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REPRODUCTIOXS  FROM  RARE 

PRINTS  AND  WORKS  OF  ART 

'AMERICANA) 


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LONDON     .    .    .    .  W.  Wesley  &  Son  ROME I*  Piale 

88  Essex  Street,  Strand,  W.  C.  1  Piazza  dl  Spaema 

PARIS Brentano's  ST.  PETERSBURG  Watklns  and  Company 

87,  Ayenue  de  1'Opera  Marakala  No.  86 

BERLIN      ....  Asher  and  Company  CAIRO F.  Dlemer 

Unter  den  Linden  66  Shepheard's  Building 

DUBLIN      ....  Combrldge  and  Company  BOMBAY Thacker  and  Company  Limited 

Orafton  Street  Esplanade  Road 

EDINBURGH    .    .  Andrew  Elliott  TOKIO Methodist  Publishing  House 

17  Princess  Street  2  Shtchome,  Glz  Ginza 

MADRID     ....  Llbreria  de  Komo  y  Faasell  MEXICO  CITY     .    .  American  Book  Printing  Co. 

Calle  Alcala,  5  1st  San  Francisco  No.  18 


nf    tl|g    Inaugural    Number 

FIRST   \  <  •  1. 1    M  1;  FIRST  NUKBKR 

Collecting  the  Various  Phases  of  History,  Art,  Literature, 
Science,  Industry,  and  Such  as  Pertains  to  the  Moral,  Intellectual 
and  Political  Uplift  of  the  American  Nation — Inspiring  Nobility 
of  Home  and  State — Testimonial  of  the  Marked  Individuality 
and  Strong  Character  of  the  Builders  of  the  American  Republic 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION — Coat-of-arms  in  use  by  the  Hooker  Family  In  America 
as  descendants  of  Thomas  Hooker,  emigrant  In  1633,  and  author  of  the  First 
Written  Constitution  In  the  World,  creating:  a  government — Emblazoned  In  six 
colors  by Charles  L.  N.  Camp 

AMERICAN  FLAG — THE  EMBLEM  OF  LIBERTY — Story  of  Its  Evolution  from  the 
Discovery  of  the  New  World  to  the  Present  Age  when  the  Sun  Never  Sets  on  the 
Stars  and  Stripes — Accompanied  by  a  Silk  Memorial  Flag:  made  by  the  Cheney 
Mills  at  South  Manchester,  Connecticut,  and  seven  Silk  Tissue  reproductions  In 
Original  Colors Mrs.  Henry  Champion  9 

TO  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE — THE  VOICE  OF  THE  STATES— Expressed  In  Per- 
sonal Messages  from  the  Governors  to  "The  Journal  of  American  History" 

"America's  Greatest  Need  Is  Civic  Virtue" Honorable  George  E.  Chamberlain 

Governor  of  Oregon     17 
"Higher  Standards  of  Public  Service".  .Hon.  George  R.  Carter,  Governor  of  Hawaii     18 

"Future  Mastery  of  the  Pacific  Ocean" Hon.  George  C.  Pardee 

Governor  of  California     21 
"An  Inspiration  for  Worthy  Work"... Hon.  Fred  M.  Warner,  Governor  of  Michigan     21 

"Strong,  New  Blood  Elevates  Citizenship" Hon.  Bryant  B.  Brooks 

Governor  of  Wyoming     24 

"The  Native  Honesty  of  the  Nation" Hon.  John  C.  Cutler,  Governor  of  Utah     25 

"American  In  Spirit  and  in  Aspiration".  .Hon.  Andrew  L.  Harris,  Governor  of  Ohio     2C 
"Wholesome  Immigration  Is  a  Builder". Hon.  J.  O.  Davidson,  Governor  of  Wisconsin     27 

"Commercialism  Must  Not  Dominate  America" Hon.  Joseph  M.  Terrell 

Governor  of  Georgia     29 
"The  Spirit  of  Patriotism  Still  Lives" Hon.  Win.  T.  Cobb,  Governor  of  Maine     SI 

THE  "MIRACLE"  OF  THE  FIRST  STEAMBOAT — Tragedy  of  an  American  Genius  who 
was  Publicly  Ridiculed  as  a  "Fanatic"  for  Proposing  the  Propulsion  of  Vessels  by 
Steam  against  Wind  and  Tide — The  Idea  was  Pronounced  "Impracticable"  and  to 
Risk  Life  in  its  Undertaking  "Foolhardy" — Eleven  Reproductions  from  Rare 
Prints By  Seymour  Bullock  22 

MEMOIRS  OF  A  SOUTHERN  CONGRESSMAN— Ranging  the  Borderlands  with  Daniel 
Boone — Encounters  with  the  Cherokees  In  Command  of  the  Light  Dragoons — 
Electioneering  In  American  Politics  a  Hundred  Years  Ago — On  the  Floor  of  Con- 
gress during  the  Monroe  Administration — Old  Manuscript  left. By  Hon.  Felix  Walker 

Born  in  Virginia  in  1762     49 

A  WEDDING  SUIT  IN  1758— Trancribed  from  Ancient  Memorandum 

By  Fannie  M.  Hackett.  Biddeford.  Maine     60 

PERSONAL  LETTERS  OF  PIONEER  AMERICANS — Glimpses   Into  Time-stained  and 
almost  Indecipherable  Correspondence  Revealing  the  Strong  Character,  Conscien- 
tious Lives,  Business  Integrity  and  Hardihood  of  the  First  Citizens  of  the  Republic     61 
Letter  Sent  by  Post-boy  from  William  Prentlss,  during  the  Plague  in  Philadel- 
phia,  to   Dr.   Jeremiah  Barker,   Fallmouth,   Casco   Bay,   Massachusetts.   In    1792 — 

Transcribed  from  Original By  Abbie  F.  Carpenter,  Portland.  Maine     61 

Letter   Written   to   Reverend   Chandler   Robbins   of   Plymouth.   Massachusetts,   by 
Reverend  Little  in  Birmingham,  England,  Discussing  the  Moral  Problems  In  1797 — 

Transcribed  from  Original By  Mrs.  Lydla  J.  Knowles,  Bangor.  Maine     62 

Letter   Sent   by   George   Washington,    in    1797,   to   Honorable   Oliver   Ellsworth,   a 
Framer  of  the  Constitution.  Minister  to  France,  and  Chief  Justice  of  the  United 

States — Transcribed  from  Original By  Adaline  B.  Ellsworth  Roberts 

Ollana.  Illinois     62 

THE  CENTENARY  OF  AN  AMERICAN  POET— Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow— Born 
at  Portland,  Maine,  February  27,  1807 — Died  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts.  March 
24,  1882 — Four  Sonnets  Inscribed  to  His  Memory  and  Centennial  Bas  Relief 

By  Louis  A  Gudebrod.  National  Society  of  Sculpture     64 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  DEATH  IN  EARLY  AMERICA— Manuscript  by  the  Reverend  Joseph 
Webb,  Born  in  1666,  and  an  Intellectual  and  Moral  Leader  of  His  Times — Occa- 

INDEX  CONTINUED  (OVER) 


mttfr  jEngraptttgg  anft 


FIRST  QUARTER  NINETEEN  SEVEN 

Chronicles  of  Those  Who  Have  Done  a  Good  Day's  Work — 
Rich  in  Information  upon  Which  May  Be  Based  Accurate 
Economic  and  Sociologic  Studies  and  of  Eminent  Value  to 
Private  and  Public  Libraries — Beautified  by  Reproductions  of 
Ancient  Subjects  through  the  Modern  Processes  of  American  Art 

CONTINUATION     OF    INDEX 

stoned  by  the  Demise  of  Major  Nathan  Gold,  in  1693,  who  was  Foremost  In  Politi- 
cal, Military  and  Ecclesiastical  Affairs — Original  Sermon  Transcribed 

By  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hubbell  Schenck,  Washington,  District  of  Columbia     65 

ANECDOTE  OF  AN  AMERICAN  REVOLUTIONIST     By  Mrs.  J.  R.  Cozart 

Lamar,  Arkansas     72 

LIFE    STORIES    OF    GALLANT    AMERICANS 78 

John  Moor — The  Knight  of  Derryfleld — Contributed. By  Mrs.  Lina  Moore  McKenney 

Madison,  Maine     78 
James  Caldwell — Hero  of  Elizabethtown — Contributed. By  Mrs.  Hiram  Price  Dillon 

Topeka,  Kansas     76 

AN  OLD  TAVERN  SONG — Transcript  from  Fugitive  Paper 79 

ESTATE  OF  A  "WELL-TO-DO"  AMERICAN  IN  1689 — Transcribed 

By  M.  Augusta  Holman,  Leominster,  Massachusetts     80 

CENTENARY  OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  E.  LEE — His  Last  Portrait  taken  on  His  Old 
War  Horse  "Traveller" — Excerpt  from  Theodore  Roosevelt's  Writing  by  His 

Special     Permission Supplement     80 

ADVENTURES  OF  AN  AMERICAN  SEAMAN— Journal  of  Captain  Samuel  Hoyt,  Born 
in  1744,  and  Followed  the  Roving  Life  of  His  Generation — On  a  Fighting  Ship  off 
Havana,  Cuba,  in  1762 — Experiences  as  a  Prisoner  on  a  Privateer — Wanderings 

as  a  Fugitive  along  the  American  Coast — Contributed By  Julius  Walter  Pease 

In  His  Ninety-Third  Year     81 

ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  INSTANCES  OF  BOYCOTT  IN  AMERICA— Transcript  from  Orig- 
inal Document By  Ella  S.  Duncan,  Keokuk,  Iowa  88 

EXPERIENCES  IN  EARLY  WARS  IN  AMERICA— Life  Story  of  an  Ambitious  Ameri- 
can Youth  who  at  Sixteen  Years  of  Age  was  Fired  with  the  Spirit  of  Patriotism 
and  against  the  Will  of  his  Parents  Marched  to  the  Battle  Line  in  Defense  of  His 
Country — Original  Journal  of  Peter  Pond,  Born  In  1740 — Transcribed 

t  By  Mrs.  Nathan  Gillette  Pond,  an  Eminent  Genealogist     89 

yBILL  OF  SALE  OF  A  NORTHERN  SLAVE  IN  1721— Transcribed  from  Original 

By  Eliza  Comstock,  Descendant  of  Slave-Holder     94 
J  QUAINT  WILL  OF  A  NEGRO  SLAVE  IN  1773— Transcribed  from  Original 

By  Eliza  Comstock     95 

A  MOTHER'S  LETTER  TO  HER  SON  IN  1789— Transcribed  from  Original  in  Posses- 
sion of Joseph  Alsop,  Descendant  of  Correspondent  96 

PIONEER  LIFE  ON  AMERICAN  FRONTIER — Experiences  of  a  Federal  Justice  on  the 
Trail  of  the  Prairie  Schooners — Carrying  the  Law  into  the  Western  Wilderness — 
Treaties  with  the  Indians  and  the  Establishment  of  Courts  in  a  New  Land  of  Gold 
and  silver — The  Birth  of  the  Rich  West — Several  illustrations  bearing  the  lines 
"Old  Prints  in  Possession  of  Judge  Munson"  should  be  credited  to  Hon.  William 
Henry  Milburn's  work  "In  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi."  Judge  Munson  wishes 
it  fully  understood  that  these  illustrations  are  from  Mr.  Milburn's  original  work,  a 
copy  of  which  was  presented  to  a  member  of  his  family  by  the  author.  The  work 
Is  published  by  the  N.  D.  Thompson  Publishing  Company  of  New  York  and  St. 
Louis  and  should  be  read  by  all  who  are  interested  in  American  pioneer  life. 

Judge  Lyman  E.  Munson 

United  States  District  Court  of  Montana  in  1865     97 

THE  FIRST  AMERICAN  SOLDIERS — Call  "To  Arms"  began  with  Arrival  of  First 
White  Men  in  the  New  World — Footmen  with  Musket  and  Pike — Horsemen  with 
Pistol  and  Carbine — Military  Force  Blazed  Path  for  Civilization — Heroic  "Trained 
Bands"  and  the  Organization  of  the  Continental  Army..  .By  Hon.  Spencer  P.  Mead 

Of  the  New  York  Bar  120 

WHEN  SORROW  BECKONS  AT  THY  DOOR— A  Poem Howard  Arnold  Walter 

Now  In  the  Orient  128 

COUNTRY  LIFE   IN  AMERICA— Six  Nature  Reproductions 

Path  Through  the  Wood — Drawing  by  Daniel  F.  Wentworth 129 

Moonlight — Drawing  by  Daniel  F.  Wentworth 130 

The  Road  Home — Sun  Gravure  by  George  C.  Atwell 131 

The  Old  Mill — Sun  Gravure  by  George  C.  Atwell 132 

The  Meadows — Drawing  by  Daniel  F.  Wentworth 133 

The  Brook — Sun  Gravure  by  George  C.  Atwell 134 

\> 


From    Anrtntt 


JAM   AKY  FEBRUARY  MARCH 

A  "Journal  of  American  History"  will  be  a  Credit  to  the  Nation. 
I  hold  its  builders  in  High  Esteem.  I  cannot  too  strongly  En- 
dorse the  Plan.  I  am  sure  it  will  receive  the  Immediate  Co- 
operation of  All  who  have  the  Real  Interests  of  the  Nation  at 
heart—  HENRY  ROBERTS,  Governor  of  Connecticut 

CONCLUSION     OF    INDEX 

THE  ACADEMY  OF  AMERICAN  IMMORTALS—  The  Hall  of  Fame  ....................    135 

Bronze  Medallion  of  George  Washington,  First  President  of  United  States  ........   1S6 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Abraham  Lincoln  —  First  Great  American  Liberator  ...........   137 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Daniel  Webster,  First  Great  American  Statesman  ............   Iff 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  First  Great  American  Diplomat  ..........   139 

CONTEMPORARY  AMERICAN  POETRY—  An  Ode  to  Niagara  Falls—  With  Four  Photo 

Art  Engraving's  .....  By  Hon.  Henry  Taylor  Blake,  Now  in  His  Seventy-Ninth  Year  141 

FIRST  AMERICAN'S  GREETING  TO  THE  WHITE  MAN—  Sculpture 

By  Herman  Atkins  McNeil,  National  Society  of  Sculpture  144 
HERE  LET  ME  DWELL  —  A  Poem  .........................  By  Frederic  E.  Snow,  B.D.  146 

LETTERS  OF  A  SERGEANT  IN  WAR  OF  1812—  Romance  of  John  Burt,  First  Battalion 
Artillery,  and  Persia  Meacham  —  With  Transcripts  from  Correspondence  and  two 
Ancient  Silhouettes  ........  By  William  Burt  Harlow,  Ph.D.,  Now  in  the  Bermudas  147 

FIRST  CHAMPION  OF  UNIVERSAL  PEACE  —  Memories  and  Anecdotes  of  Ellhu  Burrltt, 
an  American  Farmer-lad  who  Rose  from  a  Blacksmith  Forge  and  Through  Self- 
instruction  Acquired  the  Tongues  of  Fifty  Nations  —  He  Appealed  to  Christendom 
to  Cease  Warfare  and  Became  Honored  by  the  Master  Minds  of  the  Old  World  — 
With  Prophecy  of  Victor  Hugo  and  Last  Portrait  of  Elihu  Burritt 

By  Hon.  David  Nelson  Camp,  M.A.,  Department  of  Education  at  Washington  In  1867  151 
ANCIENT  AMERICAN  LANDMARKS—  Two   Photo-Engravings  .......................   162 

SCULPTURE   IN   AMERICA  —  The    First    Sculptors   and    Their   Hardships    in    the    New 

World  —  With  two  Reproductions  from  Early  Sculpture  ........  By  Bickford  Cooper  163 

I  WHO  HAVE  DRUNK  THE  WATER  BITTER  SWEET—  A  Sonnet.  .By  Horace  Holley  166 
BEGINNINGS   OF    AMERICAN    ARCHITECTURE  —  Six    Photo-Engravings    of    Ancient 

Structures  ......................................................................   167 

PAINTING  IN  AMERICA  —  The  First  Artists  and  Their  Experiences  on   the  Western 

Continent  —  With  three  Reproductions  from  Rare  Paintings  ......  By  Stuart  Copley  16$ 

MUSIC  IN  AMERICA  —  The  .Struggles  of  the  First  Composers  against  Public  Condem- 

nation ........................................................  By    Clara    Emerson  17S 

IMMUTABILITY  —  An  Illustrated  Poem  ....................  By  Frank  Burnham  Bagley  176 

BOOK-LOVERS  OF  1738  —  ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  LIBRARIES  IN  AMERICA—  The  Lit- 
erary Inclinations  of  Early  Americans  —  The  Books  They  Read  and  Their  Learned 
Discussions  in  Matters  Intellectual  and  Moral  —  A  Treatise  on  "Physlck"  was  the 
Foundation  of  Literary  Culture  In  the  Discriminating  Judgments  of  these  First 
American   Bibliophiles  —  with  Portrait  of  the   First  Librarian   of   the   Phllogram- 
matican  Library  ................................  By  Mrs.  Martha  Williams  Hooker 

Great-Granddaughter  of  tne  Founder  177 

CONTEMPORARY    THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA—  "The    Press    of    the    Republic    la    the 
Moulder  of  Public  Opinion  —  the  Leader  and  Educator"  ........................... 

American  Municipalities  of  the  Future  ----  By  T.  E.  Stafford  In  "Dally  Oklahoman"  186 

Progress  Is  Adjusting  the  Race  Problem  ................  ......  By  Frank  Johnston 

In  Jackson  (Mississippi)  "Evening  News"  186 
Marriage  and  Divorce  are  Subject  to  Evolution  ....................  By  J.  W.  Spear 

In  Arizona  "Republican"  187 
Will  American  Republic  Outgrow  State  Lines?  ................  By  Gilbert  D.  Paine 

In  Memphis  (Tennessee)  "News  Scimitar"  187 
American  Constitution  Is  In  Advance  of  Times  ............  By  Horatio  W.  Seymour 

In  Chicago  (Illinois)  "Chronicle"  18S 
Shall  America  Limit  Private  Fortunes?  ..........................  By  W.  H.  Merrell 

In  Boston  (Massachusetts)  "Herald"  188 
American  Purpose  is  Common  Good  ......  Editorial  Writer  In  New  York  "Tribune"  18» 

America  Must  Save  Lives  of  Its  Children 

Editorial  Writer  In  Houston  (Texas)  "Chronicle"  18» 
America  Extends  Freedom  to  all  Religions 

Editorial  Writer  in  Montgomery  (Alabama)  "Advertiser"  190 
Conquest  for  Pacific  Must  Not  Come 

Editorial  Writer  In  Philadelphia  (Pennsylvania)  "Inquirer"  190 
Americans  —  Our  Future  Civilization  —  Excerpt  from  Recent  Public  Utterance 

By  Theodore  Roosevelt,  President  of  the  United  States,  Cover 


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BT 

MRS.    HENRY    CHA.MPION 

AUTHOR  or  THB  BROCHURB  "  OUR  FLAG  " 
Revised  for  this  publication  and  copyright  assigned  to  the  author 


sun  never  sets  on  the 
,JL American  flag!    The  tri- 
umphant  proclamation  of 
IL      the  British  Empire  that 
night  never  mantles  her 
domain  is  now  the  exul- 
tation  of   the   American 
people.    The  Lion  has  its  compeer ! 

It  is  but  two  generations  ago  that 
the  American  Nation,  like  a  black 
knight,  entered  the  tournament  of  the 
Nations  unarmored  and  unskilled 
with  the  unwieldy  commercial  lance. 

Well  might  the  Old  World  look 
upon  it  as  brazen  effrontery.  Impov- 
erished by  the  War  for  Independence 
and  facing  a  financial  crisis  more  seri- 
ous than  any  of  its  experiences  on  the 
battlefield,  the  knight  of  the  west 
looked  to  the  east  for  the  loan  of  suf- 
ficient funds  to  secure  the  bare  suste- 
nance of  life — but  without  sympathy. 


The  aged  monarchies  proclaimed  it 
a  hazardous  risk  and  forecasted  short 
life  to  the  bold  knight,  pronouncing 
self-government  as  the  vision  of  irre- 
sponsible theorists. 

The  tournament  of  the  Nations  has 
been  swift.  From  thirteen  scattered 
states  in  the  wilderness  the  Ameri- 
can Republic  has  swept  from  ocean  to 
ocean.  It  has  pushed  the  light  of  lib- 
erty to  the  far  ice-bounds  of  Alaska. 
With  a  leap  it  has  carried  the  dawn  of 
a  new  day  into  the  Hawaiian  Islands 
and  into  the  Philippines ;  it  has  ex- 
tended its  arm  to  struggling  Cuba  and 
Porto  Rico  as  the  champion  of  free- 
dom, until  to-day  the  American 
knight  holds  the  commercial  suprem- 
acy of  the  world,  and  with  a  wealth 
estimated  at  one-tenth  of  a  trillion 
dollars,  and  increasing  at  the  rate  of 
twelve  millions  a  day,  it  is  the  richest 
Nation  on  earth — in  Men  and  gold. 


Ammran 


—  Sty?  Ensign  of 


UR     flag,     whose     one 
hundred    and    thirtieth 
birthday    we    celebrate 
this     June     14,     1907, 
was,  like  everything  in 
nature    or    history,    a 
growth,    and    to    trace 
that  growth  takes  us  back  to  the  Na- 
tional flag  of  the  Mother  Country. 

One  naturally  asks,  what  flag 
floated  over  the  early  settlements  of 
our  country?  What  over  its  battle- 
fields previous  to  that  June  day  in 
1777,  when  by  an  act  of  Congress  it 
was  resolved  "that  the  flag  of  the  na- 
tion be  thirteen  stripes,  alternate  red 
and  white,  and  thirteen  stars,  white 
on  a  blue  field?" 

Answering  our  question  in  order  of 
time,  we  take  first  the  earliest  settle- 
ments of  the  country. 

Tradition  tells  us  that  the  Norse- 
men, or  Northmen,  and  the  Danes 
landed  between  the  years  986  and 
1300  at  several  points  at  the  extreme 
northeast  of  the  continent,  and  even 
as  far  down  the  coast  as  the  New 
England  shore. 

Tradition  also  relates  that  an  expe- 
dition from  Iceland  in  1347  landed 
near  what  is  now  Newport,  Rhode 
Island — at  which  time  the  "Round 
Tower"  was  built.  These  expedi- 
tions no  doubt  planted  some  ensign  or 
standard,  as  they  took  temporary  pos- 
session, but  no  record  of  its  design  is 
left  us. 

In  1492,  Columbus  planted  the 
Spanish  flag  on  the  Island  of  San  Sal- 
vador, one  of  the  Bahama  group,  and 
again  in  1498  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ori- 
noco, South  America.  He  supposed 
he  had  then  reached  the  coast  of  Asia. 
According  to  Humboldt,  Sebastian 
Cabot  landed  at  Labrador  in  1497, 
and  planted  the  "Red  Cross  of  St. 
George,"  the  royal  ensign  of  Henry 
the  Seventh.  If  so,  the  English  flag 
then  for  the  first  time  floated  over 
North  American  soil.  But  we  nar- 
row down  our  field  of  inquiry  to  what 
is  now  the  United  States  and  as  we 
remember  that  for  one  hundred  and 
sixty-nine  years  from  the  settlement 


of  Jamestown,  Virginia,  or  the  one 
hundred  and  fifty-seven  years,  from 
the  wintry  day  when  the  Mayflower 
landed  at  Plymouth  Rock,  to  the  June 
day  in  1777  when  the  stars  and  stripes 
were  adopted — for  this  more  than  a 
century  and  a  half  the  flag  of  Eng- 
land was  our  flag,  we  ask  with  inter- 
est, what  was  the  flag  of  the  Mother 
Country  in  those  years? 

About  the  year  1192,  Richard 
Cceur  de  Lion  had  asked  the  aid  of  St. 
George,  Bishop  of  Cappadocia.  He 
gave  the  king  as  a  banner  what  is 
now  called  the  "Red  Cross  of  St. 
George,"  and  Edward  III,  about 
1345,  made  St.  George  the  patron 
saint  of  the  kingdom. 

Under  this  flag  Sir  Humphrey 
Gilbert,  Bartholomew  Gosnold  and 
others  sailed  with  grants  of  land 
from  Queen  Elizabeth  to  found  colo- 
nies in  the  new  world,  1578-1587. 

The  generous,  even  reckless  way, 
in  which  land  was  disposed  of  by 
these  charters  is  shown  by  the  boun- 
daries given. 

All  the  land  between  the  latitude  of 
Cape  Fear,  North  Carolina,  and  Can- 
ada was  given  by  the  Queen  and  to  be 
called  "Virginia."  It  was  to  be 
divided  into  two  districts;  the  south- 
ern part,  from  the  latitude  of  Cape 
Fear  to  the  mouth  of  the  Potomac, 
and  running  back  indefinitely  into  the 
wilderness,  was  given  to  the  "London 
Company,"  and  to  be  called  Southern 
Virginia ;  the  land  from  about  the  lat- 
itude of  New  York  to  Canada  was 
given  to  the  "Plymouth  Company," 
and  to  be  called  Northern  Virginia. 

The  strip  of  country  between  these 
two  grants,  about  one  hundred  miles 
of  coast,  was  to  be  a  dividing  line  to 
avoid  disputes  as  to  territory,  and 
neither  company  might  make  settle- 
ments more  than  fifty  miles  from  its 
boundary. 

All  these  efforts  to  plant  colonies 
proved  failures.  Lack  of  supplies 
and  cold  winters  led  the  settlers  to 
give  up  the  project  and  return  to 
England. 

This   "Red   Cross   of   St.   George" 


FIRST    FLAG 

TO    FLOAT    OVER 

PER  MA  NEXT  SETTLEMENTS  IX  AMERICA 


"THE  <  OLORS"   A    UNION    BETWEEN    Til  K    HI.  l> 

moss     <t|      ST.    GEORGE    OF    ENGLAND     AND    THK 

win  OTLAND  UNDER  i\ 

JAMES       I       IN       Him;     THE     FI.A«J     "I 
THE   MAYFLOWER    IN    1O2O 


American  Jflag 


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<o  -Tcord  of  its  design  is 

In     1492.    Columbus 
Spanish  flag  on  the  Islan 
vador,  one  of  the  Bahanv> 
again  in  1498  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ori- 
noco,  South  America.     He  supposed 
he  had  then  reached  the  coast  of  Asia. 
>ig    to    Hnmboldt,    Sebastian 
-..->t   landed   at   Labrador   in 

the  "Red  Cross  of 

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lied  Northern  Virg 
The  strip  of  country  between  the.>e 
two  grants,  about  one  hundred  miles 
of  coast,  was  to  be  a  dividing  line  to 
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brated  picture  of  the  "Bal 
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tol  at  Washington,  repres* 
*.  white  corner,  green 


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anil 


was  England's  flag  until  the  year 
1606,  over  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years. 

In  that  year,  1606,  Scotland  was 
added  to  England,  and  King  James  I, 
in  honor  of  the  union,  placed  the 
"White  Cross  of  St.  Andrew"  on  the 
national  flag,  changing  the  field  from 
white  to  blue.  This  diagonal  "White 
Cross  of  St.  Andrew"  had  been  the 
badge  of  the  Scots  since  the  Crusades. 

The  union  of  the  two  crosses  was 
called  the  "King's  colors,"  or  "Union 
•colors,"  and  the  first  permanent  set- 
tlements in  this  country  were  made 
under  its  protection.  It  was  the  flag 
of  the  Mayflower  in  1620. 

Massachusetts  records  speak  of  it 
as  in  use  in  that  colony  in  1634. 

In  November  of  that  year  a  Mr. 
Endicott  of  Salem  defaced  the  King's 
colors.  Much  excitement  followed, 
a  trial  was  held,  when  it  was  proven 
that  it  was  not  done  with  ill-intent  to 
England,  but  the  red  cross  was  a  relic 
of  anti-Christ,  having  been  given  to 
England  by  a  pope,  and  so  was  a 
•cause  of  offense.  After  referring  the 
matter  to  an  assembly  of  ministers, 
and  then  to  one  court  after  another, 
it  was  proposed  that  the  colony  show 
no  flag,  and  none  was  displayed. 

Then  arose  a  question.  If  captains 
of  vessels  returning  to  Europe  were 
asked  what  colors  they  saw  here,  the 
truth  might  cause  trouble.  The  mat- 
ter was  referred  to  Reverend  John 
Cotton,  who  wisely  suggested  a  way 
"by  which  the  growing  spirit  of  inde- 
pendence might  be  satisfied  and  yet  no 
offense  be  given.  He  said,  "As  the  fort 
at  the  entrance  of  Boston  harbor  with- 
out doubt  belongs  to  the  King,  the 
'King's  colors'  should  be  used  there." 
This  was  done,  to  the  extent  of  show- 
ing them  on  the  staff  at  the  fort  when 
a  vessel  was  passing,  but  only  then, 
and  they  were  not  used  elsewhere  in 
the  colony.  This  was  in  1636. 

In  1643,  tne  three  colonies  of  Ply- 
mouth, Massachusetts  and  Connecti- 
<cut  united,  under  the  name  of  "The 
United  Colonies  of  New  England," 
"but  no  flag  was  adopted. 


In  1651,  fifteen  years  after  the 
Salem  episode,  the  Court  of  Massa- 
chusetts ordered  that  the  "Cross  of 
St.  George  and  St.  Andrew"  be  used 
in  the  colony. 

Under  Cromwell  and  Charles  II, 
various  minor  changes  were  made  in 
the  flag  of  the  Mother  Country,  but 
later  the  color  was  changed  to  crim- 
son and  the  two  crosses,  which  had 
covered  the  entire  flag,  were  placed  in 
the  upper  corner. 

This  was  called  the  "Cromwell 
flag,"  and  in  that  form  was  not 
accepted  by  the  colonies;  we  contin- 
ued to  use  the  "King's  Colors"  till 
1707,  when  we  adopted  the  red  flag, 
but  substituted  a  device  of  our  own 
in  place  of  the  crosses. 

All  the  pictures  of  New  England 
flags  from  1707  to  1776  show  a  red  or 
blue  ensign,  field  white,  with  a  pine 
tree  or  globe  in  the  upper  corner, 
sometimes  covering  the  entire  field. 
The  pine  tree  was  oftener  used. 

Massachusetts  had  used  the  pine 
tree  as  her  symbol  for  some  time.  It 
is  on  the  silver  coins  of  that  colony, 
the  die  for  which  was  cast  in  1652, 
and  used  without  change  of  date  for 
thirty  years.  Trumbull,  in  his  cele- 
brated picture  of  the  "Battle  of  Bun- 
ker Hill,"  in  the  rotunda  of  the  Capi- 
tol at  Washington,  represents  the  red 
qag,  white  corner,  green  pine  tree, 
he  Connecticut  troops  who  took 
in  the  exciting  times  that  fol- 
lowed Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill 
had  a  state  banner  with  the  state 
arms  and  the  motto,  "Qui  transtulit 
sustinet." 

The  troops  of  Massachusetts  adopt- 
ed the  words,  "An  Appeal  to 
Heaven." 

Early  New  York  records  speak  of 
different  standards;  indeed,  the  regi- 
ments from  various  states,  hastening 
to  the  aid  of  Washington  or  his  gene- 
rals, carried  flags  of  various  devices ; 
many  having  only  a  local  interest  and 
only  used  on  the  occasion  that  origi- 
nated them. 

The  men  at  Lexington  had  neither 
uniform  nor  flags,  but  at  Bunker  Hill, 


Am^rtran 


nf 


two  months  later,  the  Colonial  troops 
had  more  the  appearance  of  an  army. 

Among  the  flags  described,  the  pine 
tree  is  most  frequently  mentioned, 
also  a  serpent  coiled,  ready  to  spring, 
with  the  motto,  "Beware!"  "Don't 
tread  on  me,"  or  "Come  if  you  dare !" 
The  snake  flag  was  used  by  the 
Southern  states  from  1776,  to  June, 
1777.  A  chain  of  thirteen  links,  a 
ring,  a  tiger,  and  a  field  of  wheat 
were  also  used  as  devices. 

In  October,  1775,  Washington 
writes  to  two  officers  who  were 
about  to  take  command  of  cruisers: 
"Please  fix  on  some  flag,  by  which  our 
vessels  may  know  each  other." 

They  decided  on  the  "pine-tree 
flag,"  as  it  was  called.  This  is  fre- 
quently mentioned  in  the  records  of 
1775  and  1776  as  used  by  vessels. 

The  first  striped  flag  was  flung  to 
the  breeze  and  "kissed  by  the  free  air 
of  Heaven,"  at  Cambridge,  Massa- 
chusetts, Washington's  headquarters, 
January  I,  1776. 

Washington  says :  "We  hoisted  the 
Union  flag  in  compliment  to  the 
United  Colonies,  and  saluted  it  with 
thirteen  guns." 

It  had  thirteen  stripes,  alternate 
red  and  white,  and  the  united  crosses 
of  St.  George  and  St.  Andrew  on  a 
blue  field.  Similar  flags  were  used 
later  in  the  year. 

When  reported  in  England,  it  was 
alluded  to  as  "the  thirteen  rebellious 
stripes." 

In  1775  a  navy  of  seventeen  ves- 
sels, varying  from  ten  to  thirty-two 
guns,  was  ordered.  Says  Lieutenant 
Preble:  "The  senior  of  the  five  first 
lieutenants  of  the  new  Continental 
Navy  was  John  Paul  Jones.  He  has 
left  it  on  record  that  the  'Flag  of 
America'  was  hoisted  by  his  own 
hand  on  his  vessel,  the  'Alfred,'  the 
first  time  it  was  ever  displayed  by  a 
man-of-war."  This  was  probably 
the  same  design  as  the  Cambridge 
flag,  used  January  I,  1776,  and  was 
raised  on  the  "Alfred"  about  the 
same  time.  No  exact  date  is  given. 

We  come  now  to  the  time  when  the 


crosses  of  St.  George  and  St.  Andrew 
were  taken  from  the  striped  Union 
flag,  and  a  blue  field  with  white  stars 
was  substituted  for  the  symbol  of 
English  authority. 

Thirteen  states  had  bound  them- 
selves together  as  the  "United  States 
of  America."  They  were: 


New   Hampshire, 
Massachusetts, 
Rhode   Island, 
Connecticut, 
New  York, 
New  Jersey, 


Pennsylvania, 
Delaware, 
Maryland, 
Virginia, 
North  Carolina, 
South  Carolina, 


and  Georgia. 

One  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago 
this  June  fourteenth,  1907,  the  Amer- 
ican Congress  in  session  at  Philadel- 
phia resolved,  "that  the  flag  of  the 
thirteen  United  States  be  thirteen 
stripes,  alternate  red  and  white;  the 
union  to  be  thirteen  stars,  white  on  a 
blue  field,  representing  a  new  constel- 
lation, the  stars  to  be  arranged  in  a 
circle." 

Here  we  may  ask,  what  suggested 
the  "Stars  and  Stripes?" 

It  has  been  said  in  answer,  that  the 
words  "representing  a  new  constella- 
tion" refer  to  the  constellation  Lyra, 
symbol  of  harmony;  that  this  sug- 
gested the  stars.  As  to  the  stripes, 
some  writers  refer  us  to  the  stripe 
which,  in  the  absence  of  uniform, 
marked  the  rank  of  Continental  sol- 
dier, by  orders  from  headquarters  at 
Cambridge,  July  24,  1775. 

Says  another  writer,  in  answer: 
"The  flag  of  the  Netherlands."  It 
had  become  familiar  to  the  Puritans 
during  their  twelve-years'  sojourn  in 
Holland,  and  its  triple  stripe,  red, 
white  and  blue,  suggested  the  stripes 
and  the  three  colors. 

Another  answer  has  been,  that 
Washington  found  in  the  coat  of 
arms  of  his  own  family  a  hint  from 
which  he  drew  the  design  for  the  flag. 

The  coat  of  arms  of  the  Washing- 
ton family  has  two  red  bars  on  a 
white  ground,  and  three  gilt  stars 
above  the  top  bar.  A  careful  search 
among  the  records  of  that  family 


fails  to  discover  any  connection.  Says 
one  of  their  genealogists :  "There  are 
several  points  of  resemblance  between 
our  coat  of  arms  and  the  flag  of  the 
country."  The  three  stars  are  ex- 
plained as  meaning  in  heraldry  that 
the  estate  passed  to  the  third  son. 

In  an  English  genealogy  of  the 
family,  the  author  refers  to  the  mat- 
ter as  entirely  without  foundation, 
and  adds:  "At  this  time  Washing- 
ton was  only  commander-in-chief  of 
the  army,  and  Congress  arranged  the 
flag;  besides,  he  was  not  at  all  popu- 
lar, then,  there  being  a  strong  move- 
ment to  supplant  him  with  Sir  Hora- 
tio Gates,  fresh  from  the  victory  of 
Saratoga." 

Certainly,  Washington  himself 
never  referred  to  any  connection  be- 
tween his  coat  of  arms  and  the  flag, 
and  his  pride  of  family  might  have 
led  him  to  do  so,  had  any  connection 
existed. 

It  has  seemed  to  me,  from  a  care- 
ful study  of  the  subject,  that  to  no 
one  thing,  but  to  a  blending  of  seve- 
ral, especially  of  several  flags,  are  we 
indebted  for  the  design  of  our  own. 

It  is  said  that  a  committee  had  been 
appointed,  three  weeks  before  the 
June  fourteenth  when  the  stars  and 
stripes  were  adopted,  who  were  to 
consider  the  subject  and  report  on  a 
general  standard  for  all  the  troops  of 
the  colonies ;  that  the  committee, 
consisting  of  General  Washington, 
Robert  Morris  and  Colonel  Ross, 
called  on  Betsy  Ross,  widow  of  John 
Ross,  who  kept  an  upholsterer's  shop 
on  Arch  street,  Philadelphia,  and 
passing  into  the  back  parlor  to  avoid 
public  view  they  asked  Mrs.  Ross  if 
she  could  make  a  flag  after  a  design 
they  showed  her.  She  said  she  would 
try.  She  suggested  changing  the 
stars  that  Washington  had  drawn 
with  six  points,  the  English  rule,  to 
five  points,  the  French  rule.  Her 
suggestion  was  accepted.  Our  flags 
always  have  the  five-pointed  stars,  our 
coin  the  six-pointed.  There  is  no 
doubt  but  that  Betsy  Ross  made  the 
first  flag  and  that  she  made  them  for 

13 


the  government  for  several  years. 
There  is  an  entry  of  a  draft  on  the 
United  States  Treasury,  May,  1777: 
"Pay  Betsey  Ross  £14,  125.  2  d.  for 
flags  for  fleet  in  Delaware  river." 

It  is  claimed  that  the  first  using  of 
the  stars  and  stripes  in  actual  military 
service  was  at  Fort  Stanwix,  re- 
named Fort  Schuyler,  now  Rome, 
New  York,  in  1777.  August  third, 
of  that  year,  the  fort  was  besieged  by 
the  English  and  Indians;  the  brave 
garrison  were  without  a  flag,  but  one 
was  made  in  the  fort.  The  red  was 
strips  of  a  petticoat  furnished  by  a 
woman,  the  white  was  from  shirts 
torn  up  for  the  purpose,  and  the  blue 
was  a  piece  of  Colonel  Peter  Ganse- 
voort's  military  cloak.  The  siege 
was  raised  August  22,  1777. 

The  first  anniversary  of  American 
independence  was  celebrated  July  4, 
1777,  at  Philadelphia,  at  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  and  other  places. 

Records  of  the  exercises  are  pre- 
served, and  the  flag  adopted  a  few 
weeks  earlier  is  mentioned  as  used. 

Thirteen  stripes  and  thirteen  stars 
are  mentioned  as  used  at  Brandywine, 
September  n,  1777,  at  Germantown, 
October  4,  1777,  and  to  have  floated 
over  the  surrender  of  Burgoyne. 

This  flag  cheered  the  patriots  at 
Valley  Forge  the  next  winter,  ^it 
waved  at  Yorktown,  and  shared  in 
the  rejoicings  at  the  close  of  the  war. 

The  shipping  of  the  country  seems 
to  have  been  slow  to  adopt  any  par- 
ticular form  of  flag. 

In  1789,  when  Washington  took 
the  presidential  chair  for  his  first 
term,  there  were  thirteen  states  in  the 
Union,  none  having  been  added  in  the 
twelve  years  since  1776,  nor  were  any 
added  till  Vermont  came  into  the 
Union,  two  years  later  in  1791,  and 
Kentucky  in  1792.  In  consequence 
of  these  additions  the  Senate  in  Con- 
gress passed  a  bill,  in  1794,  increasing 
the  number  of  stars  and  stripes  to  fif- 
teen, to  take  effect  the  next  year, 
1795.  When  the  bill  came  to  the 
House  it  caused  considerable  debate. 
Said  one  wise  prophet,  "The  flag 


Am*rtran 


—  ©If*  Ensign  of  ICthertg 


ought  to  be  permanent;  we  may  go 
on  altering  it  for  one  hundred  years. 
Very  likely  in  fifteen  years  we  may 
number  twenty  states."  This  was 
almost  literally  fulfilled. 

One  representative  suggested  that 
"it  might  give  offense  to  incoming 
states,  if  a  new  star  and  a  new  stripe 
were  not  added."  The  bill  finally 
passed,  making  fifteen  the  number  of 
stars  and  of  stripes  after  July  4,  1795. 
We  used  the  fifteen-striped  flag  for 
twenty-three  years.  But  one  after 
another  the  states  came  knocking  for 
admission. 

Tennessee,  1796;  Louisiana,  1812; 
Ohio,  1802,  and  Indiana,  1816,  had 
joined  the  Union,  and  in  1816  the  sub- 
ject of  the  flag  came  up  again  in  Con- 
gress, now  assembled  at  Washington ; 
since  1800  the  capitol  of  the  country. 
It  is  of  interest  to  note  that  the  cap- 
itol of  the  country  was  changed  nine 
times  during  the  Revolutionary  War. 

A  committee  was  appointed  (1816) 
to  inquire  into  the  expediency  of 
again  altering  the  flag.  This  com- 
mittee reported  in  favor  of  increas- 
ing the  number  of  stars  and  of  stripes 
to  twenty,  the  number  of  states  then 
(1817)  in  the  Union,  Mississippi  be- 
ing admitted  that  year.  The  matter 
was  referred  to  Captain  S.  C.  Reid, 
who  as  captain  of  a  privateer  had 
made  himself  famous  by  the  capture 
of  several  British  ships.  He  advised 
reducing  the  number  of  stripes  to  the 
original  thirteen  and  increasing  the 
number  of  stars,  one  for  each  incom- 
ing state,  making  them  form  one 
large  star,  the  motto  to  be,  "E  plu- 
ribus  unum."  The  committee  re- 
ported the  bill  as  recommended  by 
Captain  Reid. 

It  was  "laid  over,"  came  up  again 
and  was  passed  April  4,  1818,  to  take 
effect  July  fourth  of  that  year.  The 
new  star  did  not  take  its  place  on  the 
field  of  the  flag  till  the  July  fourth 
following  the  passage  of  the  bill.  A 
newspaper  of  the  day  says:  "The 
time  allowed  for  the  change,  three 
months,  is  too  short.  It  will  take  a 
month  before  the  change  can  be  re- 


ported in  New  Orleans  and  vessels 
all  over  the  world  cannot  hear  of  it 
for  a  year  or  more." 

Mrs.  Reid  made  the  first  flag  after 
the  new  design,  proposed  by  her  hus- 
band. July  4,  1818,  the  number  of 
stars  in  the  flag  was  twenty. 

The  rule  of  arranging  the  stars  to 
form  one  large  star  was  abandoned. 
As  the  number  of  states  increased, 
was  necessary  to  make  the  individual 
stars  on  the  field  so  small  as  to  be 
almost  indistinguishable  as  stars,  or 
their  points  must  interlace.  The  plan 
of  arranging  them  in  rows  was  adopt- 
ed in  1818  and  has  been  continued. 

Illinois  was  admitted  in  1818. 

Alabama  in  1819. 

Maine,  1820. 

Missouri,  1821. 

Arkansas,  1836. 

Michigan,  1837. 

Florida,  1845. 

Texas,  1845. 

Iowa,  1846. 

Wisconsin,  1848. 

California,  1850. 

Minnesota,  1858. 

Oregon,  1859. 

Kansas,  1861. 

West  Virginia,  1863. 

Nevada,  1864. 

Nebraska,  1867. 

Colorado,  1876. 

North  and  South  Dakota,  1889. 

Montana,  1889. 

Washington,  1889. 

Idaho,  1890. 

Wyoming,  1890. 

Utah,  1896,  the  forty-fifth  state 
and  star.  Since  that  date,  every 
Congress  has  had  before  it  a  bill  for 
the  admission  of  one  or  more  territo- 
ries, but  it  has  failed  to  pass  both 
Houses.  The  last  Congress  had  a 
bill  to  unite  Oklahoma  and  Indian 
Territory  and  Arizona  and  New  Mex- 
ico. The  former  passed  (1906)  but 
a  State  constitution  is  yet  to  be 
adopted  by  the  people  and  approved 
by  Congress,  so  its  star,  the  forty- 
sixth,  will  probably  take  its  place  on 
the  field  of  the  flag,  July  4,  1907.  By 
vote  of  Congress  the  question  of  joint 


FIKST    FI.A.CJ 
OF    COLONIAL,    SKCKSSION 


REVOLUTIONARY     BANNKH    KNOWN     AN 
THX  "PINE  THEE   KLAO"  AND   FLOWN 
TO    THE    BKEKKE    »t  KINO    Till 
UK  VOLUTION  AH  If     YKAHN 

17H7     TO      I77«. 


to  rwetK  < .  the  number  of  states  then 
(1817)  in  the  Union    V  H- 

ing  arimittc'.!   'ra*   y?*r. 


•     '«>   ih»-  c 

v-veral  Brstisb  ship*.     He  advised 
reducing  the  numter  of  stripes  to  the 
original   thirteen   and   increasing  the 
number  of  stars,  one  for  each  incom- 
ing   state,    making   them    form    one 
large  star,  the  motto  to  be,  "E  plu- 
ribus    unum."     The    committee    re- 
••-•d   the  bill  as  recommended  by 
in  Reid. 

•  as  "laid  over,"  came  up 
vas  passed  April 

.     h  of  that  year."    The 
ir  did  not  place  orrthe 

iie  flag  tiU  I 
the  pas 

-"   the    d -.''  ",*  ''  ". 
'.    for   the   cnang>,AaY 


i 
Colorado,  1876. 

th  and  South  Dakota,  18 
Montana,   iv 

W;: 

forty-fifth    state 
and    star.      Since    that    date 
Congress  his  had  before 
the  admission  of  one  or  • 
ries,  but  it  has 
^aiii<»ises.     T 

JAIVbOllQ©    "HO 


on  %  &tarB  and  fctrijir  s 


and  r 
surr 

In  184 

tically  tret   ; 
from  M« 
annexed 
was   received 

si 


KIKST    Vl.JUi 
OK     A  MKKK1  \  ^      F\ 


WITH     A     SALUTE     OIT     TH1UT.. 

AT      WASHINGTON'S      MKAI 

liKIIXiK.    M.VSSAIIH-SKTT.S.  JAKl  A10      1.    1. 
AND     AI.I.T-DKI)     TO     IN     OI.II      1 
"TIIK   TIIIKTKKN    KKMKLI.Iol    s    STIMIM 


.,..,.:    T*,.IM  ' 

'(I'/li     /.ArmiMMA     MO 


HX'JU      /.-'  HTH  I  ,1  T      HO      .  I  1    //      (IMTHM)H 

•It  A1)    Xi  /•  "      TA 

..'ITTJ    ,1    Y»y  iKIMIll 

HA  oxA.iOKa:   n.ro   xi    or   n:-i<i  I.I.IA   OUA 

"KHMIllTH    K  'I*)!. I. IMJI  \\  1!    V.HMTJIIUT    MIIT" 


nn 


mtin 


statehood  of  Arizona  and  New  Mex- 
ico was  submitted  to  the  people  of  the 
two  territories,  and  rejected  Novem- 
ber, 1906,  so  they  continue  as  terri- 
tories. 

As  the  tie  that  binds  the  United 
States  was  held  by  the  government  at 
Washington  to  be  one  that  could  not 
be  severed,  no  star  was  taken  from  the 
flag  during  the  conflict  1861-65. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  the  term 
"Old  Glory"  was  first  applied  to  our 
flag.  Stephen  Driver  had  been  a  sea- 
captain  before  the  Civil  War  and 
sailed  from  Salem,  Massachusetts,  to 
foreign  lands.  Once  when  in  a  for- 
eign port,  for  some  important  service 
rendered  the  people,  he  received  from 
them  a  beautiful  American  flag.  A 
priest  blessed  it  as  it  rose  to  the  mast- 
head of  his  ship,  and  Captain  Driver 
made  a  solemn  promise  to  defend  it 
with  his  life  if  need  be.  Giving  up 
the  sea,  he  made  his  home  in  Nash- 
ville, Tennessee.  He  opposed  seces- 
sion. When  the  war  began,  to  se- 
crete the  flag  he  sewed  it  in  a  quilt, 
and  every  night  slept  beneath  it.  He 
named  it  Old  Glory. 

Since  that  eventful  afternoon  of 
July  4,  1776,  when  with  a  boldness 
that  seemed  an  audacity  and  a  hope 
that  seemed  a  prophecy,  the  name 
United  States  of  America,  was  added 
to  the  list  of  independent  nations,  and 
nearly  a  year  later,  June  14,  1777,  the 
stars  and  stripes  adopted  as  the 
sign  of  nationality,  we  have  been  one 
of  the  combatants  in  three  wars :  with 
England,  1812-15;  Mexico,  1846-48, 
and  the  Spanish-American  War,  1898. 

The  first  was  largely  fought  in 
Northern  New  York  and  on  the  lakes. 
Our  small  navy  was  uniformly  suc- 
cessful; "more  than  nineteen  hun- 
dred British  vessels  were  captured." 
Not  once  was  our  flag  of  fifteen  stars 
and  fifteen  stripes  lowered  in  token  of 
surrender. 

In  1845,  Texas,  that  had  been  prac- 
tically free  for  many  years,  seceded 
from  Mexico  and  formally  asked  to  be 
annexed  to  the  United  States.  She 
was  received,  her  star  making  the 

is 


twenty-eighth  on  the  flag.  Mexico  re- 
fused to  acknowledge  Texas'  inde- 
pendence and  called  her  annexation  a 
declaration  of  war. 

The  conflict  lasted  about  two  years 
and  resulted  in  the  acquisition  by  the 
United  States  of  California  and  New 
Mexico,  Mexico  receiving  $15,000,- 
ooo  in  payment  for  the  territory. 

Turning,  lastly,  to  the  records  of 
the  Spanish-American  War,  we  find 
that  the  tie  that  binds  the  states  to- 
gether had  been  strengthened  by  the 
thirty-three  years  of  peace  so  that 
when  the  subject  of  Spanish  oppres- 
sion in  Cuba  and  the  blowing  up  of 
the  Maine  was  discussed  in  Congress, 
a  Southern  Senator  moved  that 
fifty  million  dollars  be  placed  at  the 
disposal  of  President  McKinley  to  up- 
hold the  honor  of  our  country  and 
our  flag.  Every  Southern  man  in 
both  Houses  voted  "aye"  and  troops 
were  offered  from  all  those  States. 

War  was  declared  April  21,  1898. 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  Long,  cabled 
to  Admiral  Dewey  in  command  of 
seven  of  our  finest  war  vessels  com- 
posing the  Pacific  squadron,  to  cap- 
ture or  destroy  the  Spanish  fleet  in 
the  harbor  of  Manila.  The  battle 
was  fought  May  I,  beginning  at  5:20 
A.  M.,  the  stars  and  stripes  flying 
from  every  mast-head.  In  seven 
hours  and  a  half  every  Spanish  ship 
was  destroyed,  while  not  one  of  our 
fleet  was  badly  injured. 

Secretary  Long,  as  soon  as  the  news 
reached  him,  ordered  the  "Oregon," 
the  largest  and  newest  of  our  fleet,  to 
join  the  Atlantic  squadron  off  Cuba 
"with  all  speed."  Raising  the  "home- 
ward-bound flag"  to  the  mast-head, 
Captain  Clark  started  on  his  14,000 
mile  race  round  Cape  Horn.  This 
flag  is  a  long  streamer,  about  one- 
third  of  its  length  is  blue,  with  the 
stars  in  line ;  the  rest  of  the  flag  is  a. 
parallel  strip  of  white  with  one  of  redv 
It  is  raised  at  the  mast-head  when  the* 
war-vessel  starts  and  flies  there  dur-. 
ing  the  voyage.  It  is  sometimes  a 
hundred  feet  long  and  would  dip  into, 
the  water  if  lying  at  rest.  Obeying^- 


Atturtratt 


—  311;?  lEttatgn  of  ?Ctb?rtg 


orders,  steam  was  kept  up  to  the  high- 
est point  night  and  day,  but  so  perfect 
had  been  the  construction  of  the  ves- 
sel, that  not  once  was  the  steam  pres- 
sure lessened  for  repairs  and  in  less 
than  four  weeks,  May  twenty-fourth, 
the  "Oregon"  anchored  off  Cuba. 

June  first  a  watch  was  set  off  the 
harbor  of  Santiago  where  Admiral 
Cervera's  fleet  had  been  discovered 
hiding.  This  was  ascertained  by  bal- 
loon. Our  vessels  formed  a  semi- 
circle with  steam  up  and  search-lights 
at  night.  June  second  the  "Merri- 
mac"  was  sunk  at  the  entrance  to  the 
harbor.  Lieutenant  Hobson  wished 
the  vessel  to  go  down  flying  the  stars 
and  stripes,  but  the  admiral  refused, 
saying  the  flag  would  be  a  target  for 
the  Spanish  guns  in  the  fort  at  the  en- 
trance to  the  harbor.  Sunday  morn- 
ing, July  third,  Admiral  Cervera, 
watching  an  opportunity  to  escape, 
saw  a  flag  mount  to  the  mast-head  of 
the  flag-ship  "New  York,"  the  only 
flag  that  ever  flies  above  the  stars  and 
stripes.  He  recognized  it  as  the 
church  flag  and  knew  that  divine  ser- 
vice was  being  held  and  the  men  off 
duty.  This  flag  is  raised  as  the  ser- 
vice begins  and  lowered  at  its  close; 
it  is  a  pennant  of  white,  nearly  square, 
deeply  notched  and  bearing  a  Greek 
cross  of  blue. 

Cervera  ordered  "Forward!"  but 
the  lookout  saw  the  line  of  smoke 
moving  behind  the  hills  that  shut  in 
the  harbor  and  firing  a  signal-gun  to 
attract  attention,  signalled  "they  are 
coming."  In  three  minutes  every 
man  was  at  his  post  at  the  guns  or  in 
the  powder-room  in  his  Sunday  suit 
of  white  duck. 

This  was  at  9 130.  At  1 130  every 
Spanish  ship  was  burned  or  beached. 
The  Spanish  colors  were  lowered  at 
1 1  :oo  in  surrender  to  our  flag.  The 
rapidity  with  which  these  two  great 
naval  battles  were  fought  attracted 
the  attention  of  all  nations.  It  is  of 
interest  to  vjote,  that  we  entered  this 
war  the  sixth  of  the  naval  powers  of 
the  world ;  we  stood  the  second  at  its 
close. 

Porto  Rico  asked  to  be  taken  under 
our  protection  and  our  flag  was  raised 


on  the  palace  at  Ponce,  October  18, 
1898. 

It  may  be  of  interest  to  refer  to  one 
more  change  made  in  the  flag  of  Eng- 
land in  1801.  In  that  year  Ireland 
became  a  part  of  the  kingdom,  and  to 
commemorate  that  event,  the  "Cross 
of  St.  Patrick,"  a  red  diagonal,  was 
by  order  of  King  George  III  fimbri- 
ated  (to  use  a  heraldry  phrase)  on 
the  "Cross  of  St.  Andrew."  By  a 
heraldry  law  the  flag  of  Scotland 
shows  uppermost  in  the  first  and  third 
quarter  of  the  field  and  that  of  Ire- 
land in  the  second  and  fourth. 

As  this  third  cross  was  added  in 
1801,  England's  flag  in  its  present 
form  was  never  used  by  an  American 
colony. 

As  we  have  seen,  the  principal 
change  in  our  flag  since  its  adoption, 
June  14,  1777,  has  been  in  the  grad- 
ual increase  of  the  number  of  stars. 
In  its  general  form  it  is  older  than 
any  of  those  of  Europe,  except  Den- 
mark, which  has  been  in  use  since 
1219.  Ours  is  followed  by  Spain, 
1785-. 

Thirty-one  states  and  three  territo- 
ries have  what  is  called  a  "flag  law," 
making  it  a  misdemeanor  punishable 
with  fine  or  imprisonment  or  both,  to 
place  any  picture  or  inscription  on  the 
flag  of  the  country.  The  number  of 
the  United  States  regiment  is  except- 
ed.  There  is  a  bill  before  Congress 
to  make  a  National  law  to  that  effect. 

The  Aleutian  Islands,  a  part  of 
Alaska,  extend  so  far  to  the  westward 
that  when  it  is  sunset  on  the  most 
westerly  part,  it  is  sunrise  in  East- 
port,  Maine.  So  it  is  that  since  1867, 
thirty-five  years  before  the  Philippine 
Islands  were  taken  under  our  care 
"for  the  purpose  of  protection  and 
government"  we  can  make  the  proud 
boast  that  the  sun  never  sets  on  the 
American  flag. 

Great  is  our  wealth,  great  is  our 
domain — but  greater  than  these,  and 
of  more  importance  than  all  of  them 
is  our  intellectual  and  moral  advance, 
our  conscientious  citizenship,  our  love 
of  home  and  country — the  dominant 
cord  in  American  life. 


FIRST   FLA» 
OF    THE    AMERICAN    REPUBLIC 


ADOPTED      BT      AMERICAN       CONGRESS       IN 
PHILADELPHIA.    JUNK     14,     1T7T.    WITH 
THIRTEEN     STARR     AND     THIRTEEN 
STRIPES  SYMBOLIZING  THE  THIR- 
TEEN   ORIGINAL     COLONIES 


it-: 


cros 


attract  atte  -jpW  "'?';';:"^un  T! 

coming."  are 

man  was  at  his  r 

the  powder 

Qi  white  duck  Sunday  suit 

_         !  was  at  9 ;  ^o.     A  x 

-"-  j^wcrea  at 
to -our  flag.    The 

>  ere 


er  of 


the  United  Sr 

ed.     T    .  ..^.^^,l. 

-TCSS 

^  to  that  effect. 
•  V  -ids,    a   part   of 

\v/i^n    »  *•  cotiV SLrfi 

'  sunset  on  the  r 
jjisrt    it  i  • 

t^J"^' 

;ds   we're   takr; 

" 

%AJ,  TaHI^ 

SHT    -50 


HI       8BXHOK03       VIADIHaMA      TH 
HTlYf    ,TTTI     ,*I     aUTJt.    .AIH^ 

naaTHinr   aviA   BHAT«   MSITHIHT 

•HJHT  XHT  OWISIJOHHTB  R 
BHWO,TOr>     JAHIOTHO 


A 


law. 
waning. 


FIRST    FLAW 
OF    AMERICAN     EXPANSION 


I     MIKI)      STATKS     CONUKJBMM     ITO.N     TIIK     ADMISSION 
<>i      TUO     MOHJC     STATKS     TO    THE     AMKKICAN 

bnehter  withTBr 


I    MON     ADDED     TWO      MORE      STARS      TO 
TIIK      KI.A«J      ON      JULY      4.      17115 


.1-1 


.  A 


/!  f  )  I  *  P. 
MA 


AT?    asiou   ov/x   • 

M1H>1£       OV/T      liaUilA      /<>! 
TJ1H,       XO       OA.r-i       HJIT 


Sfo 

Amertratt 


THE    VOICE    OF    THE    STATES 

AS     I.\  I'HKSSKD    THHOUOH 
MESSAGES   FROM  THE    GOVERNORS 

TO    i  n  i. 
JOURNAL    OF  AMERICAN    BISTORT 


Amerira'0 


10  (Ettrir  Utrtu* 


BT 


HONORABLE   GEORGE  £.  CHAMBERLAIN.  GOVERNOR  OF  OREGON 


MERICA'S  greatest  need 
is  more  of  civic  virtue, 
an  aroused  public  con- 
science,  and  the  elec- 
tion  of  men  to  office 
unpurchased,  un  pur- 
chasable, and  who  are 
willing  to  regulate  and  control  the 
great  aggregations  of  wealth  in  this 
country  and  punish  those  who,  be- 
cause of  their  wealth  and  influence 
continually  disobey  and  disregard  the 
law. 

I  do  not  believe  that  patriotism  is 
waning.  I  believe  that  our  country  is 
growing  better  and  its  prospects 
brighter  with  the  passing  years. 


Oregon's  greatest  need  to-day  is 
more  transcontinental  railways,  with 
a  rigid  law  authorizing  the  regulation 
of  transcontinental  and  other  rates. 

The  first  settlement  in  Oregon 
was  made  at  Fort  Clatsop  near  the 
mouth  of  the  Columbia  River,  on  the 
twenty-third  day  of  March,  1811. 
The  settlers  were  composed  of  men 
who  came  around  from  New  York  on 
board  the  ship  Tonquin,  which  was 
fitted  out  by  John  Jacob  Astor  of  New 
York  for  the  fur  trade  of  the  Pacific 
Coast 

Oregon  was  admitted  to  the  Union 
on  the  fourteenth  day  of  February, 
1859. 


America's  d»r?ai?0t 


tfi  (Ettm  Htrtu* 


It  is  probable  that  Honorable  E.  D. 
Baker,  who  left  his  position  in  the 
United  States  Senate  as  senator  from 
Oregon  to  take  command  of  a  regi- 
ment in  the  Civil  War,  and  who  was 
killed  at  Ball's  Bluff  in  Virginia,  was 
one  of  the  best  known  men  of  the 
State,  but  there  were  others  equally  as 
able  and  who  would  probably  have 
been  as  illustrious  if  their  fates  had 
been  as  tragic,  and  amongst  the  num- 
ber I  would  mention  Honorable  Dela- 
zon  Smith,  Honorable  J.  W.  Nesmith, 
Honorable  Joseph  Lane,  the  latter  of 
whom  participated  in  the  Mexican 
War  with  distinction  and  later  was  a 
prominent  factor  in  State  and  Na- 
tional politics. 

Our  population  to-day  is  about  five 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand. 

Our  greatest  wealth-producing 
product  is  lumber,  but  Oregon  is  soon 
to  take  the  first  rank  as  a  great  agri- 
cultural State.  Our  greatest  reven- 
ues are  derived  from  these  two  indus- 
tries. 

Quite  a  number  of  immigrants  are 
coming  here,  principally  from  the 
Middle  West  and  from  the  East,  and 
I  would  say  that  the  majority  of  them 


are  American-born,  though  there  are 
some  Italians  and  a  good  many  of  the 
Scandinavian  races.  Generally  they 
seek  occupation  in  the  country  and 
are  thrifty. 

The  immigration  to  which  I  refer 
has  no  particular  effect  on  the  citizen- 
ship of  the  State.  Our  citizenship 
has  always  been  of  a  high  standard 
and  it  is  being  maintained  by  an  ex- 
cellent class  of  immigrants. 

There  is  no  trouble  between  labor 
and  capital  in  this  State,  and  there 
never  has  been  any  serious  trouble. 

Oregon  is  forging  ahead  in  all  lines 
and  is  developing  more  rapidly  than 
ever  before  in  its  history. 

Corporal  punishment  in  the  schools 
is  rare,  though  it  has  never  been  abol- 
ished, it  has  never  been  abused.  Nor 
has  capital  punishment  been  abol- 
ished. I  hope  the  day  is  not  near  at 
hand  when  either  will  be  abolished,  so 
far  as  I  am  personally  concerned,  and 
do  not  agree  with  the  sentiment  which 
declares  itself  in  favor  of  sparing  the 
rod  and  spoiling  the  child,  nor  which 
does  not  take  kindly  to  the  old  Mosaic 
law. 


$Itiblu 


GOVBRNOH     OF    HAWAII 


MERICA'S    greatest    need 
is  to  follow  the  Golden 
Rule  and  practice  what 
she     preaches — admit 
that  all  men  are  born 
equal   and   permit   any 
human  being  to  become 
a  citizen  of  our  great  Republic,  irre- 
spective of  race  or  color,  whenever  he 


possesses  reasonable  qualifications 
which  justify  the  assumption  that  he 
will  be  patriotic  and  loyal  to  the 
Union. 

Patriotism  is  increasing  and  we  are 
reaching  higher  standards  of  public 
service  under  the  splendid  examples 
of  Roosevelt,  Root  and  Taft. 

18 


from  Sjaroati  bg 


<Eart*r 


The  traditions  and  legends  of  the 
Hawaiian  people  show  that  the 
Islands  were  settled  many  centuries 
prior  to  their  discovery  on  the  eighth 
of  December,  1777,  by  Captain  Cook. 
After  his  death,  various  adventurers 
in  search  of  trade  touched  at  these 
Islands,  and  it  is  impossible  to  state 
when  the  first  European  or  foreigner 
settled  in  the  Islands.  The  salubrity 
of  the  climate  and  the  charm  of  the 
Islands  early  caused  runaway  sailors 
to  remain  on  them,  and  the  narratives 
of  a  number  of  these  have  been  pub- 
lished. 

In  1791,  Captain  Kendrick,  of  Bos- 
ton, left  three  sailors  on  Kauai  to  col- 
lect sandal-wood,  pending  his  return. 

In  March,  1792,  Vancouver  made 
his  first  visit,  which,  from  his  great 
interest  and  kindly  advice  and  the 
fairness  with  which  he  treated  the 
natives,  did  much  towards  their  ele- 
vation and  advancement. 

The  sandal-wood  trade  brought  the 
Hawaiians  into  contact  with  the  Ori- 
ent, and  the  knowledge  gained  from 
there  was  used  by  Kamehameha  I  in 
bringing  the  entire  group  under  his 
dominion,  which  was  completed  about 
the  year  1810. 

The  harbor  of  Honolulu  was  dis- 
covered by  Captain  Brown,  of  the 
schooner  "Jackal."  in  1794,  and 
named  by  him  "Fair  Haven."  The 
facilities  it  offered  for  commerce  and 
trade  brought  about  a  considerable 
settlement  on  the  neighboring  shores 
and  the  port  of  Honolulu  developed 
rapidly. 

The  turning  point  in  the  history  of 
the  Islands  was  the  arrival  of  the  pio- 
neer missionaries  on  October  23, 
1819,  who  had  been  sent  out  by  the 
American  Board  of  Missions  on  the 
brig  "Thaddeus,"  Captain  Blanchard, 
and  of  which  Mr.  James  Hunnewell, 
of  Boston,  was  first  officer.  Kame- 
hameha I  had  died  May  8,  1819,  and 
his  son  being  still  in  his  minority, 
divided  the  sovereignty  with  Kaahu- 
manu,  his  guardian.  The  missiona- 
ries finally  secured  permission  from 

19 


them  to  settle.  A  large  proportion  of 
these  and  the  later  additions,  with 
their  descendants,  have  remained  per- 
manently on  the  Islands. 

Hawaii  is  not  a  State,  nor  is  it  a 
dependency  of  the  United  States,  as 
are  Porto  Rico  and  the  Philippines. 
The  Hawaiian  Islands  were  annexed 
by  joint  resolution  of  Congress,  ap- 
proved by  President  McKinley  on 
July  7,  1898.  This  information 
reached  here  and  the  ceremony  by 
which  the  American  flag  was  raised 
took  place  on  August  12,  1898.  Then 
followed  a  transition  period,  during 
which  the  former  Hawaiian  laws 
were  continued  and  the  Islands  were 
governed  by  direct  executive  order  of 
the  president  of  the  United  States  un- 
til June  14,  1900,  on  which  date  went 
into  effect  the  Act  of  Congress  organ- 
ising Hawaii  into  a  Territory,  ap- 
proved by  the  president  on  April  thir- 
tieth previous.  By  this  act,  Hawaii 
became  an  integral  part  of  the  Union, 
in  many  respects  the  form  of  govern- 
ment granting  greater  power  to  the 
people  and  centering  larger  authority 
here  (due  undoubtedly  to  our  geo- 
graphical isolation)  than  had  thereto- 
fore been  granted  by  Congress  in  or- 
ganizing any  territory. 

The  time  which  has  elapsed  since 
Hawaii  entered  the  Union  has  been 
so  short  that  we  must  go  beyond  that 
to  ascertain  what  great  men  or  great 
events  have  developed  in  Hawaii  in 
its  relations  to  the  United  States. 

General  Armstrong,  the  founder  of 
Hampton  Institute,  was  an  Hawaiian 
boy,  one  of  a  number  of  young  men 
of  American  parentage  whose  patri- 
otism caused  them  to  volunteer  from 
Hawaii  in  the  service  of  the  Union 
during  the  Civil  War.  In  his  early 
boyhood  he  had  observed  the  work- 
ings of  a  manual  training-school  in 
the  town  of  Hilo,  started  by  the  early 
missionaries.  His  father  was  for 
many  years  Commissioner  of  Educa- 
tion in  Hawaii,  instituted  compulsory 
education,  and  laid  the  foundations  of 
common  school  education  here,  mod- 


from  ijaroatt  bg  (Sot^rnnr 


eled,  of  course,  upon  the  American 
common  school  system,  but  in  some 
respects  in  advance  of  it.  It  was  nat- 
ural, therefore,  for  young  Armstrong 
to  be  interested  in  educational  ques- 
tions, and  his  life-work  resulted  in  the 
development  of  Hampton  Institute 
and  its  practical  ideas  of  education, 
now  so  ably  extended  by  Booker 
Washington  and  Tuskegee. 

Probably  no  other  event  better 
illustrates  the  attitude  of  the  people 
of  the  Hawaiian  Islands  towards  the 
United  States  of  America  than  one 
which  occurred  during  the  war  with 
Spain.  When  the  question  arose  in 
Hawaii,  an  independent  nation,  as  to 
what  its  attitude  should  be  towards 
the  combatants,  it  was  Hawaii's  priv- 
ilege to  remain  neutral,  in  which  case 
her  ports  could  only  harbor  the  ves- 
sels of  the  warring  nations  for 
twenty-four  hours  and  furnish  coal  in 
amount  sufficient  to  reach  the  next 
home  port.  Although  unarmed  and 
unprotected,  and  under  the  impres- 
sion that  Spanish  men-of-war  were 
cruising  in  the  South  Pacific  waters, 
yet  President  Dole  took  no  action  un- 
til he  had  ascertained  whether  the 
course  he  contemplated  would  in  any 
way  embarrass  the  United  States.  If 
not,  it  was  his  desire  and  that  of  the 
people  of  Hawaii  to  abandon  neutral- 
ity and  announce  to  the  world  that 
they  were  to  be  classed  as  favoring 
the  United  States,  would  harbor  her 
troops  and  vessels,  and  abide  the  con- 
sequences of  such  a  course. 

The  census  of  1900  showed  the 
population  of  the  Hawaiian  Islands  to 
be  some  155,000,  largely  engaged  in 
agriculture. 

Agriculture  predominates,  sugar, 
coffee  and  pineapples  being  the  prin- 
cipal products,  with  sisal  and  rubber 
forging  ahead.  There  are  also  the 
usual  business  and  commercial  pur- 
suits found  in  cities. 

The  supply  of  labor  is  entirely  in- 
adequate, and  the  first  lot  of  Euro- 
pean immigrants  to  be  landed  under 
the  auspices  of  the  Territorial  Board 


of  Immigration  has  just  arrived. 
These  came  from  the  Azores  and  a 
large  percentage  of  them  have  gone 
to  work  on  the  sugar  plantations. 
They  are  a  thrifty  and  very  desirable 
class  of  people. 

From  past  experience,  it  is  believed 
that  this  immigration  will  have  a  very 
beneficial  effect  on  the  citizenship  of 
Hawaii,  increasing  the  number  of 
those  who  can  accept  civic  duties. 

The  problem  of  capital  and  labor  is 
not  so  perplexing  in  Hawaii  as  it  is  on 
the  mainland.  The  outcome  is  bound 
to  be  satisfactory  if,  as  in  our  case, 
those  who  control  corporations  are 
dominated  by  humane  impulses. 
From  my  observation,  the  corpora- 
tions in  Hawaii  come  nearer  to  hav- 
ing "souls"  than  any  others  I  know 
of. 

Hawaii  appears  to  be  forging  ahead 
in  its  great  work  of  making  known  to 
one  another  the  habits,  customs  and 
qualities  of  the  peoples  of  the  Orient 
and  Occident — a  common  meeting- 
ground  for  both.  Our  schools  re- 
semble retorts,  into  which  all  kinds  of 
raw  material  are  poured,  and  we  be- 
lieve the  resultant  out-put  will  be  pa- 
triotic and  loyal  American  citizens. 
We  also  believe  that  if  the  Golden 
Rule  and  the  broad  principles  upon 
which  our  Union  was  founded  are 
maintained  in  spirit  and  practice  here, 
that  these  little  Islands  will  show  to 
the  mainland  that  the  causes  of  a 
"yellow  peril"  exist  only  among  our 
own  people. 

In  our  public  schools  corporal  pun- 
ishment is  rarely  resorted  to.  We 
find  it  is  not  necessary.  Capital  pun- 
ishment is  in  operation.  Our  murder 
trials  are  not,  as  a  rule,  as  expensive 
to  the  taxpayers  or  as  sensational  as 
in  other  communities.  I  believe  I 
am  expressing  the  sober  sentiment  of 
this  community  when  I  state  that  the 
effect  and  result  justify  capital  pun- 
ishment. 

Hawaii's  greatest  need  is  a  larger 
population  of  self-reliant,  sturdy  citi- 
zens. 


Jffutmr* 


nf  tfyt  fariftt 


BY  HONORABLE  GEORGE  C.  PARDEE.  GOVERNOR  OF  CALIFORNIA 


URING  the  last  five  years 
more  settlers  have  come 
into  California  than  for 
any  similar  period  since 
the  gold  rush.  They 
come  from  all  parts  of  the 
United  States  and  from 
other  countries.  To  a  very  large  ex- 
tent these  settlers  buy  lands  and  be- 
come farmers,  but  they  also  distribute 
themselves  through  all  lines  of  indus- 
tries. The  pleasant  winter  climate 
draws  many  thousands  of  tourists  to 
California  every  year,  and  many  of 
these  persons  remain  and  build 
homes.  Large  accessions  to  the 
wealth  and  population  of  many  towns, 
especially  in  the  southern  portion  of 
the  State,  have  been  made  in  this  way. 
The  greater  portion  of  the  immi- 
gration is  of  a  high  order  and  benefi- 


cial to  the  State,  but  recently  there 
has  been  a  considerable  influx  of  Jap- 
anese, who  are  gaining  a  foothold  in 
both  town  and  country  and  promise 
to  become  an  industrial  force  of  im- 
portance. This  fact  is  regretted  by 
most  citizens.  In  San  Francisco  and 
a  few  other  cities  the  problem  created 
by  the  contending  forces  of  labor  and 
capital  is  serious,  as  it  is  in  great  cen- 
ters of  population  elsewhere,  and  it 
can  only  be  solved  by  a  gradual 
process  of  evolution  along  conserva- 
tive lines. 

At  the  present  time  California  is 
progressing  in  a  most  satisfactory 
manner,  especially  in  everything 
which  tends  to  a  higher  civilization. 
No  State  spends  money  more  liber- 
ally upon  the  public  schools;  indeed, 


frnm  California  bg  (Sowrnor 


more  than  fifty  per  cent  of  the  reven- 
ues of  the  State,  now  about  $10,000,- 
ooo  per  annum,  are  expended  for  edu- 
cation. The  University  of  California, 
a  free  institution  supported  by  the 
State,  has  in  its  various  colleges  more 
than  three  thousand  students,  while 
Leland  Stanford,  Junior,  University, 
has  about  half  as  many. 

At  the  present  time  California  has 
a  population  of  more  than  two  mil- 
lions. Their  industries  are  diversi- 
fied, for  while  agricultural  and  horti- 
cultural pursuits  engage  the  attention 
of  the  largest  numbers  of  persons, 
California  has  usually  been  about 
tenth  among  the  States  in  order  of 
importance  in  manufacturing  busi- 
ness. Mining,  the  earliest  industry, 
is  still  being  conducted  with  great 
success,  fifty  or  more  mineral  sub- 
stances being  produced  on  a  commer- 
cial scale.  In  the  production  of  pe- 
troleum California  now  leads  all  the 
other  States.  There  are  more  than 
twenty  million  acres  of  valuable  for- 
est and  lumbering  is  conducted  on  a 
large  scale.  The  horticultural  prod- 
ucts of  California  far  exceed  in  value 
those  of  any  other  State. 

I  will  say  that  although  corporal 
punishment  in  the  schools  has  not 
been  abolished,  it  is  reduced  to  a  min- 
imum. Our  laws  still  recognize  cap- 
ital punishment  for  murder,  but  it  is 
within  the  option  of  trial  juries  to  fix 
the  punishment  at  life  imprisonment, 
and  this  is  very  generally  done.  Cap- 
ital punishment  will  very  probably  be- 
come obsolete  some  day,  but  it  is  very 
questionable  whether  the  time  has  yet 
come  to  prohibit  it.  In  my  judgment, 
the  greatest  need  of  California  as  of 
every  other  State  is  good  citizenship 
— good,  better,  best  citizenship.  I  do 
not  believe  that  patriotism,  in  the 
truest  sense,  is  waning  in  California 
or  in  any  other  commonwealth  made 
up  of  educated  men  and  women.  On 
the  contrary,  the  love  of  country 
never  manifested  itself  in  a  more  dis- 
criminating and  elevated  form  than 
at  the  present  time. 


The  first  settlements  by  civilized 
men  in  California  were  made  by  the 
Franciscan  friars  from  Mexico,  who 
followed  in  the  wake  of  Cabrillo,  Vis- 
caino  and  other  explorers  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  A  great  work  of  ex- 
ploration and  of  peaceful  conquest 
was  performed  by  these  earnest 
priests,  who  established  a  chain  of 
missions  extending  from  the  extreme 
south  to  the  region  immediately 
north  of  the  Bay  of  San  Francisco 
and  taught  and  civilized  the  Indian 
population. 

The  first  mission  was  established  in 
San  Diego  in  1769,  and  within  a  little 
more  than  half  a  century  twenty  other 
missions  were  established,  each  be- 
coming a  center  of  industry  and  cul- 
ture. The  Government  of  Mexico, 
not  very  much  later,  began  colonizing 
Upper  California  and  established  a 
system  of  Pueblos,  or  towns,  which 
were  the  counterpart  of  the  missions, 
or  religious  establishments.  Even- 
tually the  missions  were  disestab- 
lished, or  secularized,  and  California 
was  governed  as  a  dependency  of 
Mexico  until  the  territory  was  ac- 
quired by  the  United  States  in  1848. 

In  1850  a  State  Government  was 
established,  California  being  admitted 
to  the  Union  by  an  act  passed  by  Con- 
gress on  September  seventh,  1850. 

In  the  past  half  century  California 
has  made  important  contributions  to 
the  Nation,  the  first  and  one  of  the 
most  important  being  the  flood  of  the 
precious  metal  which  was  poured  out 
of  her  mines  from  1848,  the  year  of 
the  gold  discovery,  and  continued 
until  the  present  time,  although  in 
diminished  volume.  But  the  greatest 
advantage  which  the  Nation  derived 
from  the  acquisition  of  California  was 
that  it  gave  the  United  States  not 
merely  an  outlook  upon  the  Pacific, 
the  greatest  of  the  world's  oceans,  but 
the  command  of  a  coast  line  of  more 
than  a  thousand  miles,  including  the 
best  harbors,  and  thus  insured  this 
country  the  future  mastery  of  Pacific 
commerce. 


An    3n0pirattnn    fnr    Unrtlfij    Work 


BY  HONORABLE  FRED   M.  WARNER.  GOVERNOR  OF  MICHIGAN 


/^^^^  has  been  to  me  a  source  of 

dm      pride  to  realize  that  there 

JK          are   States   in  our  Union 

whose    citizens    feel    that 

W  I      their  history  gives  them  a 

^%L-^      special    reason    for    pride 

and  self-congratulation. 
New  York,  Massachusetts  and  the 
older  States  that  had  to  do  with  the 
earlier  contests  of  our  tountry  for  ex- 
istence and  a  place  among  the  nations 
of  the  world,  have  well  earned  the 
proud  position  among  their  sister 
States  which  they  have  always  occu- 
pied. 

Surrounded  as  is  our  State  by  the 
inland  seas  of  the  republic,  from 
Maumee  Bay  to  Keweenaw  Point,  the 
lover  of  beauty  and  of  the  picturesque 
finds  in  Michigan  that  which  is  shared 
in  full  by  none  other  of  our  sister 
States.  And  in  those  things  which 
give  commercial  standing  and  busi- 
ness worth  to  a  territory,  the  State  of 
our  homes,  by  birth  and  adoption, 
stands  foremost  in  the  list.  In  the 
great  iron  ore  industry,  in  the  produc- 
tion of  copper,  in  manufacturing 
lines,  and  in  its  farms  and  their  prod- 
ucts, Michigan  has  come  to  be  recog- 
nized as  a  leader  in  the  quantity  as 

«3 


well  as  in  the  quality  of  these,  her  sev- 
eral important  contributions  to  the 
wealth  of  the  Union. 

In  the  work  that  Michigan  has  done 
for  higher  education  through  its  great 
State  university,  in  its  normal  schools, 
which  are  excelled  by  no  other  insti- 
tutions of  their  kind ;  in  its  Agricul- 
tural College,  and  schools  for  the 
blind,  in  the  superior  provision  it  has 
made  for  its  grievously  afflicted  ones, 
its  asylums  and  charitable  institutions, 
and  its  splendid  soldier's  home,  and  in 
its  institutions  for  the  care  of  its 
homeless  and  helpless  children,  Mich- 
igan is  not  fully  equalled  by  any  other 
State. 

Forty  years  ago  Michigan  ranked 
as  the  sixteenth  State  in  the  Union  in 
population;  thirty  years  ago  our 
State  had  advanced  to  the  thirteenth 
position,  and  the  most  recent  census 
places  us  ninth  on  the  list. 

This  would  indicate  that  Michigan 
is  rapidly  growing  in  population  and 
in  the  number  and  the  value  of  its 
homes,  and  in  that  which  affects  the 
homes  of  Michigan  lies  that  which 
gives  inspiration  to  our  efforts  of  the 
future  and  compensation  for  all 
worthy  work  for  her  sake  in  the  past. 


Br  HONORABLE  BRYANT  B.  BROOKS.  GOVERNOR  OF  WYOMING 


S3 


been 
Charles    I., 
Philip    IV., 


YOMING  enjoys  the 
unique  distinction  of 
having  been  under 
more  rulers  and  more 
kinds  of  Government 
than  any  other  State 
in  the  Union.  It  has 
under  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
Philip  II.,  Philip  III., 
Charles  II.,  Philip  V., 
Ferdinand  IV.,  Charles  III.,  Charles 
IV.,  Ferdinand  VII. ,  and  Joseph 
Bonaparte  of  Spain;  Francis  I., 
Henry  II.,  Francis  II.,  Charles 
IX.,  Henry  III.,  Henry  IV.,  Louis 
XIII.,  Louis  XIV.,  Louis  XV.,  Louis 
XVI.,  the  Republic  and  the  Consu- 
late of  France,  and  Louisiana,  Mis- 
souri, Texas,  Oregon,  Utah,  Ne- 
braska, Washington,  Dakota,  Idaho 
and  Wyoming  of  America.  It  is  the 
only  State  that  contains  lands  ob- 
tained from  all  four  of  our  principal 
annexations,  which  form  the  terri- 
tory west  of  the  Mississippi  river. 

Wyoming  was  organized  as  a  terri- 
tory July  25th,  1868,  and  admitted  as 
a  State  July  loth,  1890,  being  the 
forty-fourth  State,  and  a  lucky  num- 
ber. 

In  bygone  years  this  was  the  home 
of  the  great  Sioux  Indian,  who  was 
physically  and  intellectually  the 
mightiest  of  his  race,  while  in  cour- 
age and  ferocity  unexcelled.  Conse- 
quently, here  is  recorded  some  of  the 
most  fascinating  history  of  hunter 
and  trapper  life  in  America. 


Topographically  it  is  a  country  of 
rolling  plains,  vast  plateaus  and  lofty 
mountains.  The  present  population 
numbering  125,000  people  is  engaged 
in  agriculture,  stock  raising  and  min- 
ing. 

The  climatic  conditions  are  ideal, 
altitude  favorable,  soil  fertile  and 
productive.  Owing  to  the  abundance 
of  water  supply,  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  acres  will  soon  be  brought 
under  large  irrigation  canals  through 
the  instrumentality  of  .the  Reclama- 
tion Service  and  Carey  Act  projects, 
thereby  furnishing  homes  for  land 
hungry  thousands.  Immigration  is 
received  largely  from  the  northwest 
farming  States,  where  the  young  men 
have  acquired  a  deep  knowledge  of, 
and  abiding  faith  in  agriculture,  from 
the  experience  and  successful  work  of 
pioneer  forefathers.  This  infusion  of 
strong,  intelligent,  courageous  blood 
aids  to  elevate  our  citizenship. 

Laws  are  enforced,  life  and  prop- 
erty protected,  and  in  matters  of  leg- 
islation, Wyoming  stands  well  in  the 
forefront  of  modern  progress  and  re- 
form. Her  greatest  need  to-day  is 
for  better  transportation  facilities, 
capital  with  which  to  develop  her  in- 
numerable resources,  and  sturdy  men 
and  women,  who  are  not  afraid  to 
work,  who  will  aid  in  making  of  this 
young  Commonwealth  the  Pennsyl- 
vania of  the  West. 


Natiu*    ijoiuatg    of    tlj*    Nation 

BT  HONORABLE  JOHN  C.  CUTLER.  GOVERNOR  OF  UTAH 


3T  is  my  belief  that  on  the 
whole    patriotism    is    in- 
creasing in  the  country  at 
large.     I  know  it  is  so  in 
Utah,  and  I  am  led  to  be- 
lieve,  from   my  study  of 
national  events,  that  this 
condition  is  general.    While  some  in- 
cidents have  occurred,  and  have  been 
magnified  unduly,  which  some  people 
may  regard  as  menacing  our  national 
honor,    I    am    firmly   convinced   that 
these  will  sink  into  insignificance  and 
oblivion,    when   contrasted    with    the 
breadth  and  scope  of  patriotic  Amer- 
icanism, as  exemplified  in  our  great 
and  admirable  chief  executive,  Theo- 
dore Roosevelt.     So  long  as  our  Na- 
tion is  producing  such  men  as  he,  its 
future  is  in  no  great  jeopardy. 

The  first  settlement  in  Utah  was 
made  at  Salt  Lake  City,  in  July,  1847. 
Utah  became  a  State  in  the  year 
1896.  In  contributions  to  the  Nation, 
both  in  great  men  and  great  events, 
Utah  has  cause  to  be  proud  of  its 
record.  The  greatest  of  these  events 
— one  that  will  stand  out  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Nation  as  pre-eminently 
important — is  the  establishment  of 
the  practice  of  irrigation,  by  means  of 


which  the  western  half  of  the  conti- 
nent was  given  to  the  Union.  The 
part  taken  by  Utah  in  the  settlement 
of  the  West,  and  the  building  of  the 
great  highways  across  the  continent, 
is  a  prominent  part  of  the  State's 
splendid  record.  We  also  point  with 
pride  to  the  work  of  our  batteries  in 
the  Philippines.  To  mention  a  few 
of  the  great  men  Utah  has  produced 
would  necessitate  the  omission  of 
many  equally  great.  The  founder  of 
Utah  was  the  greatest  colonizer  of 
modern  times;  one  of  her  sons  is  a 
sculptor  of  international  reputation; 
some  of  our  scientists,  artists,  states- 
men, painters,  orators,  and  financiers 
have  won  the  admiration  of  the 
world.  The  size  and  scope  of  this 
article  will  scarcely  allow  further  par- 
ticularization. 

Utah's  population  to-day  is  about 
335,000.  By  far  the  largest  propor- 
tion of  our  people  live  by  agriculture. 
We  are  receiving  many  immigrants 
every  year.  This  fact  is  due  in  large 
part  to  the  splendid  opportunities 
afforded  here  for  sturdy,  honest  im- 
migrants, and  partly  to  the  mission- 
ary system  of  the  Mormon  Church,  by 


frnm   Ital;   hg 


(ttntbr 


means  of  which  the  solid,  honest  peo- 
ple of  the  European  middle  class  are 
brought  to  Utah.  The  immigrants 
are  Scandinavians,  English,  Welsh, 
Scotch,  Dutch,  Swiss,  Germans,  and 
a  few  Italians,  Greeks,  and  Austrians. 
A  very  large  part  of  our  immigration 
is  from  various  portions  of  the  United 
States.  Most  of  the  immigrants  go 
to  the  farms,  and  help  to  build  up 
country  settlements.  As  a  rule  they 
are  thrifty.  The  general  effect  of 
immigration  on  the  citizenship  of 
Utah  is  very  beneficial.  About  the 
only  drawback  in  this  respect  is  in  the 
case  of  the  elements  which  never  be- 
come assimilated,  such  as  the  Italians, 
Japanese,  Austrians,  and  Greeks.  In 
Utah  there  are  practically  no  labor 
troubles.  Labor  and  capital  has  not 
become  one  of  our  vexed  problems. 

Utah  is  making  greatest  progress, 
perhaps,  in  mining.  And  the  progress 
here  is  steady  and  healthy.  In  cer- 
tain lines  of  manufacture,  and  espec- 
ially in  the  making  of  beet  sugar, 
there  is  a  notable  advancement. 
Agriculture  and  stock  raising  are  also 
making  rapid  strides.  In  education, 
social  advancement,  religious  prog- 
ress, and  in  other  worthy  directions, 
our  State  is  forging  ahead  as  rapidly 


as  in  material  affairs.  Light  corpo- 
ral punishment  is  still  permitted  in 
the  public  schools,  and  I  approve  of  it 
when  cruelty  and  harshness  are  pro- 
hibited, as  they  are  by  our  school  law. 
My  views  on  capital  punishment  are 
strong.  It  is  a  part  of  Utah's  code, 
and  so  long  as  I  occupy  the  executive 
chair  it  shall  remain  so  unless  two- 
thirds  of  the  legislators  shall  vote  for 
its  abolishment. 

In  my  opinion,  Utah's  greatest  need 
to-day  is  unity.  A  small  faction  of 
malcontents,  disappointed  politicians, 
and  others  of  their  kind,  has  been 
formed,  and  is  doing  a  little  to  stir  up 
strife  and  create  false  impressions 
abroad.  But  the  better  element  of 
Utah's  citizenship  protests  against 
the  methods  of  these  breeders  of 
strife,  and  we  confidently  hope  that 
before  long  they  will  leave  the  State 
or  join  in  promoting  its  interests. 
America's  greatest  need  to-day,  in  my 
opinion,  is  political,  social,  and  com- 
mercial integrity.  And  I  think  the 
events  of  the  past  few  years  indicate 
that  the  very  few  cases  where  a  lack 
of  this  integrity  has  been  revealed 
will  soon  be  eliminated,  and  the  gen- 
eral, native  honesty  of  the  Nation  will 
again  be  without  serious  blemish. 


Ameriran   in  ^ptrtt  attfc  in 


BY  ANDREW  L.  HARRIS, 

HIO  is  pressing  forward 
in  many  lines  of  hon- 
orable endeavor,  and  is 
keeping  step  with  the 
progress  of  the  Union. 
Incidentally,  she  leads 
all  States  in  the  extent 
of  interurban  electric  railways. 


GOVERNOR  OF  OHIO 

It  is  difficult  to  say  what  is  Ohio's 
greatest  need.  A  distinct  impetus 
would  be  given  to  her  commerce  by 
the  improvement  of  the  Ohio  River. 

Our  greatest  need  as  a  Nation  is 
"unity  of  purpose  and  unity  of  patri- 
otism." 

Patriotism  is  not  waning;  our  love 

26 


frnm  (Pfytn  fag  (Snuernnr 


of  country  should  be  more  fervent, 
pure  and  umlefiled. 

In  war  and  statesmanship,  Ohio  has 
contributed  Ulysses  S.  Grant,  Wil- 
liam T.  Sherman,  Philip  Sheridan, 
William  Henry  Harrison,  Rutherford 
B.  Hayes,  James  A.  Garfield,  Benja- 
min Harrison,  William  McKinley, 
Edwin  M.  Stanton,  Salmon  P.  Chase, 
and  Allen  G.  Thurman.  Salmon  P. 
Chase  and  Morrison  R.  Waite  were 
chief  justices  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States.  In  literature 
Ohio  has  contributed  William  Dean 
Howells,  Albion  Tourgee,  the  Carey 
sisters,  and  Paul  Laurence  Dunbar; 
in  science,  Thomas  A.  Edison  and 
Charles  F.  Brush,  Daniel  Decatur 
Emmett,  author  of  "Dixie,"  and  Ben- 
jamin R.  Hanby,  author  of  "Darling 
Nelly  Gray,"  were  sons  of  Ohio. 

Within    the    limits    of    the    State 


occurred  the  most  serious  reverse  in 
battle  ever  suffered  at  the  hands  of 
the  Indians, — known  in  history  as 
"St.  Clair's  Defeat."  phio  was  the 
scene  of  stirring  events  in  the  War  of 
1812,  among  them  Major  Croghan's 
defense  of  Fort  Stephenson  and 
Perry's  victory  on  Lake  Erie.  In  the 
Civil  War  the  Confederate  cavalry 
leader,  John  Morgan,  made  his  fam- 
ous raid  through  the  State  and  was 
captured  near  Lisbon,  Ohio. 

The  population  of  Ohio  in  1900 
was  4,157,543.  It  is  now  probably 
about  4400,000. 

The  better  element  of  our  foreign 
population  rapidly  becomes  American 
in  spirit  and  aspiration.  The  objec- 
tionable element  is  so  small  relatively 
that  it  does  not  seriously  affect  the 
citizenship  of  Ohio. 


Jfmmtgraitnn    ta    a    Sutler 


JSCONSIN'S  fervent 
civic  patriotism, 
-  evinced  in  the  great 
Civil  War,  has  les- 
sened in  no  degree, 
and  an  eager,  intelli- 
gent, and  well-in- 
formed people  will  do  their  part  with 
the  rest  of  the  nation  in  effecting  the 
total  extirpation  of  special  privilege 
throughout  our  common  country. 


The  distance  between  the  head 
waters  of  the  rivers  flowing  into  the 
Great  Lakes  and  the  Mississippi,  be- 
ing shortest  in  Wisconsin,  this  terri- 
tory naturally  very  early  became  a 
far-famed  region  of  exploration  and 
trade  in  the  development  of  New 
France.  Previous  to  the  fall  of  New 
France  in  1763,  the  French  had  seve- 
ral military  posts  within  its  borders, 
chiefly  at  Green  Bay,  Prairie  du 


frnm  WternnBtn  fag  dtotimuir  iatriinann 


Chien,  Lake  Pepin,  and  Chequame- 
gon  Bay  (La  Pointe). 

Wisconsin  was  included  in  the  Old 
Northwest  Territory ;  subsequently 
it  was  a  part  of  Indiana  and  Michi- 
gan, respectively;  it  was  erected  into 
a  territory  by  itself  in  1836;  and  on 
May  twenty-ninth,  1848,  was  the  last 
part  of  the  Old  Northwest  to  be  ad- 
mitted into  the  Union  as  a  State. 

During  the  War  of  the  Rebellion, 
Wisconsin  contributed  a  larger  per- 
centage of  its  male  population  to  the 
Union  Army  than  any  other  State. 
In  this  contribution  was  the  famous 
iron  brigade,  and  its  commander,  Ed- 
ward S.  Bragg,  later  United  States 
Consul-General  at  Hongkong. 

Matthew  H.  Carpenter,  James  R. 
Doolittle,  William  F.  Vilas,  John  C. 
Spooner,  and  Robert  M.  La  Follette 
are  among  the  men  who  have  repre- 
sented Wisconsin  in  the  United  States 
Senate, — all  of  them  well-known  na- 
tional characters. 

Timothy  O.  Howe,  William  F. 
Vilas,  and  Jeremiah  M.  Rusk  have 
been  members  of  president's  cabinets. 

The  Babcock  test,  In  determining 
the  butterfat  value  of  milk,  was  an 
important  contribution  to  science  and 
to  civilization,  made  by  Stephen  S. 
Babcock.  Professor  Babcock  is  one 
of  Wisconsin's  modest  and  unassum- 
ing citizens.  His  discovery,  although 
royalty  thereon  might  have  brought 
to  him  millions  of  dollars,  was  gratui- 
tously given  to  agriculture  by  Mr. 
Babcock. 

Wisconsin,  as  shown  by  the  State 
census  of  1905,  has  a  population  of 
2,228,947.  The  builders  of  the  State 
were,  in  a  very  large  proportion,  for- 
eign-born,— Norwegians  and  Ger- 
mans predominating.  The  propor- 
tion of  native-born  is,  however,  stead- 
ily increasing.  The  emigration,  which 
is  still  coming  into  the  State,  is  of  the 
most  desirable  class,  being  largely 
Scandinavian  and  Teutonic.  The 
people  of  Wisconsin  possess  the  na- 
tional characteristics  of  honesty,  fru- 
gality and  thrift. 


Agriculturally,  Wisconsin  is  a  rich 
commonwealth.  While  tobacco  is, 
from  a  moneyed  point  of  view,  per- 
haps, its  most  important  agricultural 
product,  it  is  by  no  means  a  one-crop 
State.  Its  agricultural  interests  are 
much  diversified,  dairying  being  a 
close  second  in  value  of  product. 

As  a  manufacturing  State,  Wis- 
consin deservedly  stands  high.  Its 
exceptionally  good  water-powers  are 
as  yet  largely  undeveloped,  and  they 
promise  abundantly  for  the  future. 

The  lead  and  zinc  mines  of  South- 
western Wisconsin,  which  were  large- 
ly worked  during  the  period  of  1828 
and  1855,  are  now  being  reopened, 
especially  for  the  zinc  deposits,  and 
their  bi-products,  especially  sulphuric 
acid,  and  it  seems  likely  that  Wiscon- 
sin will  prosper  more  on  account  of 
them  in  the  future  than  it  has  in  the 
past.  We  have  also  extensive  iron- 
and  copper  mines. 

Because  of  the  diversification  of  in- 
dustries, our  manufacturing  estab- 
lishments are  fast  growing  in  number 
and  power,  our  farms  are  constantly 
in  need  of  more  men  than  can  be  ob- 
tained, our  fisheries  on  the  Great 
Lakes  and  inland  waters  are  growing 
yearly,  our  railways  are  pushing  out 
into  territory  not  yet  gridironed,  and 
the  opportunities  thus  afforded  for 
labor  and  capital,  economic  and  social 
problems  have  not  as  yet  much  per- 
plexed Wisconsin. 

It  was  in  Wisconsin  that  the  mod- 
ern humane  treatment  of  the  incura- 
bly insane  was  first  experimented 
upon,  and  in  harmony  with  the  spirit 
thus  manifested,  the  State  at  an  early 
date  abolished  capital  punishment,  be- 
ing one  of  the  four  or  five  States  in 
the  Union  that  does  not  take  life. 

The  exceptional  water-power,  the 
fine  building  stone, — granite,  lime, 
and  sandstone, — and  the  still  unde- 
veloped agricultural  lands  of  Wiscon- 
sin, our  great  fisheries,  and  far-reach- 
ing manufacturing  interests,  all  cair 
for  a  larger  population  for  their  ex- 
ploitation, and  the  State  cordially 
welcomes  emigration. 

•I 


(EmnmmtaltBm  iKuBt  Net  laminate  Ammra 


BY  HONORABLE  JOSEPH  M.  TERRELL,  GOVERNOR  OF  GEORGIA 


SHE    tide    of    immigration 
has  not  turned  this  way. 
Still  there  is  to  be  no- 
ticed a  steady  increase  in 
sturdy   immigration   that 
assimilates     with     our 
blood — representing  pure 
Americanism.     This  is  the  only  peo- 
ple we  want,  feeling  that  it  is  better  to 
have  as  our  peasantry  the  negro,  a 
distinct  type,  that  cannot  assimilate, 
than  certain  foreigners  who  might,  by 
intermarriage,    endanger    our    blood 
and  institutions. 

The  foreigners  who  are  coming  to 
Georgia,  as  a  rule,  are  of  German, 
Scotch,  Swede,  English  and  Irish 
blood.  Without  appreciable  excep- 
tion they,  are  thrifty.  Georgia  needs 
people  of  these  types  on  the  farm. 
Those  we  have  are  to  be  found  in  the 
cities,  and  their  number  is  yet  too 
small  to  have  any  effect  on  the  civil- 
ization of  our  State. 

There  is  no  problem  of  capital  and 
labor  that  threatens  any  industry  in 


our  State.  Georgia  is  practically  a 
stranger  to  strikes. 

Corporal  punishment  in  schools  has 
been  abolished  in  most  of  the  local 
systems.  (Each  separate  board  of 
trustees  determines  this  question)  ; 
but  capital  punishment  remains  on  the 
statutes  of  our  State,  with  no  indica- 
tion that  it  will  be  a  repealed  law. 

Georgia  has  a  population  of  2,750,- 
ooo— more  than  half  being  American 
blood — balance  largely  made  up  of 
negroes,  who  are  tractable. 

The  people  of  the  State  are  sup- 
ported, in  the  main,  by  four  indus- 
tries: Agriculture,  Commerce,  Manu- 
facturing and  Mining. 

Georgia  is  the  only  State  in  the 
Union  that  ever  whipped,  single- 
handed,  a  powerful  Nation,  six  hun- 
dred and  fifty  settlers  defeating  seven 
thousand  Spaniards,  with  an  armed 
fleet,  who  were  bent  on  invasion.  She 
was  likewise  the  only  original  colony 
that  did  not  allow  slavery  under  her 
formative  constitution.  She  was 
forced,  by  a  spirit  of  competition  with 


from  (irorgta  bg    (Sironiuir  Sfcmll 


Massachusetts,  Connecticut,  Rhode 
Island  and  South  Carolina  to  petition 
for  this  industrial  vantage  in  1749 — 
but  with  the  distinct  provision  that  the 
slaves  should  never  be  used  in  compe- 
tition with  white  labor,  and  that  they 
should  further  be  compelled  to  ob- 
serve the  Sabbath  day. 

Among  the  representative  men  of 
international  fame  that  Georgia  con- 
tributed to  the  world  of  action  during 
the  Colonial  and  Revolutionary  peri- 
ods, may  be  mentioned:  Oglethorpe 
the  founder;  Noble  Wimberly  Jones, 
"the  morning  star  of  liberty ;"  Tomo- 
chichi,  the  greatest  Indian  chief  of 
that  period;  Nancy  Hart,  the  hero- 
ine of  the  Revolution;  Jackson, 
Habersham,  Pulaski  and  others. 

Georgia  gave  Eli  Whitney,  the  dis- 
coverer of  the  cotton  gin,  to  the  field 
of  industry ;  she  presented  Dr.  Craw- 
ford W.  Long,  the  discoverer  of  an- 
aesthesia, to  the  world  of  science ;  and 
she  suggested  steam-propelling  to 
navigation,  through  William  Long- 
street,  one  year  before  Robert  Fulton 
made  his  successful  trial  trip. 

Her  contributions  to  the  gospel 
may  be  read  in  such  lives  as  Jesse 
Mercer,  George  F.  Pierce,  Willard 
Preston,  Bishop  Gartland  and  Father 
Ryan. 

In  the  Wesleyan  Female  College 
Georgia  built  the  first  institution  of 
learning  in  the  world  to  confer  de- 
grees upon  women. 

Some  of  Georgia's  notable  states- 
men are:  William  H.  Crawford, 
John  McPherson  Berrien,  John  For- 
syth,  Robert  Toombs,  Benjamin  H. 
Hill,  Alexander  H.  Stephens,  Joseph 
E.  Brown,  the  war  Governor,  Howell 
Cobb  and  Charles  F.  Crisp  (the  two 
last  named  having  been  Speakers  of 
the  National  House  of  Representa- 
tives), and  General  John  B.  Gordon. 

During  the  war  between  the  States 
Georgia  bore  herself  with  the  same 
unconquering  devotion  to  duty  that 
had  always  characterized  her  people. 
She  gave  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
thousand  men  to  the  struggle,  and 


such  was  their  gallantry  that  she  had 
one  hundred  and  seventy-two  officers 
killed  on  the  battlefield, — among  them 
seven  generals. 

In  the  Spanish-American  war 
Georgia  furnished  more  volunteer 
troops,  according  to  population,  than 
any  State  in  the  Union. 

The  principal  instances  of  improve- 
ment in  which  Georgia  excels  are : 
Agriculture,  Mining  and  Manufac- 
turing. Our  State  contains  more 
granite  and  marble  than  all  the  States 
of  the  Union  combined — and  much  in 
gold,  iron,  coal  and  aluminum. 

The  greatest  need  of  our  State  is  to 
be  let  alone — and  to  grow  politicians 
and  editors  who  will  let  the  race  ques- 
tion alone. 

In  agriculture  and  horticulture 
Georgia  excels.  She  grows  sixteen 
million  peach  trees;  produces  more 
and  better  water-melons  than  any 
country  on  earth;  markets  two  mil- 
lion bales  of  cotton,  and  has  fields  of 
Bermuda  that  are  second  only  to  the 
blue-grass  fields  of  Kentucky. 

Georgia  was  settled  as  a  colony  in 
1733,  the  date  of  settlement  being 
February  12,  and  the  site  Savannah. 

She  became  an  independent  State 
April  15,  1776. 

Oglethorpe,  the  settler  of  Georgia, 
proved  a  great  forerunner  of  civiliza- 
tion. The  colony  first  emblazoned  a 
purpose  to  lead  by  building  the  tallest 
light-house  then  on  the  Atlantic  coast 
a  few  months  after  the  date  of  settle- 
ment. One  of  these  first  settlers,  John 
Wesley,  gave  Methodism  to  the  spir- 
itual world. 

America's  greatest  need  is  to  pro- 
duce a  type  of  public  men  who  will 
attend  to  their  own  business,  and  quit 
this  interminable  intermeddling  with 
other  people's  affairs. 

It  seems  that  patriotism  is  waning 
in  our  land  as  the  love  of  money  in- 
creases. America  needs  education  on 
this  line.  Fortunately  for  our  State 
her  people  are  not  dominated  by  com- 
mercialism to  the  extent  of  forgetting 
the  higher  duty. 

3° 


Spirit    nf  JJairtflttam 


BY  HONORABLE  WILLIAM  T.  conn.  GOVERNOR  OF  MAINE 


,AINE  has  never  failed 
to  manifest  her  fidel- 
ity to  the  Union  and 
in  early  life  her  sons 
learn  that  the  noblest 
ambition  of  a  manly 
life  is  to  suffer  for 
liberty.  From  the  sixteenth  century 
to  the  present  time  in  every  conflict 
that  has  encompassed  this  land,  Maine 
has,  owing  to  her  exposed  position, 
suffered  more  or  less.  From  the  days 
of  her  starving  Plymouth  colonists  to 
the  present  she  has  cheerfully  done 
her  part  in  succoring  her  friends  and 
allies.  She  has  ever  been  a  central 
figure  upon  the  stage,  a  shining  star 
in  the  constellation  of  States. 

Upon  the  Nation's  roll  of  honor 
Maine  has  etched  many  names  besides 
Hamlin,  Washburn,  Fessenden,  Dear- 
born, Morrill,  Elaine,  Dingley,  Fuller 
and  Reed.  She  has  reared  twenty- 
seven  of  her  forty  governors,  fur- 
nished twenty-one  governors  for 
other  States,  supplied  the  Nation  with 
nine  major-generals,  nine  brigadier- 
generals,  six  rear-admirals,  two  com- 
modores, three  commanders,  and  fur- 
nished more  mental  timber  to  other 
States  in  proportion  to  her  population 
than  any  other  State.  The  blood  of 
Maine  runs  in  every  State  of  the 
Union.  Governors,  senators,  judges, 
congressmen,  from  the  Atlantic  to  the 
Pacific,  claim  a  part  of  her  greatness 
as  their  birthright.  In  addition  to 
her  generous  gifts  of  men  qualified  to 


manage  the  affairs  of  the  Nation,  she 
has  contributed  liberally  to  the  world 
of  literature,  science  and  art. 

In  National  affairs  Maine  has  often 
wielded  an  influence  out  of  propor- 
tion to  her  size,  location,  population 
and  apparent  interests.  With  a  pop- 
ulation of  694,466,  a  land  surface 
equal  to  one-half  of  all  New  England, 
with  almost  unlimited  and  only  par- 
tially developed  resources,  Maine  is 
entering  an  era  of  great  promise.  The 
increase  in  our  population  has  been 
smaller  on  account  of  the  large  num- 
ber of  our  citizens  who  have  gone  to 
the  West,  and  yet  our  growth  has 
been  steady  both  in  population  and 
wealth. 

While  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossi- 
ble, to  fix  the  exact  date  and  place  of 
the  first  settlement  in  Maine,  it  is  con- 
ceded that  many  settlements  had  been 
established  along  the  coast  and  inland 
some  years  prior  to  the  landing  of  the 
Pilgrims  on  Plymouth  shore.  It  is 
safe  to  say  that  permanent  settlement 
had  begun  in  1607  in  the  region  of  the 
Kennebec  and  Sagadahoc.  The  men 
of  Maine,  the  Pophams,  the  Gilberts, 
and  the  Gorges,  are  rightfully  termed 
the  fathers  of  New  England  coloniza- 
tion. The  Maine  shore  was  an  ob- 
jective point  for  the  early  explorers 
and  adventurers,  and  our  claim  to 
priority  of  settlement  in  New  Eng- 
land is  well  founded. 

Until  within  the  last  two  decades 
Maine  has  been  an  agricultural  State 


frnm  HJatn?  fag  (Snumtor  Qlnbb 


and  while  the  present  condition  and 
future  prospects  of  the  agriculture  of 
the  State  is  most  hopeful  and  encour- 
aging, the  majority  of  people  engaged 
in  gainful  occupations  are  those  fol- 
lowing manufacturing  and  mechani- 
cal pursuits. 

Maine's  extensive  fisheries  are  one 
of  her  best  known  industries.  Ap- 
proximately 25,000  men  are  employed 
in  reaping  her  annual  fish  harvest  of 
more  than  $4,000,000.  Lumber  is  a 
great  revenue  producer ;  the  woods  of 
Maine  yield  a  yearly  sum  of  at  least 
$15,000,000. 

Her  extensive  water-power  has 
been  a  great  aid  in  developing  her 
manufacturing  industries.  The  man- 
ufacture of  wood  pulp  has  developed 
greatly  during  the  last  few  years  and 
two  of  the  largest  mills  of  the  world 
are  located  within  her  borders. 

The  city  of  Bath  is  known  as  the 
cradle  of  American  shipbuilding 
where  have  been  built  craft  varying 
from  the  highest  type  of  government 
vessels  to  the  six  master  schooners, 
the  biggest  cargo  carriers  of  the  type 
extant. 

Aside  from  the  commercial  and 
manufacturing  lines,  the  summer  vis- 
itor is  a  constantly  increasing  source 
of  revenue  and  gratification.  The 
four  hundred  thousand  pleasure-seek- 
ers, attracted  by  the  salubrious  sum- 
mer climate,  the  beautiful  and  varied 
seashore  and  mountain  scenery  and 
unequaled  sporting,  fishing  and  hunt- 
ing privileges,  leave  nearly  sixteen 
million  dollars  in  various  summer  re- 
sorts and  pleasant  abiding  places. 
With  magnificent  and  extensive  for- 
est, and  a  coast  line  of  278  miles,  from 
Quoddy  Head  to  Kittery  Point, 
which,  by  the  wonderful  network  of 
bays  and  inlets  becomes  nearly  3,000 
miles  (greater  than  any  other  State), 
Maine  offers  greater  natural  attrac- 
tions than  any  other  commonwealth. 

The  industrial  condition  of  the 
State  is  not  materially  affected  by  im- 
migration. Only  about  thirteen  per 
cent  of  the  population  are  foreign- 
born.  They  are  of  the  different  na- 


tionalities, follow  various  occupations, 
and  seem  to  be  contented  and  well-to- 
do. 

The  people  of  Maine  are  possessed 
of  a  generous,  public  spirit  and  a  hu- 
mane tendency.  A  common  school 
system  was  adopted  very  early  in  the 
history  of  the  State  and  all  institu- 
tions of  an  educational  nature  have 
been  liberally  patronized  by  the  State. 
In  her  hospitals,  prisons  and  reforma- 
tory institutions,  her  unfortunate  and 
evil-minded  are  provided  for  by  scien- 
tific and  rational  methods.  The  death 
penalty  was  abolished  in  1878  and 
although  it  was  restored  for  a  brief 
time,  it  has  never  been  in  real  opera- 
tion since  that  date  and  unless  condi- 
tions change  considerably  that  law 
will  never  be  re-enacted. 

Maine  enjoys  prosperity  in  her  va- 
ried industries,  and  her  workingmen 
are  a  class  of  such  intelligence  and 
character  as  to  induce  reasonable  de- 
mands on  their  part  and  fair  treat- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  employers. 
The  spirit  of  trade  unionism,  while  it 
has  become  an  important  factor  in  in- 
dustrial conditions,  is  opposed  to  dras- 
tic measures.  The  affairs  of  the 
Union  are,  for  the  most  part,  wisely 
and  justly  handled,  and  there  is  no 
apparent  desire  to  do  injustice  or 
wrong  to  others.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  labor  organizations  have  done 
much  to  advance  the  interests  of  la- 
boring people. 

The  spirit  of  patriotism  still  lives  in 
the  hearts  of  the  citizens.  They  want 
peace,  but  should  war  come  Maine 
would  respond  as  promptly  as  she 
ever  has.  In  the  minds  of  the  people 
there  is  a  marked  difference  between 
the  patriotism  of  the  military  ages, 
when  war  was  the  chief  business  of  a 
country,  and  the  present  day  spirit  of 
devotion  and  duty  to  country.  The 
patriot  of  our  day  is  the  just  and  not 
the  fighting  man ;  he  is  the  patriot  of 
peace;  the  man  who  lives  honestly, 
injures  no  one,  does  the  best  he  can  in 
his  calling,  is  helpful  and  kindly  to 
all. 


"iEtrarlr"  of       Jtrat 


WORLD'S    FIRST    STEAMBOATS—  Built  and  Successfully  Run  by  John  Fitch 


<i  ram-iiu  of  an 

Amrriran  (brittur,  mini 

3?nblirlg  Riuirnlrb  UH  a  "Jffanaiir" 

for  yrupn-.-.tiu;  ihr  flropnlBion  uf  "Hri-.i-.rhi  Im 

Strain  against  2$Hnb  an&  (Tii»r  **  OH??  3ora  utas  fJrnmmnrrb 

"  Jmprartirablr  "    and  to  Risk  Htfr  in  its  lliturrtaktuy  "  jfmilhuriH}  ** 


iirlatrn 


BY 


SEYMOUR   BULLOCK 

AFTBR  TWENTY-FIVE  YEARS'  INVKSTIOATIOX  or  TOE  DCVEUIPMENT  OF  STEAM  NAVIGATION 


A  "unpractical"     man's 
"impracticable"      the- 
ory that  steam  could  be 
used    to    drive    vessels 
against  wind   and   tide 
met  the  ridicule  of  the 
"sound-headed"     men 
of  the  business  world  a  generation  or 
two  ago.     When  a  few  months  later 
a  strange  craft,  puffing  smoke  from  a 
tall   stack,   wierdly  scooted  over  the 
waters  at  the  mercy  of  a  man  at  a 
crude    throttle    it    was    proclaimed    a 
"miracle."     Men  with  business  judg- 
ment advised  sane  people  to  avoid  it 
and  not  to  risk  their  lives  in  its  power. 
Indeed  they  spoke  better  than  they 
knew — it  was  a  miracle.     A  miracle 
inasmuch  as  its  value  to  civilization  is 
beyond  the  power  of  human  mind  to 

33 


compute ;  a  miracle  that  has  thrown 
wide  open  the  gates  to  the  world;  a 
supernatural  "elastic  vapor"  that  has 
reduced  time  and  space  and  moved 
the  world  along  at  a  pace  an  hundred- 
thousand-fold  more  rapidly  than  be- 
fore its  discovery.  Until  to-day  the 
nations  of  the  earth  through  the 
power  of  modern  transportation  facil- 
ities are  exchanging  products  at  the 
magnitude  of  seventy  million  dollars  a 
day — or  an  estimated  value  of  about 
twenty-five  billions  during  the  year 
that  has  just  closed. 

It  is  the  story  of  this  "unpractical" 
man,  who  had  the  courage  to  face  the 
rebuffs  of  his  business  contempora- 
ries and  who  closed  his  life  in  dis- 
couragement and  tragedy,  that  is  here 
told. 


"Hirarle"  nf 


'HE  day  will  come 
when  some  more 
powerful  man  will 
get  fame  and 
riches  from  my 
invention,  but  no- 
body will  believe 

that  poor  John  Fitch  can  do  anything 
worthy  of  attention." 

These  words  of  the  discouraged  in- 
ventor who  first  demonstrated  the 
practicability  of  the  propulsion  of  ves- 
sels by  steam,  came  to  my  mind  as  I 
stood  over  his  unmarked  grave  in  the 
little  burial  spot  in  Bardstown,  Ken- 
tucky, a  few  days  ago. 

My  life-long  researches  into  the 
development  of  steam  navigation  have 
led  me  several  times  to  that  shrine, 
"but  never  before  has  the  fickleness  of 
fortune  impressed  me  more  forcibly. 

As  I  looked  upon  the  neglected 
grass-grown  plot  that  lay  about  thirty 
feet  from  the  fence  on  the  north  side 
and  but  little  more  from  the  fence 
that  ran  along  the  east  side — fourteen 
feet  north  of  a  stone  that  bore  the 
name  Jesse  McDonald — ,  I  thought 
of  the  oft-repeated  yet  unfulfilled 
wish  of  the  man  who  had  opened  up 
the  gates  of  the  world's  commerce 
and  had  received  in  compensation 
only  a  narrow  six-foot-deep  strip  of 
otherwise  worthless  earth,  the  exact 
location  of  which  seemed  scarce  saved 
from  the  all-hiding  hand  of  obliv- 
ion. John  Fitch — unappreciated  in 
life,  unwept  in  death  and  unsung  in 
story — had  often  wished  that  his  last 
couch,  when,  wearied  with  life's  un- 
even battle,  he  should  lay  himself 
down  to  sleep,  might  be  placed 
"where  the  song  of  the  boatman 
would  enliven  the  stillness  of  his  rest- 
ing place  and  the  music  of  the  steam 
engine  soothe  his  spirit." 

The  world's  greatest  benefactions 
have  come  through  the  hands  of  pov- 
erty; the  story  of  a  poor  man's  life, 
however,  is  thought  to  be  hardly 
worth  the  telling.  But  when  that  poor 
man  proves  to  be  the  genius  who  first 
successfully  hitched  his  oars  to  the 
power  of  steam,  then  men  may  be 


brought  to  read  his  story  and  to  even 
join  in  sounding  his  praise. 

No  claim  is  made  that  John  Fitch 
was  the  sole  "original  inventor"  of 
the  steamboat,  in  the  sense  that  no  one 
but  he  had  thought  of  the  possibility 
of  using  the  power  of  steam  for  navi- 
gation. He  was  an  original  inventor 
xin  that  he  successfully  linked  together 
a  steam  engine  and  a  method  of  pro- 
pulsion for  boats  before  he  knew  that 
anyone  else  had  ever  even  attempted 
it.  The  boats  that  he  built  were  not 
magnificent  marine  palaces,  like  the 
boats  upon  the  Hudson  and  the  Mis- 
sissippi to-day;  they  were  not  mon- 
strous leviathans  into  whose  cavern- 
ous maw  thousands  and  thousands  of 
tons  of  freight  could  be  stored,  but 
they  were  the  first  successful  cham- 
pions in  the  battle  for  supremacy  over 
wind  and  tide  and  to  them  must  be 
given  the  credit  of  demonstrating  that 
it  was  possible  to  travel  by  water  and 
yet  keep  engagements  by  set  appoint- 
ments in  time. 

Revolutions  so  far  reaching  as  con- 
templated in  the  scheme  of  Fitcli 
must  necessarily  move  slowly.  The 
world  of  to-day  differs  more  from  the 
world  that  John  Fitch  knew  than  that 
world  differed  from  the  world  of 
Julius  Caesar  and  the  great  difference 
has  been  wrought  by  the  development 
of  the  ideas  that  he  incorporated  in 
his  first  steamboat.  The  boats  of  his 
day  differed  from  the  boats  Csesar 
saw  upon  the  Mediterranean  only  by 
the  cut  and  set  of  their  sails.  The 
boats  of  to-day  differ  from  those  of  a 
hundred  and  twenty-five  years  ago  in 
nearly  every  feature.  Yet,  as  the 
forest  lies  hidden  in  the  acorn,  the 
"Minnesota"  and  the  "Dakota,"  the 
largest  freight  carriers  in  the  world, 
built  at  New  London,  and  now  plying 
the  waters  of  the  Pacific,  were  hidden 
in  that  little  craft  that  John  Fitch 
launched  in  a  small  meadow-stream  in 
1786. 

Although  the  ancients  knew  of  the 
expansive  force  of  confined  steam  but 
little  use  was  made  of  it  until  men  of 
modern  times  demonstrated  its  utility 


0f  an    Amnrtran 


*,..       \ 


«r'<»M:»T,  -       "TV 

.  n  ,  *s  1 1 

r.~..1 1      *&uY* 


...... ., 


7 

I  _  •*...,«.  i,       -- 

-if    i 
' §•• 

s<-  • '  / 

_1 5      / 


4r 
ffi-v 


COLLECT  POND,  NEW  YORK,  UPON  WHICH 
FITCH  SAILED  HIS  STEAMBOAT  OP  1796-7 

and  no  small  share  of  the  honors  that 
the  Present  renders  to  the  not-far- 
distant  Past  is  due  to  John  Fitch  for 
the  part  he  took  in  that  demonstra- 
tion. 

The  time  had  come  for  the  turning 
of  a  new  leaf  in  the  world's  book  of 
progress.  A  new  hour  had  been 
struck  on  the  "Horologue  of  the 
Ages."  The  "Old  World"  was  to  be 
brought  over  and  anchored  alongside 
the  "New"  with  but  enough  water- 
filled  space  left  between  them  to  set 
for  each  the  bounds  and  limits  of  its 
own.  To  John  Fitch  was  given  a 
dream — a  tantalizing  haunting  dream 
that  held  him  in  its  power  day  and 
night — in  which  he  saw  this  thing 
made  true. 

Speaking  of  that  time  when  he  first 
thought  to  annihilate  space  through 
the  application  of  steam,  Fitch  leaves 
this  written  confession: 

In  the  month  of  April,  1785,  I  was  so 
unfortunate  as  to  have  an  idea  that  a  car- 
riage might  be  carried  by  the  force  of 

35 


steam  along  the  roads.  I  pursued  that  idea 
for  about  one  week  and  gave  it  over  as  im- 
practicable, or,  in  other  words,  turned  my 
thoughts  to  vessels.  From  that  time  I  have 
pursued  the  idea  to  this  day  with  unre- 
mitted  assiduity,  yet  do  I  frankly  confess 
that  it  has  been  the  most  imprudent  scheme 
I  was  ever  engaged  in. 

Up  to  this  time  Fitch  had  never 
heard  of  a  steam  engine.  In  the 
Franklin  Institute  manuscript,  from 
which  the  foregoing  quotation  is 
taken,  he  says: 

What  I  am  now  to  inform  you  of  is  not 
to  my  credit  but  as  long  as  it  is  the  truth, 
I  will  insert  it  viz :  that  I  did  not  know 
there  was  a  steam  engine  on  earth  when  I 
first  proposed  to  gain  force  by  steam.  .  .  . 
A  short  time  after  drawing  my  first  draft 
for  a  boat.  I  was  amazingly  chagrined  to 
find  at  Parson  Irwin's,  in  Bucks  County, 
Pennsylvania,  a  drawing  of  a  steam  en- 
gine; but  it  had  the  effect  to  establish  me 
in  my  other  principles  as  my  doubts  lay 
at  that  time  in  the  engine  only. 

Every  part  of  the  civilized  world 
possessing  any  extended  sea  coast  or 
navigable  waters  seems  to  have  put 
forth  at  some  time  a  claimant  for  the 
honor  of  having  invented  the  steam- 
boat. Spain  presents  Blasco  de 
Garay,  but  of  his  work  the  editor  of 
the  Franklin  Journal  very  suggest- 
ively hints  that  it  is  not  wise  "to  date 
the  history  of  the  steamboat  back  so 
far  as  1543  until  the  Public  Record 
from  which  the  account  is  taken  shall 
appear  in  authentic  form." 

The  next  champion  for  the  crown  is 
Jonathan  Hulls  who  published  in 
London  in  1737  a  "Description  and 
draught  of  a  new  invented  machine 
for  carrying  vessels  out  of  and  into 
any  harbor,  port  or  river  against 
wind  and  tide  or  in  a  calm,  for  which 
his  majesty  George  II  has  granted 
letters  patent  for  the  sole  benefit  of 
the  author,  for  the  space  of  fourteen 
years."  Accompanying  this  pamph- 
let is  a  drawing  of  a  stubby  little  boat, 
with  a  smoking  "chimney,"  having  a 
pair  of  wheels  rigged  out  over  the 
stern  which  are  supposed  to  be  moved 
by  ropes  passed  around  their  outer 
rims.  To  the  axis  of  the  wheels  pad- 
dles are  fixed  for  propulsion. 


iltrarli>"  nf   tlj? 


SIDE    WHEEL    STEAMBOAT    THAT    CREATED   WONDERMENT    ON    COLLECT    POND, 
NEW    YORK— (From  an  old  print) 


It  is  not  probable  that  Jonathan 
Hulls  ever  built  any  other  steamboat 
than  this  one  on  paper.  Leastwise 
there  is  no  account  of  his  doing  any- 
thing further  with  the  patent  and  1 
believe  it  safe  in  assuming  that  no  one 
else  ever  became  sufficiently  inter- 
ested in  the  "paper  invention"  as  to 
have  put  its  theories  to  the  testing. 
The  late  Robert  D.  Roosevelt,  of  New 
York,  wrote  me  shortly  before  his 
death :  "I  cannot  allow  the  discussion 
of  this  subject  to  pass  without  putting 
in  the  claim  of  the  Roosevelt  family. 
I  trusted  that  some  other  member  of 
the  family  who  had  the  actual  proofs 
in  his  possession  would  come  for- 
ward, but  we  are  rather  careless  in 
claiming  credit — especially  when  the 
public  has  made  up  its  mind  in 
another  direction.  It  has  always  been 
a  tradition  with  us  that  my  grand- 
uncle,  Nicholas  J.  Roosevelt,  first  ran 
a  model  steamboat  as  finally  adopted 
by  Fulton  and  made  a  success  by  him. 
He  was  connected  with  Fitch  by  mar- 
riage and  business,  and  together  they 
afterward  exploited  the  Western 
waters,  leaving  Fulton  the  Hudson. 
You  will  find  models  of  boats  with 
oars  propelled  with  steam.  These 
were  failures,  and  the  little  steamboat 
of  my  relative  led  the  way  for  the 
wonderful  invention  which  Fulton 
made  successful.  I  do  not  like  to 
seem  to  ignore  or  abandon  our  claim, 
which  has  been  quietly  maintained  for 


nearly  a  century  and  is  upheld  by  a 
quantity  of  evidence." 

When  John  Fitch  built  and 
launched  his  first  boat  it  was  no  re- 
production of  any  other.  So  unique 
was  it  that  its  builder  might  have 
fallen  down  before  it  in  worship,  and 
yet  have  been  without  sin,  for  it  was 
not  made  like  unto  "anything  that  is 
in  the  heavens  above,  or  that  is  in  the 
earth  beneath,  or  that  "is  in  the  waters 
under  the  earth." 

Fitch  once  exclaimed  to  friends: 
"The  propelling  of  a  boat  by  steam  is 
as  new  as  the  rowing  of  a  boat  by  an- 
gels and  I  can  claim  the  first  thought 
and  invention  of  it." 

The  first  model  was  built  in  Cobe 
Stout's  log  shop  and  tried  on  the  small 
stream  that  ran  through  Joseph  Long- 
streth's  meadow  about  a  mile  and  a 
half  from  Davisville,  Southampton 
County,  Pennsylvania.  The  boiler 
was  made  of  an  iron  kettle,  the  ma- 
chinery was  of  brass  and  the  paddle 
wheels,  thrown  over  the  sides,  were  of 
wood.  In  all,  Fitch  tried  seven  dif- 
ferent schemes  for  propelling  the 
boat,  building  perfect  models  of  four, 
and  in  September,  1785, — having 
already  experimented  with  the  screw- 
propeller,  the  endless  chain,  the  pad- 
dle wheels  and  the  large  stern  wheel 
— Fitch  prepared  and  submitted  to  the 
American  Philosophical  Society  of 
Philadelphia  a  "drawing  and  descrip- 
tion of  the  machine  .  .  .  invent- 

36 


nf  an    Amrrtran 


ed  for  working  a  boat  against  the 
stream  by  means  of  a  steam  engine," 
and  in  the  following  December  he 
"presented  to  the  society  a  model  and 
additional  drawings,"  and  in  that 
same  year,  he  wrote  to  Benjamin 
Franklin  his  belief  in  the  practica- 
bility of  sea  navigation  by  steam. 

In  1786-7  the  sole  and  exclusive 
right  to  the  waters  of  Pennsylvania 
and  several  adjacent  states  for  steam 
propelled  vessels  was  given  to  John 
Fitch.  When  he  applied  for  this  con- 
cession, he  was  experimenting  with 
an  engine  having  a  three-inch  cylin- 
der and  a  propeller  attached  to  a 
skiff.  His  efforts  seemed  to  end  only 
in  failures  and,  stung  by  the  jibes  of 
the  wiseacres  with  their  eternal  "I 
told  you  so,"  Fitch  sought  the  tavern 
and  tried  to  drown  his  disappointment 
in  drink.  The  debauch  ran  through 
that  night  and  the  next  day  and  then 
he  seems  to  have  gotten  hold  of  him- 
self. He  went  to  bed  early  the  sec- 
ond night  to  try  to  sleep  himself  so- 
ber but  "about  twelve  o'clock  (July 
21 )  the  idea  struck  me,"  he  writes, 
"about  cranks  and  paddles  for  rowing 
a  boat  and  for  fear  that  I  should  lose 
the  idea,  I  got  up  about  one  o'clock, 
struck  a  light  and  drew  a  plan.  I  was 
so  excited  I  could  not  sleep."  Six 
days  later  Fitch  had  a  craft  of  about 
nine  tons  burden  fitted  with  paddles 
hung  perpendicularly  and  moved  by 
his  re-arranged  engine  geared  to  a 


crank.  On  the  twenty-seventh  (July, 
1786)  he  gave  a  public  demonstration 
— the  trial  trip  of  the  world's  first 
steamboat. 

Having  exhausted  his  own  finances, 
Fitch  applied  to  the  Pennsylvania 
legislature  for  a  loan  of  £150  and  fail- 
ing to  obtain  it — by  a  vote  of  thirty- 
two  to  twenty-eight — he  applied  to 
the  speaker  of  that  body,  General 
Thomas  Mifflin,  for  an  individual  loan 
of  the  amount.  In  soliciting  this 
accommodation  Fitch  writes: 

I  am  of  the  opinion  that  a  vessel  may  be 
carried  six,  seven  or  eight  miles  per  hour 
by  the  force  of  steam  and  the  larger  the 
vessel  the  better  it  will  answer,  and  am  in- 
clined to  believe  that  it  will  answer  for  sea 
voyages  as  well  as  for  inland  navigation 
which  would  not  only  make  the  Mississippi 
as  navigable  as  tide  water  but  would  make 
our  vast  territory  on  those  waters  an  in- 
conceivable fund  in  the  treasury  of  the 
United  States.  Perhaps  I  should  not  be 
thought  more  extravagant  than  I  already 
have  been  when  I  assert  that  six  tons  of 
machinery  will  act  with  as  much  force  as 
ten  tons  of  men,  and  should  I  suggest  that 
the  navigation  between  this  country  and 
Europe  may  be  made  so  easy  as  shortly  to 
make  us  the  most  popular  empire  on  the 
earth,  it  probably  at  this  time  would  make 
the  whole  very  laughable. 

Fitch  during  that  year  built  a  sec- 
ond boat,  forty-five  feet  long  and 
twelve  feet  beam,  which  was  an  im- 
provement in  every  way  over  its  pre- 
decessor. Besides  its  larger  propor- 
tions this  boat  had  a  much  heavier  en- 
gine. The  trial  trip  was  made  on  the 


PROPELLER    BUILT    BY    JOHN    FITCH-CONSIDERED    A    MARVELOUS     MECHANISM 
(Prom  an  old  print) 


37 


of 


Jtrat    g>t?ambnai 


THE    "PERSEVERANCE"    ON    THE    DELAWARE    RIVER    IN    1787 


IDelaware  river,  August  22,  1787, 
-and  was  witnessed  by  all  the  members 
•of  the  convention  for  framing  the 
Federal  Constitution,  except  General 
Washington. 

Chief  Justice  Oliver  Ellsworth  of 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  was 
the  guest  of  the  steamboat  company 
on  the  initial  trip  of  Fitch's  new  boat. 
Every  one  seemed  to  be  satisfied  with 
what  was  done  except  the  inventor. 
Attainment  seemed  to  only  fire  his 
ambition  and  he  at  once  began  to 
plan  for  greater  things. 

By  the  sale  of  maps  of  the  North- 
west Territory  drawn  by  Fitch  from 
his  own  surveys  and  engraved  in  the 
rude  shop  of  Cobe  Stout,  the  print- 
ing being  done  with  a  cider  press,  the 
sum  of  $800  was  made  available  for 
-the  new  boat.  A  stock  company  of 
forty  shares  was  organized  in  Feb- 
ruary, 1788,  and  the  exclusive  right 
to  navigate  by  steam  the  waters  of 
New  York,  March  19;  Delaware, 
February  3 ;  Pennsylvania,  March 
28,  and  Virginia,  November  7,  was 
:given  to  the  new  enterprise  "for  a  pe- 


riod of  fourteen  years."  The  new 
boat  was  built  and  -measured  sixty 
feet  in  length  with  eight-foot  beam. 
Paddles  were  set  at  the  sides  instead 
of  at  the  stern  as  in  the  former  boat. 
It  was  noised  about  that  Fitch's  new 
boat  would  be  given  its  trial  trip  that 
twenty-second  day  of  August  and  a 
crowd  of  the  curious  gathered  to  wit- 
ness the  event.  Incredulity  and  an- 
ticipation stood  staring  each  into  the 
other's  face.  The  lines  were  cast  off, 
there  was  a  puff  of  smoke  and  a  whiff 
of  steam  and  the  odd,  multi-legged 
creature  began  walking  on  the  water. 
Three  miles  only  were  covered  in  an 
hour  but  it  had  been  shown  that  some- 
thing could  be  done.  A  rally  was 
made  and  the  forty  original  shares 
were  doubled.  A  new  and  larger 
boat  was  built.  The  next  summer 
this  new  craft,  fittingly  called  the 
"Perseverance,"  Fan  on  its  trial  trip 
from  Philadelphia  to  Burlington, 
twenty  miles.  On  the  twelfth  of  Oc- 
tober, 1788,  a  pleasure  party  of  thirty 
was  taken  over  the  same  course  in 
three  hours  and  ten  minutes. 

38 


nf  an    Amrrtran 


Had  this  boat  been  launched  on  the 
Hudson,  locked  in  by  the  towering- 
hills  over  whose  heights  no  ordinary 
roadway  could  be  built,  instead  of  on 
the  Delaware  along  whose  shore 
stretched  a  well-kept  level  road  upon 
which  swift  ( ?)  stages  ran  more 
than  six  miles  in  an  hour,  it  is  certain 
that  no  break  would  have  been  per- 
mitted in  the  chain  that  linked  to- 
gether the  steamboats  of  three  centu- 
ries. If  the  papers  that  published  Ihe 
account  of  Fulton's  triumph  had  an- 
nounced that  on  that  August  day  of 
which  so  much  is  made,  the  "Cler- 
mont"  and  the  "Perseverance"  would 
leave  New  York  at  the  same  hour  and 
race  to  Albany,  each  maintaining  its 
accredited  rate  of  trial-trip  speed, 
their  account  of  the  race  would  have 
shown  that  when  the  "Perseverance" 
touched  her  wharf  at  the  farther  city 
the  "Clermont"  was  fifty-two  miles 
astern. 

Fitch  was  not  content  with  what 
had  been  accomplished  with  the  "Per- 
severance" and  at  once  proposed  the 
building  of  a  larger  boat  with  a  more 
powerful  engine.  The  next  year  was 
spent  in  preparation  and  building  and 
on  the  sixteenth  of  the  April  follow- 
ing (1790),  a  trial  trip  was  made. 
Everything  worked  charmingly  and 
Fitch  writes:  "Although  the  wind 
blew  fresh  at  the  northeast,  we 
reigned  Lord  High  Admirals  of  the 
Delaware  and  no  boat  in  the  river 
could  hold  its  way  against  us  but  all 
fell  astern,  though  several  sail  boats 
which  were  light,  and  heavy  sails  that 
brought  their  gunwales  well  down  to 
the  water,  came  out  to  try  us." 

Several  other  equally  successful 
trips  were  made  and  the  elated  Fitch 
wrote  again  :  "Thus  has  been  effected 
by  little  Johnny  Fitch  and  Harry 
Voight  (a  close  friend)  one  of  the 
greatest  and  most  useful  arts  that  has 
ever  been  introduced  into  the  world, 
and  although  the  world  and  my  coun- 
try does  not  thank  me  for  it,  yet  it 
gives  me  heartfelt  satisfaction." 

In  a  description  of  this  admittedly 
successful  steamboat,  which  was  pub- 


lished   under    Fitch's    name    in    the 
Columbian  Magazine,  he  says: 

The  cylinder  is  to  be  horizontal  and  the 
steam  to  work  with  equal  force  at  each  end. 
The  mode  by  which  we  obtain  a  vacuum 
is,  it  is  believed,  entirely  new,  as  is  also  the 
method  of  letting  the  water  into  it  and 
throwing  it  off  against  the  atmosphere 
without  any  friction.  It  is  expected  that 
the  cylinder,  which  is  of  twelve  inches 
diameter,  will  move  a  clear  force  of  eleven 
or  twelve  cwt.  after  the  frictions  are  de- 
ducted, this  force  is  to  be  directed  against 
a  wheel  eighteen  inches  in  diameter.  The 
piston  is  to  move  about  three  feet  and  each 
vibration  of  it  gives  the  axis  about  forty 
evolutions.  Each  evolution  of  the  axis- 
moves  twelve  oars  or  paddles  five  and  a. 
half  feet;  they  work  perpendicularly  and 
are  represented  by  the  strokes  of  a  paddle 
of  a  canoe.  As  six  paddles  are  raised  from 
the  water,  six  more  are  entered  and  the 
two  sets  of  paddles  make  their  strokes  of 
about  eleven  feet  in  each  evolution.  The 
crank  of  the  axis  acts  upon  the  paddles 
about  one-third  of  their  length  from  their 
lower  ends,  on  which  part  of  the  oars  the 
whole  force  of  the  axis  is  applied.  The 
engine  is  placed  in  the  bottom  of  the  boat, 
about  a  third  from  the  stern  and  both  the 
action  and  the  reaction  turn  the  wheel  the 
same  way. 

From  the  very  first  demonstration 
of  this  steamboat,  Fitch  had  held  the 
unshaken  confidence  of  a  Dr.  William 
Thornton  and  a  Mr.  David  Ritten- 
house,  who,  with  Benjamin  Franklin 
also  a  stockholder  in  the  company  or- 
ganized to  build  steamboats,  were 
members  of  the  American  Philosoph- 
ical Society.  Dr.  Thornton  was 
sometime  afterward  connected  with 
the  government  patent  office  in  Wash- 
ington where  he  had  access  to  all 
drawings  and  models  illustrative  of 
steamboating.  From  this  unequalled 
opportunity  to  study  all  that  others 
had  done  and  were  doing,  Dr.  Thorn- 
ton was  peculiarly  fitted  to  write  the 
pamphlet,  "A  short  account  of  the  ori- 
gin of  steamboats,"  in  which  he  says: 

Finding  that  Mr.  Robert  Fulton,  whose 
genius  and  talents  I  highly  respect,  has 
been  considered  by  some  the  inventor  of 
the  steamboat.  I  think  it  a  duty  to  the  mem- 
ory of  the  late  John  Fitch  to  set  forth  with 
as  much  brevity  as  possible,  the  fallacy  of 
this  opinion  and  to  show,  moreover,  that  if 
Mr  Fulton  has  any  claim  whatever  to  orig- 


UUrarU"  nf  tlj?  Jtrat 


PROPELLER    BUILT    BY    JOHN    FITCH    IN    1796-7 

The  figure  in  the  centre  is  Fitch— At  the  extreme  left  stands  Livingston  with  Fulton— This  boat  was  sailed  on 
Collect  Pond,  New  York,  in  a  demonstration  to  raise  capital  for  organizing  a  corporation 


inality  in  his  steamboat,  it  must  be  ex- 
ceedingly limited.  In  the  year  1788,  the 
late  John  Fitch  applied  for  and  obtained  a 
patent  for  the  application  of  steam  to  navi- 
gation, in  the  states  of  New  York,  Pennsyl- 
vania, New  Jersey,  Delaware,  etc. ;  and 
soon  after,  the  late  Mr.  James  Rumsey, 
conceiving  he  had  made  some  discoveries 
in  perfecting  the  same,  applied  to  the  state 
of  Pennsylvania  for  a  patent;  but  a  com- 
pany formed  by  Mr.  John  Fitch  under  his 
state  patents,  conceiving  that  the  patent  of 
Fitch  was  not  for  any  particular  mode  of 
applying  the  steam  to  navigation  but  that  it 
extended  to  all  known  modes  of  propelling 
boats  or  vessels,  contested  before  the 
assembly  of  Pennsylvania,  and  also  before 
the  assembly  of  Delaware,  the  mode  pro- 
posed by  Mr.  Rumsey  and  contended  that 
the  mode  be  proposed,  viz. :  by  drawing  up 
water  into  a  tube  and  forcing  the  same 
water  out  of  the  stern  of  the  vessel  or  boat, 
which  was  derived  from  Dr.  Franklin's 
works  (Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin  being  one 
of  the  company),  was  a  mode  the  company 
had  a  right  to,  for  the  plan  was  originally 
published  in  Latin  about  fifty  years  before 
in  the  works  of  Bernonilli  the  younger. 

The  decision  of  the  assembly  in 
both  states  where  the  issue  was  raised 
was  in  favor  of  Fitch  and  the  Rumsey 
company  "were  excluded  from  the 
right  of  using  steamboats  on  any 
principle."  In  the  violent  pamphlet 
controversy  between  these  two  claim- 
ants for  the  honor  of  having  first 
applied  the  power  of  steam  to  naviga- 
tion, it  was  shown  that  Fitch,  when 
en  route  to  Philadelphia  to  interest 
men  and  capital  in  his  invention,  had 
passed  through  Winchester,  Virginia, 
and  had  stopped  to  rest  at  the  home 
of  a  friend  to  whom  he  declared  his 
"firm  conviction  that  the  agency  of 


steam  might  be  used  in  navigation," 
stating  that  he  "was  then  on  his  way 
to  Philadelphia  to  awaken  interest  in 
such  an  invention."  Rumsey  is  said 
to  have  learned  this.  Be  this  as  it 
may,  it  is  certain  that  the  world  would 
yet  be  without  its  swift  sailing  steam- 
boats if  it  had  been  forced  to  depend 
upon  the  "suck-in,  squirt-out"  mech- 
anism of  James  Rumsey's  invention. 

But,  to  go  back  to  Dr.  Thornton's 
story.  Here  is  given  in  detail  the 
difficulties  under  which  Fitch  built 
his  first  boat  and  then  comes  the  ac- 
count of  the  launching  and  the  suc- 
cess that  crowned  him : 

The  day  was  appointed  and  the  experi- 
ment made  in  the  following  manner:  A 
mile  was  measured  in  Front  (Water) 
Street,  Philadelphia,  and  the  bounds  pro- 
jected at  right  angles,  as  exactly  as  could 
be  to  the  wharf,  where  a  flag  was  placed 
at  each  end  and  also  a  stop-watch.  The 
boat  was  ordered  under  way  at  dead  water, 
or  when  the  tide  was  found  to  be  without 
movement,  as  the  boat  passed  one  flag,  it 
struck  and  at  the  same  instant  the  watches 
were  se't  off;  as  the  boat  reached  the  other 
flag  it  was  also  struck  and  the  watches  in- 
stantly stopped.  Every  precaution  was 
taken  before  witnesses ;  the  time  was 
shown  to  all,  the  experiment  declared  to  be 
fairly  made  and  the  boat  was  found  to  go 
at  the  rate  of  eight  miles  an  hour,  or  one 
mile  in  seven  minutes  and  a  half.  .  .  . 
It  afterward  went  eighty  miles  in  a  day. 

Congress  was  in  session  and  an 
adjournment  was  ordered  that  the 
members  might  witness  the  remark- 
able event  and  on  the  sixteenth  of 
June,  1790,  Governor  Thomas  Mifflin 
and  the  Supreme  Executive  Council 


nf  an    Amrrtran 


SIDE    WHEEL    BOAT    BUILT    BY    FITCH    1796-7 

With  Fitch,  the  inventor,  Fulton  and  Livingston  made  several  trips  about  Collect  Pond,  New  York,  in  this 
boat  ten  years  before  they  placed  the  "  Clermont  "  upon  the  Hudson 


of  Pennsylvania  were  passengers  on 
the  boat.  Of  the  latter  Dr.  Thorn- 
ton writes: 

The  governor  and  council  of  Pennsyl- 
vania were  so  highly  gratified  with  our 
labors  that  without  their  intention  being 
previously  known  to  us,  Governor  MiffHn, 
attended  by  the  council  in  procession,  pre- 
sented to  the  company  and  placed  in  the 
boat  a  superb  silk  flag  prepared  expressly 
and  containing  the  arms  of  Pennsylvania; 
and  this  flag  we  possessed  till  Mr.  Fitch 
was  sent  to  France  by  the  company,  at  the 
request  of  Aaron  Vail,  Esq.,  our  consul  at 
L'Orient,  who  being  one  of  the  company, 
was  solicitous  to  have  steamboats  built  in 
France.  John  Fitch  took  the  flag,  un- 
known to  the  company,  and  presented  it  to 
the  National  Convention. 

The  success  of  Fitch's  boat  foun'l 
its  way  into  print  and  during  that 
summer  a  "card"  appeared  in  the 
advertising  columns  of  the  two  papers 
published  in  Philadelphia,  announcing 
the  regular  sailings  of  the  "steam- 
boat." The  Pennsylvania  Packet 
of  June  15  runs  the  first  steamboat 
"ad"  as  follows: 

The  Steam-Boat 

IS  now  ready  to  take  PafTcngers,  and  it  intended  to 
frt  off  dam  Arch  flreet  Ferry  in  Philadelphia  eve- 
ry Moo'/jr,  Wtdmffay  and  fritaj,  for  BurtintHmt 
B'ijlol.  BirJinta-wn  and  Trtntat,  to  r<iurn  on  TirJJtyt, 
TburfJaii  and  Satfrdayi— Price  for  Pjflenger*,  a/5  to 
Burlington  and  Bridal,  J  J  to  Bordcntown,  5/*.  10 
Trenton. June  14.  tu.th  f  tf 

The  same  "ad"  appeared  in  the 
Federal  Gazette  and  Philadelphia 


Daily  Advertiser  on  June  14,  17,  19, 
22  and  24,  and  on  Monday,  July  26, 
it  was  changed,  abbreviated  to  read: 
"The  steamboat  sets  out  to-morrow 
at  ten  o'clock  from  Arch  Street  Ferry 
in  order  to  take  passengers  for  Bur- 
lington, Bristol,  Bordentown  and 
Trenton  and  return  next  day." 

This  was  the  first  steamboat  line  in 
the  world  and  the  first  use  of  any 
steam-propelled  carrier  for  hire. 

Later  in  the  year  a  letter  was  print- 
ed in  the  New  York  Magazine,  dated 
Philadelphia,  August  thirteenth,  con- 
taining the  words:  "Fitch's  steam- 
boat really  performs  to  a  charm. ' 
The  boat  had  then  been  running  two 
months  and  was  maintained  all  that 
year  and  the  next  summer.  Her 
frame  rots  to-day  on  the  south  side  of 
Cohocksink  Creek. 

In  1788-0  another  boat  was  built 
and  successfully  launched.  On  the 
night  of  the  day  she  made  her  trial 
trip,  she  was  burned  to  the  water's 
edge.  In  1791  further  "patents" 
were  secured  and  a  boat  was  built  for 
a  New  Orleans  route.  When  nearly 
completed  a  storm  tore  this  new  craft 
from  its  moorings  and  drove  it  over 
onto  Petty's  Island,  opposite  the 
uoper  end  of  Philadelphia,  where  it 
became  embedded  in  the  mud.  Con- 
stant interference  with  Fitch's  plans 
and  the  substitution  of  worthless  in- 
ventions by  shareholders  had  made 


iitrarU?"  of   tljr  Jirai    &trambnat 


ORIGINAL    MODEL    OF    JOHN    FITCH'S    STEAMBOAT 
Presented  by  Fitch  to  the  American  Philosophical  Society  of  Philadelphia— Now  in  the  Smithsonian  Institute 


the  building  of  this  boat  very  expen- 
sive. The  shareholders  were  dis- 
couraged and  would  advance  no  more 
funds.  Fitch  had  spent  his  little 
"all"  and  the  boat  was  abandoned. 
For  four  years  it  lay  in  the  mud 
where  it  had  first  stranded  and  then 
it  was  advertised  as  for  sale  at  auction 
on  the  eighteenth  day  of  August, 


Boat  building  has  always  been  a 
good  butt  for  a  joke.  The  first  man 
who  launched  a  log  and  straddled  it, 
using  his  hands  for  paddles,  afforded 
no  end  of  merriment  to  the  other  fel- 
low who  was  "looking  on."  Noah's 
boat  was  the  most  ludicrous  thing  his 
contemporaries  had  ever  seen.  Poor 
John  Fitch  soon  found  himself  to  be 
the  "laughing-stock"  of  the  town  but 
through  it  all  he  said:  "Never  mind, 
boys,  the  day  will  come  when  all  our 
great  lakes,  rivers  and  oceans  will  be 
navigated  by  vessels  propelled  by 
steam." 

The  patent  that  Fitch  received 
from  the  Federal  Congress,  signed  by 
George  Washington  and  commission- 
ers Thomas  Jefferson,  General  Henry 
Knox  and  John  Randolph,  ran  for  a 
period  of  fourteen  years  from  August 
26,  1791.  It  was  this  patent,  with 
the  Rumsey-Fitch  pamphlets,  that  the 
opponents  to  the  Fulton-Livingston 
monopoly  used  to  break  the  exclusive 
franchise  held  for  the  waters  of  New 
York. 

Knowing  that  his  friend  Ritten- 
house  was  fully  cognizant  of  the 
details  of  this  patent,  Fitch  wrote  to 


him,  upon  the  abandonment  of  the 
Philadelphia-Trenton  steamboat  line 
in  1792,  urging  him  to  purchase  his 
lands  in  Kentucky  that  he  might 
"have  the  honor,"  as  Fitch  says,  "of 
enabling  me  to  complete  the  great  un- 
dertaking." 

In  this  letter  Fitch  writes:  "It 
would  be  much  easier  to  carry  a  first- 
rate  man-of-war  by  steam  than  .1 
boat  as  we  would  not  be  cramped  for 
room,  nor  would  the  weight  of  ma- 
chinery be  felt.  This,  sir,  tvill  be  the 
mode  of  crossing  the  Atlantic  in  time 
whether  I  bring  it  to  perfection  or 
not  for  packets  and  armed  vessels." 
He  suggests  further  on  that  steam  be 
used  to  conquer  the  Barbary  pirates 
who  had  recently  captured'  several 
American  vessels.  "A  six-foot  cylin- 
der could  discharge  a  column  of 
water,"  he  says,  "from  the  round-top 
forty  or  fifty  yards  and  throw  a  man 
off  his  feet  and  wet  their  arms  and 
ammunitions" — a  device  actually  re- 
ported in  England  some  years  later 
as  having  been  incorporated  as  part 
of  the  armament  of  the  "Demologos," 
the  first  steam  war  vessel  in  the 
world. 

The  "Demalogos"  was  built  for  the 
War  of  1812  upon  the  urgent  solicita- 
tion of  "a  number  of  gentlemen  in 
\Y\v  York  associated  under  the  title 
of  a  Society  for  Coast  and  Harbor 
Defense."  Their  chief  object  was  to 
bring  into  operation  a  Steam  frigate 
in  addition  to  the  measures  already 
adopted  for  annoying  the  enemy  with- 
in our  waters.  The  "memorialists" 


Sragrfog    nf  an    American   <£nttufi 


who  urged  this  innovation  were  ap- 
pointed by  the  secretary  of  the  navy 
to  act  as  "his  agents  to  superintend 
the  construction  of  a  vessel  of  war  to 
be  propelled  by  steam"  and  they  in 
turn  announced  for  themselves  that 
"Messrs.  Browns  are  to  be  the  naval 
constructors  and  Mr.  Fulton  is  the 
engineer  for  completing  the  grand  de- 
sign originally  conceived  by  himself." 

As  originally  planned  the  "Demo- 
logos,"  afterward  known  as  "Fulton 
I,"  was  to  have  been  a  mastless  ves- 
sel, but  Captain  David  Porter,  who 
had  just  returned  from  the  unfortu- 
nate cruise  of  the  "Essex"  and  been 
assigned  to  the  navy  yard  to  superin- 
tend the  building  of  this  new-style 
craft,  had  ordered  that  two  masts  be 
stepped,  upon  which  were  hung  lateen 
sails  with  the  accompanying  top- 
hamper,  and  the  installation  of  a  bow- 
sprit. Before  the  time  had  come  for 
the  launching  he  seemed  to  have 
grown  more  apprehensive  of  dangers 
hidden  in  the  strange  creature  and 
ordered  several  other  changes.  Two 
boilers  or  "cauldrons  for  preparing 
steam"  as  they  are  termed  in  the  re- 
port, were  substituted  for  the  one  de- 
signed by  Fulton.  Guns  that  were 
originally  on  the  British  ship  "John- 
of-Lancaster."  which  had  been  cap- 
tured early  in  the  war,  were  hauled 
overland  from  Philadelphia  and 
mounted  on  her  decks.  The  day  of 
launching  was  a  gala  day  for  all  New- 
York  and  vicinity.  At  eight  forty-five 
Saturday  morning,  October  24,  1814, 
the  "Steam  Battery  Fulton,  the 
First,"  slipped  from  her  cradle  and 
rested  on  the  waters  of  the  Fast  river. 
In  the  following  June  the  "Demo- 
logos" — Fulton's  name  for  the  boat — 
carried  a  party  of  officials  out  onto 
the  waters  of  Xew  York  Bay.  On  the 
fourth  of  July  a  trip  to  sea — covering 
from  fifty-three  to  fifty-five  miles — 
\vas  made — John  Fitch's  prophecy  of 
a  steam  war-craft  had  been  fulfilled. 

Stories  travel  far  and  in  Fngland  it 
was  reported  that  we  had  a  craft 
"three  hundred  feet  long  and  two 
hundred  feet  wide,  with  sides  thirteen 

43 


feet  thick  built  up  of  alternate  oak 
plank  and  cork  wood.  There  are 
forty-four  guns,  four  of  them  one 
hundred  pounders  on  the  main  deck 
and  quarter  deck.  The  forecastle- 
deck  guns  are  forty- four  pounders. 
And  further  to  annoy  an  enemy  a 
mechanism  to  discharge  one  hundred 
gallons  of  boiling-hot  water  every 
minute  and,  by  a  new  contrivance 
three  hundred  cutlasses  are  brand- 
ished over  her  gunwales,  and  an  equal 
number  of  heavy  iron  pikes  of  great 
length  dart  from  her  sides  with  prodi- 
gious force — darting  and  withdraw- 
ing every  quarter  of  a  minute." 

The  "Demologos"  after  her  "trip 
to  sea"  was  taken  to  the  Brooklyn 
Navy  Yard  and  used  as  a  receiving 
ship.  On  the  fourth  of  June,  1829, 
her  magazine,  containing  two  and  a 
half  barrels  of  damaged  powder,  used 
for  firing  the  morning  and  evening 
gun.  exploded  and  destroyed  the  ves- 
sel. No  other  steam  vessel  was  adde'l 
to  the  navy — except  a  galliott  of  one 
hundred  tons,  named  the  "Sea  Gull" 
purchased  in  "1822  to  suppress  piracy 
in  the  West  Indies — until  the  "Fulton 
II"  was  built  for  the  government  in 
1837.  The  engines  for  the  "Fulton 
II"  were  built  by  William  Kemble  of 
the  West  Point  Foundry  Association 
and  were  made  up  of  successful  inno- 
vations in  marine  enginery.  This 
boat  ran  a  race  with  the  British 
steamer  "Great  Western"  and  easily 
vanquished  her  opponent.  She  did 
service  till  1842  when  she  was  laid  up 
at  the  navy  yard  till  1851.  In  the 
latter  year  she  was  pulled  out  onto 
the  ways  and  thoroughly  overhauled 
before  being  sent  to  the  West  Indies 
on,  "cruising  duty."  In  1861  she  was 
called  back  and  "placed  in  ordinary" 
at  Pensacola  and  that  same  year  fell 
into  the  hands  of  the  Confederates 
and  was  destroyed  with  the  navy 
yard,  May  9,  1862. 

With  the  exception  of  a  little  pad- 
dle wheel  tug  bought  in  1836  and 
used  as  a  despatch  boat,  our  navy  had 
no  other  steamboat  until  the  launch- 
ing of  the  "Mississippi"  and  the  "Mis- 


Ultrarl?"  nf   ilf? 


souri"  in  1842.  These  two  vessels 
were  planned  at  a  meeting  of  the  na- 
val board  in  1839  and  at  the  same 
time  plans  were  laid  for  the  "Mich- 
igan" which  was  the  first  iron  steam 
war  vessel  in  the  world.  The  "Mich- 
igan," built  in  1842,  is  yet  in  active 
service  on  the  Great  Lakes  and  the 
original  engines  are  yet  in  use  as 
placed  in  the  hull  at  first.  These 
three  boats  were  the  first  to  be  built 
under  the  entirely  new  branch  of  na- 
val economy  organized  by  Captain 
Matthew  C.  Perry,  a  brother  of  the 
hero  of  Lake  Erie  in  1813. 

The  "Missouri,"  whose  engines 
were  built  at  Cold  Spring,  New  York, 
under  the  supervision  of  William 
Kemble  who  had  built  the  engines  for 
the  "Fulton  II,"  was  burned  at  Gibral- 
tar in  1843  by  the  careless  dropping 
of  a  cask  of  turpentine  which  ignited. 
The  "Mississippi"  twice  circumnavi- 
gated the  globe ;  was  flagship  in  the 
Mexican  War;  led  the  fleet  as  flag- 
ship in  the  expedition  of  Commodore 
Perry  to  Japan ;  carried  Kossuth,  the 
Hungarian  patriot,  from  Turkey  to 
France;  was  flagship  at  the  engage- 
ment of  Pei  Ho  river  in  1859,  and 
was  one  of  the  first  ships  to  the  front 
at  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War. 
She  took  part  in  the  midnight  attack 
upon  Port  Hudson.  Riddled  by  shot 
poured  into  her  while  grounded,  she 
was  there  fired  by  the  crew  that  had 
so  proudly  sailed  her  and  sunk  in 
the  waters  whose  name  she  had  so 
gloriously  borne. 

The  same  year  that  witnessed  the 
launching  of  the  "Mississippi,"  the 
"Missouri"  and  the  "Michigan,"  saw 
also  the  building  of  the  "Princeton"- 
the  first  screw  war  vessel  ever  built, 
the  first  to  have  its  machinery  below 
the  water  line,  the  first  to  burn  anthra- 
cite coal,  the  first  to  use  "blowers"  for 
artificial  draft  and  to  have  a  collapsi- 
ble or  telescoping  smoke-stack,  and 
the  first  to  have  engines  couple'l 
direct  to  the  shaft.  When  the 
"Princeton"  was  launched,  having 
Ericsson's  screw  and  Ericsson's 
wrought  iron  gun,  the  war  between 


armor  and  projectile  had  really  begun 
in  earnest.  After  seven  years  of 
service  the  "Princeton"  was  broken 
up  at  the  Boston  Navy  Yard  in  1849. 

But  to  return  to  the  story  of  John 
Fitch.  In  1796-7,  upon  a  pond  of 
water  known  as  the  "Collect"  which 
remained  up  to  very  recent  times 
where  the  Tombs  Prison  and  the  ad- 
jacent buildings  now  stand,  Fitch 
had  a  yawl  of  about  eighteen  feet  in 
length  and  six  feet  beam,  with  a 
square  stern  and  rounded  bow,  in 
which  he  had  placed  an  engine  and 
boiler.  The  boiler  was  a  ten  or  twelve 
gallon  iron  pot  with  a  lid  of  thick 
plank  securely  fastened  down  by  a 
transverse  bar  of  iron.  The  cylin- 
ders of  the  engine  were  made  of  wood 
shaped  like  a  stubby  barrel  on  the  out- 
side and  made  straight  inside, 
strongly  hooped  together.  The  main 
steam  pipe  led  directly  from  the 
boiler  top  into  a  copper  box,  about  six 
inches  square  which  was  called  by 
Fitch  "the  receiver  or  valve  box." 
"Leading  pipes"  led  from  the  boiler 
into  the  bottom  or  base  of  each  cylin- 
der. 

John  Hutchins,  who  some  time 
later  published  an  account  of  the  boat, 
was  the  "assistant"  engineer  and 
pilot.  He  tells  us: 

In  the  summer  of  1796-7  Robert  Living- 
ston, Esq.,  and  Mr.  Fulton  made  several 
trips,  on  different  occasions,  around  the 
pond  and  Mr.  Fitch  explained  to  them 
the  modus-operandi  of  the  machinery.  I 
being  a  lad  had  conversation  only  with  Mr. 
Fitch.  From  hearsay  I  believe  Colonel 
Stevens  of  Hoboken,  New  Jersey,  and 
another  person  by  the  name  of  Roosevelt 
had  some  knowledge  of  the  enterprise  and 
had  some  interest  in  its  success.  In  con- 
versation Mr.  Fitch  remarked  to  Mr.  Ful- 
ton that  in  former  experiments  with  paddle 
wheels  it  was  found  that  they  splashed  too 
much  and  could  not  be  used  in  canal  navi- 
gation. No  one  in  that  time  thought  of 
having  them  covered. 

Hutchins  says  that  he  afterward 
made  several  trips  to  see  the  "Cler- 
mont"  and  that  he  then  recognized 
Fulton  "to  be  the  same  man  who  was 
with  us  on  the  Collect."  Hutchins 
gathered  up  the  statements  of  men 
who  had  witnessed  the  steamboat 


Sragrfcy    nf  an    Amrriran 


demonstrations  on  the  Collect  pond. 
Among  them  he  has  two  that  are  of 
special  force. 

Anthony  Lamb,  who  was  a  briga- 
dier-general and  later  an  alderman 
in  New  York  says: 

I  have  a  perfect  recollection  of  having 
seen  a  boat  on  the  Collect  pond  in  this  city 
with  a  screw  propeller  in  the  stern  driven 
by  steam  across  the  pond.  I  do  not  recol- 
lect tin-  year  but  I  am  certain  that  it  was 
as  early  as  1796.  It  was  about  the  size  of  a 
ship's  yawl. 

William  H.  Whitlock,  who  was  for 
some  time  city  surveyor,  wrote: 

It  affords  me  much  pleasure  to  state  that 
I  was  an  eye  witness  to  the  circumstance 
of  a  boat  being  propelled  by  steam  on  the 
Collect  pond  of  this  city  about  the  year 
1796. 

Failing  to  interest  others  in  what 
he  saw  to  be  so  feasible  himself,  Fitch 
abandoned  the  boat  with  portions  of 
its  machinery,  leaving  it  to  decay  on 
the  muddy  shore  of  the  Collect. 
Piece  by  piece  this  prototype  of  the 
world's  steam  fleet  was  carried  away 
by  the  children  of  the  neighborhood. 

Fitch  was  still  firm  in  his  convic- 
tions and  talked  steamboat  wherever 
he  could  find  an  audience  and  for  as 
long  as  his  audience  could  be  induced 
to  stay.  Soon  after  the  New  York 
demonstrations  he  returned  to  the 
scenes  of  his  first  experiments  and 
from  thence  went  into  Kentucky.  In 
a  blacksmith's  shop  he  met  Jacob 
Graff,  who  had  helped  him  on  his  first 
boat,  and  began  to  talk  of  those  early 
days.  The  onlookers  chimed  in  with 
ridicule  to  which  he  replied:  "Well, 
gentlemen,  although  I  may  not  live  to 
see  the  time,  you  will,  when  steam- 
boats will  be  preferred  to  all  other 
means  of  conveyance  and  especially 
for  passengers  and  they  will  be  partic- 
ularly useful  in  navigating  the  Mis- 
sissippi river."  As  he  went  out  of 
the  shop  Peter  Brown,  who  had 
worked  with  John  Wilson  on  the  first 
boat,  turned  to  the  latter  and  said : 
"Poor  fellow!  What  a  pity  he  is 
crazy !" 

Who  was  this  man  thrust  thus  upon 
the  world  before  his  time,  who  blazed 

45 


the  way  for  others  to  riches  and  re- 
nown and  then  died,  scarce  wept — 
his  only  friend  the  poverty  with  which 
he  had  been  so  wholly  in  touch 
through  all  his  years?  What  was  his 
parentage?  Where  was  he  born? 

In  writing  of  himself  in  a  manu- 
script bequeathed  to  the  Franklin 
(Philadelphia)  Institute,  under  the 
condition  that  its  contents  should  not 
be  known  until  thirty  years  after  his 
decease,  Fitch  says: 

The  21  st  of  January,  1743,  old  style,  was 
the  fatal  time  of  bringing  me  into  existence. 
The  house  I  was  born  in  was  upon  the  line 
between  Hartford,  Connecticut,  and  Wind- 
sor—  (now  known  as  the  Old  Road).  It 
was  said  I  was  born  in  Windsor  but  from 
the  singularity  of  my  make,  shape,  disposi- 
tion and  fortune  in  the  world,  I  am  in- 
clined to  believe  that  it  was  the  design  of 
Heaven  that  I  should  be  born  on  the  very 
line  and  not  in  any  township  whatever; 
yet  I  am  happy  also  that  it  did  not  happen 
between  two  states  that  I  can  say  I  was 
born  somewhere. 

He  gives  us,  farther  on  in  the  man- 
uscript, glimpses  of  his  boyhood's 
home  and  tells  us  of  two  sisters,  to 
one  of  whom  he  seemed  to  have  been 
especially  attached,  and  two  brothers, 
one  of  whom  he  calls  a  tyrant.  We 
are  shown  the  school  to  which  he  was 
sent  "one  month  in  the  year,  because 
it  didn't  cost  anything" — his  father's 
obligations  to  him  being  limited  to 
pointing  out  the  way  to  Heaven  and 
a  way  to  make  money  for  his  sole  ben- 
efit. The  books  that  he  used  are  all 
named:  "The  New  England  Primer 
from  Adam's  fall  to  the  end  of  the 
Catechism;"  an  "arithmetic  by  Hod- 
der  which  had  the  old-fashioned  long 
division  in  it  and  went  as  far  as  Alli- 
gation alternate,"  and  "Salmon's 
Geography" — which  his  father  re- 
fused to  buy  for  him  and  he  finally 
purchased  himself,  through  a  neigh- 
bor who  was  going  into  the  city,  and 
paid  for  by  selling  "potatoes  raised  on 
the  headlands  at  the  end  of  the  garden 
in  soil  dug  up  by  hand  on  a  holyday" 
(holiday) — the  annual  gathering  of 
the  militia.  Only  those  who  have 
heard  an  old  grandfather's  rhymes 


"Utrarb"  of   ttyt  Jtrai 


***2e^2 


/^ 


LINES    INSCRIBED    BY    JOHN    FITCH    IN    HIS    DISCOURAGEMENT 


of  those  early  days  and  listened  to  the 
distich : 

"First  Monday  in  May 
Is  training  day," 

can  have  any  adequate  idea  of  the 
thirst  for  knowledge  John  Fitch  must 
have  had  as  a  boy  when  he  denied 
himself  the  crowd  and  the  soldier's 
drill  and  stuck  to  his  "digging"  on 
this  "holyday"  to  buy  a  book  that 
would  tell  him  "all  about  the  whole 
world." 

Page  after  page  is  taken  from  his 
life  experiences  before  he  comes  to 
the  story  of  the  governor  of  the  col- 
ony whose  lands  adjoined  some 
meadow  land  owned  by  his  father. 
One  day.  Fitch  tells  us,  the  governor 
had  gained  the  consent  of  the  elder 
Fitch  to  the  boys'  helping  him  survey 
some  land  that  was  to  be  cut  up  into 
small  parcels  for  several  purchasers. 
All  day  the  weary-legged  lad  of 
eleven  summers  trudged  over  the 
fields  carrying  the  surveyor's  chain 
for  the  governor  and  at  night  the 
work  had  not  been  finished.  The 
chain  was  left  with  young  Fitch  who 
was  told  how  he  should  lay  off  the 
remaining  lots  and  the  next  day 
found  him  early  at  his  task.  "I,  be- 
ing proud  of  the  office,"  he  says, 
"readily  accepted  it  and  executed  it 
faithfully.  Sometime  after  the  gov- 
ernor called  at  my  father's  house  for 
the  chain ;  I  fetched  it  to  him  with 
the  greatest  expedition,  and  expecta- 
tion of  some  pennies.  When  he  took 


it,  he  put  it  into  his  saddle  bag  and 
rode  off  without  saying  a  word !  .  .  . 
I  am  persuaded  the  governor  was  an 
honest  man  but  concluded  within 
himself  that  the  honor  of  having 
helped  him  would  compensate  me." 

This  experience  with  the  governor, 
Fitch  says,  was  a  forerunner  of  the 
treatment  he  was  afterward  to  re- 
ceive in  the  world.  In  another  place 
he  tells  of  a  September  day  when  the 
steeple  was  raised  on  the  village 
church :  "This  was  indeed  a  gala  day 
and  the  people  from  Hartford  and  the 
whole  country  flocked  to  witness  the 
uncommon  spectacle."  But  on  that 
day  Fitch  borrowed  a  horse  that 
would  otherwise  have  been  in  service 
and  "rode  to  Rocky  Hill,  a  parish  in 
Wethersfield,  where  there  were  a 
great  many  coasters"  and  engaged 
berth  for  a  short  voyage  that  he  might 
settle  the  question  as  to  whether  he 
should  become  a  seaman  or  remain 
ashore  and  learn  a  trade. 

After  describing  his  experiences  at 
sea  and  the  treatment  that  he  after- 
ward received  on  land  when  he  sought 
to  learn  a  trade,  Fitch  tells  us  of  his 
marriage  on  the  twenty-ninth  of  De- 
cember, 1767,  to  Miss  Lucy  Roberts 
of  Simsbury.  A  son  and  a  daughter 
were  born  to  them.  The  daughter 
who  married  James  Kilbourn,  was 
born  in  1769.  Fitch  "thought  the 
world  and  all  of  little  Lucy"  but  that 
marriage  in  1767  was  the  beginning 
of  the  ending.  He  could  not  live 

46 


nf  an    Ammratt   <&?ntii0 


happily  with  his  wife  and  went  out 
from  his  home  to  become  a  wanderer. 

Notwithstanding  what  Fitch  wrote 
about  the  vexations  of  a  steamboat 
he  continued  his  experiments  and 
improved  every  opportunity,  as  we 
have  seen,  to  interest  others  in  his  in- 
ventions. On  his  return  from  the 
fruitless  trip  to  France,  Fitch,  who 
had  worked  his  way  homeward  as  a 
common  sailor,  landed  in  Boston  and 
from  there  went  to  the  home  of  Colo- 
nel King,  who  had  married  Fitch's 
sister,  where  he  remained  for  some 
two  years  with  occasional  visits  made 
to  his  daughter,  Mrs.  Kilbourne. 

Leaving  the  hospitality  of  Windsor 
to  claim  possession  of  the  lands  he 
acquired  when  appointed  "Deputy 
Surveyor"  for  Kentucky,  Fitch  passed 
through  New  York  and  made  the 
demonstrations  upon  the  Collect  pond 
which  should  have  won  for  him  first 
place  on  the  roll  of  honor.  Arriving 


at  I'.anlstown,  Kentucky,  Fitch  made 
another  model  of  a  side-wheel  boat 
which  he  ran  upon  the  nearby  stream. 
Broken  in  health  and  in  spirit,  he 
gave  up  the  project  and  handed  over 
his  model  to  one  of  the  few  friends 
who  yet  stood  true  and  by  whom  it 
was  kept  for  many  years.  A  bargain 
had  been  made  with  the  tavern-keeper 
by  which  Fitch  was  to  give  him  half 
of  the  tract  of  land  he  had  gone  south 
to  claim  in  exchange  for  board  and 
a  pint  of  liquor  daily  as  long  as  he 
should  live.  Later  the  size  of  the 
piece  of  land  was  increased  for  an  in-t 
crease  in  the  quantity  of  liquor. 

There  is  an  added  tone  of  sadness 
to  the  story  of  this  man  when  one 
stops  to  think  of  how  unnecessary 
were  all  the  deprivations  and  suffer- 
ings of  the  closing  days  of  his  life. 
At  the  death  of  her  father,  Mrs.  Fitch, 
from  whom  the  great  genius  had  sep- 
arated when  the  question  of  their  per- 


'DEMOLOGOS"    THE    FIRST    STEAM    WAR    VESSEL    IN    THE    WORLD 


47 


Ultrari?"  nf 


Jtrst 


sonal  religion  was  raised — he  was  a 
"skeptic"  and  she  had  just  become  a 
Methodist — sent  her  brother-in-law, 
Burnam,  with  a  letter  telling  the  hus- 
band that  she  had  come  into  a  consid- 
erable estate  and  urging  him  to  return 
to  Connecticut,  where  she  promised  to 
"maintain  him  like  a  gentleman  for 
life,"  but  he  was  inflexible  and  stub- 
bornly refused  to  consider  the  matter. 
He  sent  a  pair  of  silver  shoe  buckles 
to  his  son,  Shaler,  and  a  gold  ring  to 
his  "little  girl  Lucy,"  but  refused  to 
send  anything  to  his  wife,  despite  the 
.urging  of  his  friend  Garrison  and  his 
wife,  with  whom  he  was  then  staying. 
Straight  as  an  arrow,  six  feet  two 
inches  tall ;  thin  and  spare,  face  slim 
and  complexion  tawny;  hair  jet  black, 
eyes  dark  and  peculiarly  piercing; 
temper  sensitive  and  quick  and  stub- 
born— such  was  John  Fitch.  His  an- 
cestry, for  he  had  a  most  respectable 
ancestry  with  a  vellum  of  pedigree 
and  a  coat-of-arms,  were  originally 
Saxon  and  immigrated  to  Essex,  Eng- 
land, from  whence  they  came  to 
Windsor,  where  the  great-grandfather 
purchased  one-half  the  original  settle- 
ment, leaving  it  at  his  death  to  three 
sons — Joseph,  Nathaniel  and  Samuel. 
From  the  loins  of  Joseph  sprung 


John,  who  was  the  father  of  the  John 
to  whom  the  boiling  over  of  a  tea- 
kettle suggested  the  latent  force  of 
steam. 

Somewhere  between  the  twenty- 
fifth  of  June,  1798,  when  he  made  his 
will  and  the  eighteenth  of  the  follow- 
ing July  when  the  will  was  probated, 
poor  John  Fitch  died.  He  could  have 
been  a  rich  man  had  he  chosen,  for 
Gardoqui,  the  Spanish  envoy  in  this 
country  in  1796,  wanted  to  buy  his 
invention  for  the  "sole  and  exclusive 
use  of  my  Master  the  King  of  Spain," 
but  Fitch  who  had  linked  his  fortunes 
with  the  feeble  colonies  in  their 
struggle  for  liberty,  said:  "No.  If 
there  is  any  glory  or  profit  in  my  in- 
vention my  countrymen  shall  have  the 
whole  of  it." 

I  would  not  ask  that  the  honors  be 
stripped  from  others  that  they  may  be 
bestowed  upon  John  Fitch ;  but  only 
ask  that  by  the  side  of  their  names, 
his  name  shall  be  written  equally 
large.  His  lone  grave,  unmarked 
and  unkept  is  a  silent  witness  against 
the  manner  in  which  we  write  history 
and  a  condemnation  of  the  conserva- 
tism with  which  we  cling  to  beliefs, 
however  false,  simply  because  they 
bear  the  stamp  of  long-gone  years. 


FIRST    STEAMSHIP    OF    CUNARD     LINE    FROM    LIVERPOOL    TO    BOSTON 
The  "Britannia"  made  her  first  trip  in  1840.     It  was  on  this  ship  that  Dickens  experienced  the 
storm  at  sea  described  in  his  American  Notes,  speaking  of  the  many  perils  of  the  new  science 


of  a  &msthmt 


Hanging  Ihr 
iTimthrnt  Sordrrlanta 
uiitlj  Dmtirl  Sounr  o*  Enrnmttrra  mitt; 
llir  (Chrrnkrrii  in  CCummauiJ  uf  thr  Higljt  Dragnuno  J* 
Elrrtinnrrring  in  Amrrtran  |JolittrB  a  ifunfcrrii  $rarn  Ago  > 
(On  tbr  JFlunr  af  (CangrtHH  during  tl|p  IHanrar  AfcmtniBtraiinn  ^  Aulnbiographg 

BT 

HONORABLE  FELIX  WALKER 

MEMBER  or  UNITED    STATES   HOUSE   or   REPRESENTATIVES,  1808-1818—  ONB    op    THB    ORGANIZERS    OP    FIRST 

QOTBRNMENT    IK    KENTUCKY—  FlRST    CLERK    OF   FlRST    COURT    IN    A    SELF-GOVERNING  DISTRICT 

CALLED  WASHINGTON  NOW  INCORPORATED  IN  STATE  OP  TENNESSEE—  BORN  IN  VIRGINIA 
IH  1758  AND  AUTHOR  op  THESB  MEMOIRS  IN  HIS  SEVENTY-FOURTH  TEAR 


HIS  chronicle  of  the  se- 
cret struggles — the  for- 
tunes and  misfortunes — 
of  a  pioneer  American 
has  been  held  from  pub- 
lic scrutiny  for  eighty 
years.  Not  that  its  con- 
tents have  been  of  a  confidential 
nature,  the  revelation  of  which 
would  violate  a  trust — for  it  is  the 
frank  story  of  an  honorable  man — but 
because  the  descendants  of  the  chron- 
icler have  treasured  it  as  a  family 
heirloom  rather  than  a. public  docu- 
ment. 

It  is  the  life  story  of  a  man  of 
strong  character  and  wide  experi- 
ence. It  was  written  by  Congress- 
man Walker  in  his  seventy-fourth 
year  for  the  entertainment  of  his 
children  and  for  the  information  of 
his  direct  descendants.  It  is,  how- 
ever, one  of  those  rare  "human" 
documents  that  throw  back  the  por- 
tals that  separate  the  yesterdays 
from  to-day  and  lay  before  the  vision 
a  clear  view  of  "America  in  the 
rough,"  when  one  had  to  "cut  his 
way  through  the  forests  to  pass  from 
Virginia  into  Kentucky,"  matching 
his  cunning  and  markmanship  with 
the  half  barbarous  men,  enduring 
hardships  and  sufferings  that  are 
little  known  to  this  generation,  and 

49 


literally  moving  the  mountains  before 
him. 

When  one  considers  that  it  is  but 
the  call  of  a  single  generation  since 
the  writing  of  the  manuscript  here 
recorded  and  that  this  same  region 
is  to-day  a  panorama  of  thrifty 
estates,  of  prosperous  institutions, 
of  great  centers  of  commerce  and  in- 
dustry— the  American  Nation  seems 
almost  a  miracle. 

It  is  living  testimony  such  as  this — 
modest  in  its  narration  and  wholly 
unconscious  of  the  possibility  of  its 
ever  becoming  public  record  and  ar- 
resting the  attention  of  succeeding 
generations  of  fellow-countrymen, — 
that  awakens  a  full  sense  of  the 
building  of  the  United  States — a 
masterpiece  in  governmental  evolu- 
tion. 

The  chronicler's  posterity  to-day 
enrolls  many  names  distinguished  in 
the  service  of  his  country — the  Bairds 
of  Louisiana  and  North  Carolina, 
the  Grants,  Trichelles,  Haydens, 
Bakers,  Sawyers,  Rollins. 

This  transcript  from  the  original 
manuscript  is  officially  presented  by 
permission  of  Mrs.  Estelle  Trichelle 
Oltrogge  of  Jacksonville,  Florida,  _a 
great-great-granddaughter  of  Con- 
gressman Walker. 


nf   a 


,HEN  I  proceed  to  re- 
late the  reminiscences 
of  my  own  desultory 
walk  through  life, 
variable  as  the 
winds  that  incessant- 
ly change  through  the 
atmosphere,  I  blush  to  record  the 
working  of  the  needle  in  the  compass 
of  my  mind  which  has  played  and 
vibrated  in  every  direction,  like  the 
fool's  eyes  to  the  end  of  the  earth.  A 
restless  and  enterprising  anxiety  was 
my  constitutional  misfortune,  which 
in  my  later  years  I  most  sensibly  see 
and  feel,  and  has  lost  me  half  a  life- 
time of  repentance,  and,  to  speak 
comparatively,  ten  thousand  disap- 
pointments. 

But  to  do  the  same  justice  to  my- 
self, and  that  I  would  to  others,  can 
-acquit  myself  on  the  ground  that  my 
irregularities  were  entirely  and  ex- 
clusively my  own,  and,  on  the  most 
scrupulous  and  strict  examination,  I 
cannot  charge  myself  in  any  of  my 
transactions  through  life,  intention- 
ally with  malice  or  fraud  afore- 
thought, of  doing  injury  or  injustice 
to  my  fellow-man.  Honesty,  truth 
and  integrity  has  been  my  guiding  or 
polar  star  through  all  the  vicissitudes 
of  my  variable  and  checkered  life. 


An  Irish  Emigrant  in 
Delaware  in  the  Year  1720 

In  attempting  to  give  a  history  or 
biography  of  our  ancestors,  I  cannot 
look  back  and  avail  myself  of  eminent 
family  distinctions  as  others  may  do 
and  have  a  right  to  do;  honest  pov- 
erty appears  to  be  the  lot  of  our  in- 
heritance. 

The  only  honorable  title  we  can 
•claim  by  birthright,  on  which  I  can 
proceed  with  certainty,  although  we 
might  have  a  claim  on  the  merits  of 
George  Walker,  a  dissenting  clergy- 
man who  distinguished  himself  in  the 
•wars  of  King  James  in  Ireland, 
about  the  year  of  1690,  in  saving  the 
city  of  Derry,  by  his  valor  and  strat- 
agem, when  it  was  thought  all  was 


lost  when  besieged  by  the  King's 
troops. 

From  the  information  afforded  by 
my  father  and  what  I  could  collect 
from  an  old  and  respectable  citizen, 
Mr.  William  Smart  (an  elder  of  the 
church  in  Rutherford  County,  North 
Carolina,  now  deceased)  relative  to 
our  family  descent,  states,  that  my 
grandfather,  John  Walker,  was  an 
emigrant  from  Ireland  about  the  year 
1720,  settled  in  the  State  of  Delaware 
about  or  near  a  small  town  called 
Appaquinimey,  lived  and  died  in  that 
State,  was  buried  in  a  church  called 
Back  Creek  Church  on  Bohemia 
River. 

I  passed  the  church  in  my  travels 
through  that  country  in  the  year  1796. 
Mr.  Smart  related  that  my  grand- 
father Walker  was  a  plain,  honest 
man  (a  farmer),  in  moderate  circum- 
stances, of  upright  character,  and  re- 
spectable in  his  standing.  He,  Mr. 
Smart,  made  one  or  two  crops  with 
him  when  a  young  man.  We  must 
suppose  he  died  in  the  meridian  of 
life.  He  left  two  sons  and  three 
daughters.  The  eldest  son  Thomas 
died  young ;  my  father,  the  youngest, 
was  bound  to  the  cooper's  trade,  and 
followed  it  some  years  within  my 
recollection  after  he  had  a  family. 

One  of  my  father's  sisters  married 
a  man  by  the  name  of  Humphreys, 
father  of  Colonel  Ralph  Humphreys, 
who  died  at  or  near  Natchez  about 
thirty  years  past,  the  father  of  George 
Humphreys,  who  lives  in  that  county. 
One  sister  married  Benjamin  Gruble 
(?Grubb),  a  respectable  farmer  of 
Pennsylvania,  but  removed  to  South 
Carolina  and  died  there.  The  other 
sister  married  Colonel  Joseph  Curry, 
settled  about  five  miles  below  Colum- 
bia on  the  Congaree  River.  I  was 
boarded  there  to  school  in  the  year 
1764  at  eleven  years  old.  The  school- 
house  stood  on  the  site  where  Granby 
is  now  situated.  It  was  then  nearly 
a  wilderness,  a  sandy  desert,  and  so 
thinly  inhabited  that  a  school  could 
scarcely  be  made  up,  and  now  a  con- 
siderable commercial  town. 


Adventures  of  a  Huntsman 
in  Virginia  150  Years  Ago 

My  father,  John  Walker,  after  his 
freedom  from  apprenticeship,  went  up 
the  country  as  an  adventurer,  settled 
on  the  south  branch  of  the  Potomac 
in  Hampshire  County,  Virginia.  Be- 
ing a  new  country  and  game  plenty, 
he  became  a  hunter  of  the  first  order, 
famous  in  that  profession,  in  which 
he  practiced  nearly  to  the  end  of  his 
life.  He  was  with  General  Washing- 
ton in  Braddock's  Army  in  the  year 
1755.  Previous  to  that  time  he  mar- 
ried my  mother,  Elizabeth  Watson,  of 
a  good  family  from  Ireland,  by  whom 
he  had  seven  sons,  no  daughter.  I 
was  the  eldest,  born  nineteenth  day  of 
July,  1753.  The  names  of  his  sons 
after  my  own,  were  John,  James, 
Thomas,  Joseph,  George  and  Jacob. 
I  like  to  have  forgotten  William  who 
was  the  eighth  son,  although  the 
fourth  in  succession,  and  only  now 
living  (William,  Jacob  and  myself). 
After  Braddock's  defeat,  which  hap- 
pened on  the  ninth  day  of  July,  1775, 
the  country  exposed  to  the  depreda- 
tion of  the  Indians  and-  in  continual 
jeopardy,  my  father  removed  to  North 
Carolina,  settled  in  Lincoln  County 
on  Lee  Creek  about  ten  miles  east  of 
the  village  of  Lincolnton,  worked  at 
his  trade  and  hunted  for  his  livelihood 
according  to  the  custom  of  the  time; 
game  was  then  in  abundance. 

About  this  time  the  Cherokees,  a 
powerful  and  war-like  nation  of  In- 
dians, broke  out  and  murdered  some 
of  the  inhabitants  on  the  frontier. 
He  went  out  as  volunteer  against  the 
Indians,  joined  the  army  from  South 
Carolina  under  Colonel  Grant,  a 
Scotch  officer,  marched  on  to  the  Che- 
rokee nation  (a  battle  was  fought  at 
Estitoa,  a  town  on  Tennessee  River 
about  fifty  miles  distant  from  my  own 
residence)  in  the  fall  of  1762.  Colo- 
nel Grant  was  there  repulsed  with 
considerable  loss,  yet  in  the  event  the 
Indians  were  partially  subdued  and 
made  peace,  for  a  time.  It  did  not 


continue    long;    the    war   broke    the 
year  after. 

Plantation  Life  in  the 
Carolinas  Before  Revolution 

On  his  return  from  the  expedition 
he  purchased  a  beautiful  spot  of  land 
on  Crowder's  Creek,  about  four  miles 
from  King's  Mountain,  in  the  same 
county,  and  removed  there  in  the  fall 
of  1763,  being  then  a  fresh  part;  he 
cultivated  some  land  and  raised  stock 
in  abundance  and  I  can  then  remem- 
ber that  my  mother  and  her  assistants 
made  as  much  butter  in  one  summer 
as  purchased  a  negro  woman  in 
Charleston.  My  father  hunted  and 
killed  deer  in  abundance  and  main- 
tained his  family  on  wild  meat  in 
style.  I  remember  he  kept  me  fol- 
lowing him  on  a  horse  to  carry  the 
venison  until  I  was  weary  of  the  bus- 
iness, which  also  gave  me  a  taste  for 
the  forest.  He  resided  on  Crowder 
Creek  until  the  year  of  1768  the 
range  began  to  break  and  the  game 
not  so  plenty,  his  ardor  for  range  and 
game  still  continued.  He  purchased 
a  tract  of  land  of  four  hundred  acres 
from  one,  Moses  Moore,  a  brother 
hunter,  for  one  doubleloon,  which  at 
this  time  could  not  be  purchased  for 
five  thousand  dollars,  such  the  rapid 
increase  of  the  value  of  land  in  half  a 
century.  This  is  the  farm  and  plan- 
tation at  the  mouth  of  Cane  Creek  (or 
second  Broad  River)  in  Rutherford 
County,  settled  by  my  father  in  1768, 
on  which  he  resided  until  he  raised 
his  family  until  they  all  were  grown, 
and  on  part  of  said  tract  I  lived  for 
seventeen  years,  and  had  six  children 
born,  Betsie  Watson,  Elvira,  Felix 
Hampton,  Joseph,  Jefferson  and  Isa- 
bella. 

In  the  year  of  1787  my  father  re- 
moved to  the  mouth  of  Green  River  in 
the  same  county  (about  ten  miles  dis- 
tant) where  he  lived  until  he  died  on 
the  twenty-fifth  of  January,  1796,  in 
the  sixty-eighth  year  of  his  age;  left 
that  valuable  inheritance  of  land  in 
the  Forks  of  Green  and  Broad  River 
to  his  youngest  son,  Jacob  Walker, 


nf   a   &roitl|mi   Qtottgrcaaman 


who  lives  on  it  to  this  day.  My 
mother  died  on  Easter  Sunday  in 
April,  1808,  about  the  age  of  75, 
and  buried  by  the  side  of  my  father 
in  the  family  burying-ground  on  the 
plantation.  I  trust  she  was  a  good 
woman  and  gone  to  rest. 

My  father  bore  several  commis- 
sions under  the  old  government;  was 
colonel-commandant  and  judge  of  the 
court  for  many  years  in  the  county 
of  Rutherford,  but  on  the  commence- 
ment of  the  Revolutionary  War  he 
resigned  all  his  commissions,  both  lo- 
cal and  military,  and  united  his  in- 
terests and  efforts  in  defense  of  his 
country  against  the  oppressions  of  the 
British  government  and  was  a  mem- 
ber of  the  First  Public  Convention 
held  in  North  Carolina  at  Hillsbor- 
ough  in  July,  1775,  on  the  Revolution 
of  the  American  States.  I  was  with 
him  at  that  place.  He  took  an  early 
and  decided  part  in  the  war,  was  ap- 
pointed a  regular  officer  in  the  Conti- 
nental Army.  His  grown  sons  were 
all  active  in  that  war  in  defense  of 
their  country.  He  was  in  person  a 
man  of  slender  habit,  full  of  energy 
and  swift  on  foot;  a  suavity  in  his 
manners  that  was  graceful  and  at- 
tractive, and  a  cultivated  understand- 
ing for  his  times  and  his  day,  and 
proper  enthusiast  in  his  friendship. 
Among  my  acquaintances  I  knew  no 
man  of  a  more  liberal,  hospitable  and 
benevolent  disposition  (even  to  a 
fault)  which  often  proved  injurious 
to  his  pecuniary  circumstances,  but 
have  thought  he  was  wanting  in  that 
cool,  deliberate,  calculating  faculty  so 
necessary  in  all  the  occurrences  of 
life,  to  balance  the  scale  of  our  exist- 
ence; yet  he  maintained  such  a  con- 
sistency of  character  as  insured  him 
the  confidence  and  friendship  of  so- 
ciety through  life  and  left  a  good 
reputation  and  inheritance  to  his  chil- 
dren. This  is  a  narrative  of  our  an- 
cestors down  to  the  present  genera- 
tion so  far  as  my  information  extends. 


Early  Custom  of  Binding 
Boys  into  Apprenticeship 

At  the  age  of  sixteen  my  father 
bound  me  to  a  merchant  in  Charles- 
ton (Mr.  George  Parker,  an  English 
gentleman  of  high  standing  in  trade) 
for  five  years.  He  had  three  pren- 
tices of  very  singular  names,  one 
Nancy  Milly  Stuckings,  one  Atlard 
Belin,  and  myself,  Felix  Walker  (the 
youngest).  He  used  to  boast  that  he 
had  three  young  men  of  such  singu- 
lar names,  none  such  to  be  found  in 
the  city  of  Charleston  in  one  house, 
either  for  names  or  service.  I  was 
highly  gratified  with  my  mode  of  life, 
well  approved  by  my  master,  caressed 
by  my  mistress,  who  treated  me  with 
the  sympathy  and  kindness  of  a  child. 
I  lived  most  delightfully  for  a  time 
while  the  novelties  of  the  city  arrested 
my  mind  and  occupied  my  attention. 

At  length  those  pleasures  began  to 
lag  and  I  became  weary  and  satiated 
with  the  continual  sameness  of  the 
city.  My  restless  and  anxious  pro- 
pensities began  to  prevail  and  I  thirst- 
ed and  sighed  for  those  pleasures  that 
variety  afforded.  Some  more  than  a 
year  after  being  bound,  I  solicited  my 
master  to  give  me  up  my  indentures 
and  permit  me  to  go  home  for  a  time, 
under  promise  to  return  and  serve 
out  my  apprenticeship.  This  he  ab- 
solutely and  promptly  refused,  saying 
he  could  nor  would  not  do  without 
me;  my  father's  and  my  own  ac- 
quaintance in  the  country  brought  in 
a  great  custom.  At  length  my  father 
coming  to  town,  I  renewed  my  solici- 
tations to  go  home  and  through  the 
influence  of  my  father,  and  he  seeing 
I  was  determined  to  go,  he  let  me  off 
with  seemingly  great  reluctance.  In 
this  I  believe  my  father  committed  an 
error  in  taking  me  away.  He  ought 
to  have  compelled  me  to  business, 
and  have  since  thought  that  too  much 
indulgence  to  a  child,  particularly  in 
the  rise  or  dawn  of  life,  is  the  greatest 
injury  we  can  do  them.  I  have  ex- 
perienced something  of  this  in  my 
own  family. 


ODn   tlj?   Imrforlanfc   Uitty   lanul 


During  my  residence  in  Charles- 
ton in  the  Christmas  of  1769  I  heard 
the  celebrated  Dart  Whitefield  preach 
with  great  power.  He  was  the  great- 
est awakening  preacher  that  perhaps 
ever  filled  the  sacred  desk.  He  had 
most  crowded  congregations.  I  felt 
the  power  of  the  awakening  spirit 
under  his  preaching,  but  it  soon  went 
off. 

Paternal  Discipline  in 

the  Pioneer  American  Homes 

On  my  return  home  my  father  put 
me  to  work  on  the  farm,  which  did 
not  well  accord  with  my  feelings. 
Yet  I  submitted  and  worked  faith- 
fully for  a  while.  I  applied  myself  to 
music,  for  which  I  had  a  predominant 
taste,  and  soon  acquired  a  great  pro- 
ficiency in  performing  on  the  violin 
(then  called  a  fiddle)  in  which  I  ex- 
celled, and  although  accustomed  to 
frolic,  I  could  never  learn  to  dance. 
My  father,  discovering  I  had  neither 
inclination  or  capacity  for  a  farmer, 
he  put  me  to  school  to  Doctor  Joseph 
Dobson  of  Burke  County,  from  whom 
I  received  the  best  education  I  have 
ever  been  in  possession  of,  although 
no  more  than  the  common  English, 
so-called.  I  returned  from  school  in 
less  than  a  year  and  lived  at  home 
nearly  two  years  without  much  re- 
straint, yet  I  obeyed  my  father  and 
mother  with  the  greatest  punctuality, 
but  at  the  same  time  living  accord- 
ing to  the  course  of  this  world,  ful- 
filling the  desires  of  the  flesh  and  of 
the  mind  and  of  the  vanities  of  life 
with  the  greatest  avidity.  At  length, 
becoming  weary  of  so  limited  a  circle, 
I  solicited  my  father  to  suffer  me  to 
go  to  Kentucky  (which  was  then 
called  Louvizy)  with  Colonel  Richard 
Henderson,  who  had  made  a  purchase 
of  that  country  from  the  Cherokee 
Indians.  He  consented,  and  accord- 
ing my  father  and  myself  set  out  to  a 
treaty  held  for  that  purpose,  on 
Watawga  in  the  month  of  February, 
1775,  where  we  met  with  Colonel 
Henderson  and  the  Indians  in  treaty. 
I  there  saw  the  celebrated  Indian 

53 


Chief  called  Atticullaculla — in  our 
tongue  "the  little  carpenter."  He  was 
a  very  small  man  and  said  to  be  then 
ninety  years  of  age  and  had  the  char- 
acter of  being  the  greatest  politician 
ever  known  in  the  Cherokee  Nation. 
He  was  sent  as  an  agent  or  plenipo- 
tentiary from  his  nation  to  England 
and  dined  with  King  George  the  Sec- 
ond with  the  nobility,  so  I  heard  him 
declare  in  a  public  oration  delivered 
at  the  treaty.  He  was  an  eloquent 
orator  and  graceful  speaker  in  his  In- 
dian way.  The  name  of  "little  car- 
penter" was  given  him  by  similitude. 
The  Indians  said  he  would  modify 
and  connect  his  political  views  so  as 
to  make  every  joint  fit  to  its  place  as 
a  white  carpenter  can  do  in  wood. 
You  may  find  his  name  mentioned  in 
"Weem's  Life  of  General  Marion." 

The  treaty  being  finished  and  a 
purchase  made,  there  associated  and 
collected  together  about  thirty  men. 
Mr.  William  Twitty  with  six  men 
and  myself  were  from  Rutherford; 
the  others  a  miscellaneous  collection. 

Adventures  with  Daniel  Boone 
In  the  Wilds  of  Kentucky 

We  rendezvoused  at  the  Long 
Island  in  Holstion.  Colonel  Daniel 
Boone  was  our  leader  and  pilot. 
Never  was  a  company  of  more  cheer- 
ful and  ardent  spirits  set  out  to  find  a 
new  country.  We  proceeded  and 
traveled,  cutting  our  way  through  a 
wilderness  of  near  three  hundred 
miles,  until  we  arrived  within  about 
twelve  miles  of  Kentucky  River  when, 
on  the  twenty-fifth  of  March,  1775, 
we  were  fired  on  by  the  Indians  while 
asleep  in  our  camp ;  Mr.  Twitty  and 
his  negro  man  killed,  myself  badly 
wounded,  the  company  despondent 
and  discouraged.  We  continued  there 
for  twelve  days.  I  was  carried  in  a 
litter  between  two  horses  to  the  bank 
of  the  Kentucky  River,  where  we 
stopped  and  made  a  station  and  called 
it  Boonsborough.  I  well  recollect  it 
was  a  "lick."  A  vast  number  of  buf- 
faloes moved  off  on  our  appearance. 
I  saw  some  running,  some  loping  and 


0f   a   j&nutljmt 


some  walking  quietly  as  if  they  had 
been  driven.  It  was  calculated  there 
were  near  two  hundred. 

But  let  me  not  forget,  nor  never 
shall  forget,  the  kindness,  tenderness 
and  sympathy  shown  me  by  Colonel 
Daniel  Boone.  He  was  my  father 
my  physician  and  my  friend;  attend- 
ed me,  cured  my  wounds,  consoled 
me  in  my  distress  and  fostered  me  as 
his  own  child.  He  is  no  more,  has 
gone  to  rest,  but  let  me  pay  my  trib- 
ute of  gratitude  to  his  memory  and 
his  ashes. 

In  a  few  days  after  we  had  fixed 
our  residence,  Colonel  Richard  Hen- 
derson, Colonel  Luttrell  and  Colonel 
Slaughter  (from  Virginia)  arrived 
with  about  fifteen  men,  who  stationed 
with  us.  This  addition,  our  company 
consisted  of  about  fifty  men,  well 
armed  with  good  rifles.  Colonel  Hen- 
derson, being  proprietor,  acted  as  Gov- 
ernor, organized  a  government.  We 
elected  members,  convened  an  assem- 
bly, formed  a  constitution,  passed 
some  laws  regulating  our  little  com- 
munity. This  assembly  was  held 
about  the  beginning  of  May  1775. 
This  was  the  first  feature  of  civiliza- 
tion ever  attempted  in  that  flourish- 
ing and  enlightened  state  now  called 
Kentucky. 

From  the  recent  occurrences  of  so 
unexpected  an  event,  my  friend  and 
protector,  Mr.  Twitty,  taken  dead 
from  my  side,  myself  deeply  wounded 
without  much  expectation  of  recov- 
ery, brought  me  to  solemn  reflections 
should  I  be  taken  off,  what  would  be 
my  destination  in  the  world  to  come. 
I  could  make  no  favorable  calcula- 
tions as  to  my  future  happiness. 
Under  these  impressions  I  was  indeed 
excited  to  make  every  possible  exer- 
tion to  meet  death,  prayed  much  and 
formed  solemn  resolutions  to  amend 
my  life  by  repentance  should  I  be 
spared ;  but  on  my  recovery,  my  feel- 
ings wearing  off,  and  my  duties  de- 
clining, I  gradually  slided  back  to  my 
former  courses  and  pursued  my  pleas- 
ures with  the  greatest  avidity. 


Experiences  as  a  Civilizer 
in  Forests  of  Tennessee 

Such  is  the  instability  of  all  human 
resolutions  and  legal  repentance,  no 
power  on  earth  can  change  the  heart 
but  the  omnipotent  power  of  the  grace 
of  Almighty  God.  During  the  time 
we  were  there  we  lived  without  bread 
or  salt.  In  summer,  perhaps  in  July, 
my  wounds  being  healed,  although 
very  feeble  I  was  able  to  sit  on  horse- 
back by  being  lifted  up.  I  set  out  in 
company  with  Messrs.  Decker  and 
Richard  Hogan  and  returned  by  the 
way  we  came  to  Watawga,  a  danger- 
ous route.  It  was  a  merciful  provi- 
dence that  preserved  us  from  being 
killed  by  the  Indians,  who  were  then 
in  open  hostilities  with  all  the  adven- 
turers to  Kentucky.  However,  we 
arrived  safe  to  Colonel  Robinson  on 
Watawga,  and  from  there  in  a  few 
days  I  returned  to  my  father's  in 
Rutherford.  I  lived  at  home  about 
three  months,  when  that  spirit  of  nov- 
elty began  to  prevail.  I  wished  to  be 
moving,  but  what  course  to  pursue 
was  undetermined.  At  length  con- 
cluded to  go  to  Watawga,  (This  river 
is  a  branch  of  Holsteen,  heads  up  in 
the  mountains  opposite  to  Ash 
County,  in  N.  C.)  where  I  had 
formed  some  acquaintances,  on  my 
way  to  Kentucky.  And  now  being 
my  own  man  (but  with  the  consent  of 
my  father)  I  set  out  in  October  '75, 
and  arrived  at  Col.  Charles  Robin- 
son's in  a  few  days,  being  about 
ninety  miles. 

The  country  being  newly  settled,  in 
a  short  time  they  organized  a  county 
and  called  it  Washington.  I  was  ap- 
pointed Clerk  of  the  Court.  It  was 
then  a  county  or  district  of  self-gov- 
ernment, not  incorporated  in  the  State 
of  North  Carolina  until  some  years 
after.  It  was  then  taken  in  by  Act  of 
Assembly  and  so  remained  until  it 
was  ceded  to  Congress  in  1789,  and 
since  a  part  of  the  State  of  Tennessee. 
This  was  the  first  Court  ever  organ- 
ized in  that  section  of  the  western 


54 


country.     I   continued   in   this   office 
for  nearly  four  years. 

The  war  of  the  Revolution  com- 
mencing about  this  time,  I  considered 
it  a  favorable  opportunity,  a  fine  the- 
ater, on  which  to  distinguish  myself 
as  a  young  man  and  patriot  in  defense 
of  my  Country. 

Accordingly  I  went  to  Mecklen- 
burgh  County,  and  meeting  with 
some  recruiting  officers,  by  the  recom- 
mendation of  General  Thomas  Polk 
(father  of  Col.  William  Polk  of 
Raleigh)  I  was  appointed  Lieutenant 
in  Capt.  Richardson's  Company  in  the 
Rifle  Regiment,  commanded  by  James 
Stuger  (then  a  Colonel)  and  was 
there  furnished  with  money  for  the 
recruiting  service.  I  returned  to 
Watawga  and  on  my  way  throughout 
that  country  I  recruited  my  full  pro- 
portion of  men  and  marched  them  to 
Charlestown  in  May  1776,  joined  the 
Regiment,  and  was  stationed  on 
James  Island. 

Sir  Peter  Parker  with  his  whole 
fleet  arrived  in  the  Bay  while  we  were 
stationed  on  the  Island.  General  Lee 
arrived  in  Charleston  and  took  com- 
mand of  the  troops,  but  did  not  tarry 
long;  he  went  on  to  Savannah  to 
assist  the  Americans  against  the  Brit- 
ish and  Indians,  and  to  regulate  the 
troops,  Sir  Peter  Parker  commanded 
an  attack  on  Fort  Moultrie  on  Sulli- 
van's Island  on  the  twenty-eighth  of 
June  1776,  was  repulsed  with  loss  of 
two  British  men-of-war  and  a  number 
of  men ;  did  not  succeed  in  the  reduc- 
tion of  Charleston. 

Ranging  the  Borderlands 
with  the  "Light  Dragoons" 

The  war  now  becoming  general 
through  the  American  provinces,  the 
British  stimulating  the  Indians  on  the 
frontiers,  the  Cherokees  breaking  out 
and  murdering  the  inhabitants  of 
Watawga  and  Holsteen,  where  my 
property  and  interests  lay,  I  was  con- 
strained to  resigrn  my  commission, 
contrary  to  the  wish  of  the  command- 
ing officer,  and  return  home  to  engage 

55 


against  the  Indians  in  the  defence  of 
my  property  and  country. 

I  was  appointed  to  a  command  of  a 
company  of  Light  Dragoons  to  range 
on  the  frontiers,  was  stationed  at  Nol- 
achuckey  for  a  year  and  prevented 
the  Indians  from  making  any  depre- 
dations on  the  inhabitants. 

The  war  subsiding  with  the  In- 
dians, I  returned  to  Watawga,  attend- 
ed to  the  duties  of  my  office  as  Clerk 
of  the  Court.  Having  experienced 
some  of  bitter  with  the  sweets  of  life, 
I  became  imore  local  in  my  disposi- 
tion. Thinking  it  necessary  to  be- 
come a  citizen  of  the  world,  in  its  ut- 
most latitude,  concluded  to  marry. 

Accordingly  I  was  married  to  Su- 
san Robinson,  a  beautiful  girl  of  fif- 
teen, on  the  8th  of  January,  1778, 
daughter  of  Col.  Chas.  Robinson 
(where  I  had  resided  for  3  years  past). 
In  March  ensuing,  my  wife  and  self 
paid  a  visit  to  my  father  in  Ruther- 
ford, designed  to  spend  the  summer. 
On  the  28th  of  June,  my  dear  girl  has 
a  miscarriage,  which  terminated  her 
existence.  She  died  on  the  9th  day 
of  July,  1778,  six  months  after  our 
marriage. 

This  was  the  most  momentous  and 
eventful  year  in  which  I  lived, 
through  the  whole  period  of  my  life. 
I  was  so  shocked  and  impressed  with 
so  unexpected  an  event,  that  my  mind 
was  almost  lost.  Absorbed  in  grief 
almost  insupportable,  I  felt  so  deeply 
afflicted  that  I  thought  all  my  pros- 
pects of  happiness  were  buried  with 
the  woman  I  loved.  However,  happy 
for  man,  that  in  cases  of  the  most  deep 
and  deplorable  affliction,  the  constitu- 
tion of  our  nature  affords  some  re- 
sources for  recovery,  and  finds  his 
way  from  under  the  most  pressing 
calamities ;  but  as  excess  of  any  kind 
is  not  intended  to  last,  after  some  time 
I  began  to  collect  my  scattered  facul- 
ties and  realize  what  would  have  been 
the  consequence  had  I  been  called  off 
in  place  of  her  that  was  gone,  and 
although  it  is  now  48  years  since 
(1826)  that  melancholy  scene,  yet  I 
tremble  as  I  write  when  I  consider 


a 


the  goodness  and  merciful  forbear- 
ance of  Almighty  God  in  sparing  me 
to  this  day,  who  am  a  sinner,  through 
all  the  vicissitudes  and  vanities  of  life 
which  I  have  been  destined  to  fill. 
To  Him  be  the  praise  forever,  under 
the  alarm  of  so  feeling  a  dispensa- 
tion, I  became  seriously  and  solemnly 
impressed  with  a  mighty  concern  for 
my  own  salvation. 

Strong  Heart  of  Frontiersman     , 
Broken  by  Death  of  Beloved  One 

Reflecting  on  my  past  life,  I  found 
that  I  had  been  traveling  from  Jeru- 
salem to  Jerico,  had  lived  in  a  state  of 
sin  and  rebellion  against  God,  un- 
grateful of  his  goodness,  and  tram- 
pled his  mercies  under  my  feet.  I  re- 
solved to  reform  and  turn  from  my 
wicked  ways  and  be  a  good  Christian, 
and  so  ignorant  was  I  that  I  thought 
all  was  in  my  own  power  with  my 
good  intentions ;  and  but  endeavoring 
to  obtain  forgiveness  for  all  my  sins 
through  the  merits  of  the  Redeemer 
(delusive  hope)  which  I  fear  thou- 
sands are  carried  away  on  on  the 
quicksands  of  their  own  confidence. 

In  this  resolution  I  was  serious  and 
determined.  Accordingly,  I  read  my 
bible,  prayed  much,  abstained  from 
every  evil  as  I  could  avoid,  declined 
corrupt  company,  was  sober  and  re- 
served in  my  manners  and  morals, 
and  so  continued  until  I  thought  I 
was  not  only  an  almost,  but  a  real 
Christian  indeed,  and  in  truth  so  I  was 
settled  on  the  fatal  rock  of  self-right- 
eousness, that  when  the  rain  descend- 
ed and  the  wind  blew  and  beat  upon 
it,  it  fell  and  great  was  the  fall;  in- 
deed, it  swept  away  the  refuge  of  lies ; 
but  glory,  honor  and  praise  be  to  Him 
who  sits  on  the  throne,  and  to  the 
lamb  forever  and  ever. 

I  was  not  suffered  to  rest  on  so  fa- 
tal a  delusion;  the  Lord  by  his  spirit 
cautioned  me  that  all  I  have  been  do- 
ing was  as  filthy  rags  and  then  the 
commandment  and  sin  renewed  and 
the  purity  and  extent  of  the  law  was 
discovered  to  my  mind  with  irresist- 
ible force,  and  I  was  constrained  to 


say  "what  shall  I  do  to  be  saved?" 
The  spirituality  of  Divine  Law  was  as 
a  piercing  sword  in  my  back,  with 
condemning  power. 

This  produced  a  deep  sense  of  the 
depravity  of  my  nature  and  pollution 
of  my  heart,  and  my  utter  inability 
to  save  myself  by  the  utmost  exer- 
tions of  my  moral  powers.  In  this 
deplorable  and  depressed  situation, 
almost  to  desperation,  I  remained  for 
a  time  in  inexpressible  anguish  of 
spirit,  until  it  pleased  the  Almighty  in 
His  mercy  to  discover  to  my  mind  the 
way  of  salvation  by  faith  in  Jesus 
Christ  as  a  Redeemer  and  Saviour  for 
lost  sinners,  such  as  I  found  myself 
to  be,  and  at  a  certain  time  on  a  cer- 
tain day,  which  was  Sunday,  I  re- 
ceived power  to  believe  in  His  Name 
and  obtain  pardon  for  my  sins  to  my 
inexpressible  joy  and  comfort.  It 
appeared  to  me  indeed  that  old  things 
were  done  away,  and  all  things  be- 
come new,  or  as  if  I  had  really  been 
in  a  new  world,  for  which  may  I  be 
enabled  to  praise  Him  through  the 
ages  of  eternity;  so  confident  was  I 
at  that  season  of  happiness,  that  I  did 
then  believe  that  all  men  on  earth  and 
devils  in  hell  could  through  their  in- 
sinuations never  prevail  on  me  to  do 
what  I  have  since  done;  but  since 
that  period  my  course  through  life 
has  been  such  medley  of  inconsis- 
tencies. 

Remorse  of  an  American 
Pioneer  and  His  Resolutions 

Could  I  write  in  tears  of  blood  the 
many  failures,  backslidings  and  self- 
indulgences  of  which  I  have  suffered 
myself  to  be  the  victim,  I  could  not 
describe  the  heartfelt  inquietudes  I 
have  experienced  as  the  conse- 
quences; and  in  truth  confess  that 
sinning  and  repenting  has  filled  up  the 
measure  of  my  days,  which  I  lament 
and  deplore  before  Him  that  knows 
my  heart,  and  regret  with  the  deepest 
sensibility  that  I  was  not  more  faith- 
ful and  watchful  and  grace-given  and 
not  permitted  the  old  traitor  without, 
combined  with  my  own  traitorous 

56 


<S)n   tfyt 


OTtilf   iatwl 


within,  to  place  me  on  the  dark 
mountains  of  unbelief,  and  left  me 
neither  the  pleasures  of  a  saint  or  sin- 
ner ;  but  thanks  be  to  Him  that  opens 
and  no  man  can  shut,  who  did  not  en- 
tirely abandon  and  forsake  me  in  that 
state  of  double  rebellion,  but  gave  me 
such  intimations  of  His  grace  as  en- 
abled me  to  maintain  a  habitual  dis- 
position to  press  forward  through 
fears  without  and  fightings  within,  and 
often  times  like  a  lost  sheep  wander- 
ing on  dangerous  ground,  has  brought 
me  back  to  the  fold  again,  and  by  the 
grace  of  God  I  am  what  I  am. 

As  this  narrative  of  my  passage 
through  life  may  be  read  by  my  chil- 
dren while  I  am  mingling  with  the 
dust  I  have  trodden  for  73  years,  I 
have  been  more  copious  on  the  exper- 
imental part  (for  their  encourage- 
ment) that  if  any  of  them  should 
travel  the  same  thorny  road  I  sol- 
emnly warn  them  of  the  danger  of 
deviating  from  the  narrow  path  of 
rectitude,  of  virtue  and  religion.  Not 
to  wander  on  foreign  and  forbidden 
ground. 

The  wages  of  sin  is  death,  and  be 
assured  a  man's  sin  will  find  him  out. 
If  they  have  been  the  chief  of  sinners, 
so  am  I ;  if  they  are  backsliders,  so 
have  I  been;  if  they  are  struggling 
and  striving  for  victory  over  a  cor- 
rupt heart  and  degenerate  nature,  so 
am  I,  at  this  time,  and  have  a  hope 
that  through  the  broad  righteousness 
of  our  Great  Redeemer's  merits,  I 
shall  in  the  end  arrive  on  the  shores 
of  a  happy  immortality,  and  (oh 
transporting  thought)  if  the  father 
and  mother,  sons  and  daughters, 
would  be  participants  of  that  happy 
region,  what  a  happy  consolation  be- 
yond expression  to  be  found  worthy. 

'  With  rapturous  awe  on  Him  to  gaze,  who 

taught  the  light  Tor  me, 
And  shout  and  wonder  at  his  grace  through 
all  eternity." 

If  this  be  read  with  the  same  inter- 
est and  feeling  with  which  it  is  writ- 
ten, I  trust  it  will  not  lose  its  effect. 

Having  given  a  concise  view  of  my 
times  so  far,  I  return  to  the  narrative 

57 


as  it  relates  to  my  further  progress 
through  life. 

I  continued  at  my  father's  as  a 
home  for  about  16  months  under  the 
pressure  of  a  wounded  and  broken 
spirit,  rather  in  a  state  of  despond- 
ency, spending  my  time  without  much 
effect.  The  war  now  raging  in  its 
utmost  violence,  I  was  occasionally 
with  the  Whig  or  Liberty  party, 
though  took  no  commission  as  I  might 
have  had.  The  county  of  Rutherford 
was  at  this  time  stricken  off  from 
Tyron  (now  Lincoln  County),  and 
made  a  new  county.  I  was  appointed 
Clerk  of  Court  in  October  1779, 
which  brought  me  into  business. 

Entering  Public  Service  in  First 
Days  of  American  Politics 

After  some  time,  my  spirits  began 
to  revive  and  gradually  emancipate 
me  from  my  drooping  situation,  and 
viewing  myself  as  a  young  man  and 
must  travel  through  life  on  some 
ground,  thought  it  best  to  marry  and 
become  a  citizen  of  the  world  once 
more.  Accordingly,  after  some  pre- 
liminary acquaintance,  I  was  married 
to  Isabella  Henry  on  the  loth  of 
January,  1780,  in  the  27th  year  of 
my  age  and  I7th  of  hers,  a  daughter 
of  William  Henry,  Esquire,  of  York, 
South  Carolina.  Mr.  Henry  was 
a  reputable  citizen,  a  plain,  honest, 
reputable  character;  was  a  member 
of  the  Legislature,  and  was  one  of 
the  first  settlers  in  the  frontiers  of 
the  Carolinas.  He  raised  a  reputable 
family  of  sons,  all  of  whom  took  an 
active  part  in  the  Revolutionary  War ; 
of  a  decided  military  character,  invin- 
cible courage,  feared  no  danger,  and 
always  ready  for  the  most  eventful 
enterprise. 

Grandfather  Henry  (it  is  asserted) 
was  descended  from  a  wealthy  family 
in  Ireland,  the  only  son  of  his  father, 
who  possessed  a  large  estate.  His 
mother  dying  young,  his  father  mar- 
ried a  second  wife,  and  he  not  liking 
so  well  his  next  mother,  eloped  from 
his  father  about  18  years  of  age,  came 


nf   a    £>nu%nt 


to  America  and  never  returned  to  see 
for  his  hereditary  inheritance.  He  set- 
tled in  Augusta  County  in  Virginia, 
there  married  your  grandmother  Isa- 
bella McKown,  of  a  good  family.  My 
acquaintance  with  her  enables  me  to 
say  she  was  a  woman  of  the  first  class 
in  her  time  and  her  day.  She  died  about 
the  age  of  56.  Mr.  Henry  removed 
to  Carolina  about  75  or  80  years  past, 
and  resided  in  York  District,  South 
Carolina,  for  65  years,  and  died  at  the 
advanced  age  of  102  years,  a  complete 
century,  which  one  in  ten  thousand 
never  arrives  to.  Thus  you  have  a 
transient  account  of  both  the  paternal 
and  maternal  line  of  your  ancestors, 
so  far  as  my  information  extends ;  but 
have  something  more  to  relate  as  re- 
spects my  further  progress  through 
this  world,  where  woods  and  wild 
promiscuous  shoot,  and  gardens 
tempting  with  forbidden  fruit. 

I  was  highly  gratified  in  my  second 
marriage,  happy  in  the  woman  of  my 
choice,  and  believe  I  could  not  have 
selected  a  better  had  I  traveled  and 
traveled  till  this  day.  I  resided  at  my 
father's  and  father-in-law's  alterna- 
tively for  a  while;  no  place  a  home, 
but  in  camp,  the  War  being  so  severe 
and  Tories  all  around. 

Driven  thro'  Wilderness  by 
Enemy  in  War  for  Independence 

Charleston,  S.  C.,  was  taken  by  the 
British  the  I2th  of  May,  1780,  after 
which  temporary  victory  and  encour- 
aged by  the  Tories,  they  advanced  up 
the  country  with  the  greatest  rapidity, 
overran  the  country  in  the  frontiers 
of  North  and  South  Carolina.  My- 
self with  many  others  were  compelled 
to  retreat  over  the  mountains  to 
Watawga  and  Holsteen  in  Tennessee 
for  refuge.  I  took  my  wife  and  prop- 
erty with  me,  and  had  to  take  a  cir- 
cuitous route  by  the  head  of  the  Yad- 
kin  River  through  the  Flour  Gap,  by 
New  River  to  the  head  of  Holsteen, 
down  to  Watawga  in  Washington 
County,  Tennessee,  waiting  there  the 
event  of  the  War.  At  length  an 
Army  of  Volunteers  from  the  West- 


ern waters,  under  the  command  of 
Cols.  Campbell,  Shelley,  Sevier  and 
Cleveland,  marched  through  the 
mountains,  joined  a  few  militia  from 
North  and  South  Carolina,  under  the 
command  of  Col.  Williams  and  Col. 
Hambright.  A  battle  was  fought  on 
"Kings  Mountain"  ist  of  October, 
1780,  where  a  complete  victory  was 
obtained  by  the  Americans,  being  all 
militia,  over  the  British  Regulars,  and 
Tories,  commanded  by  Major  Fergu- 
son, who  was  shot  from  his  horse, 
bravely  exhorting  his  men.  Seven 
bullets  went  through  his  body,  it  was; 
said.  He  was  a  brave  and  meritori- 
ous officer  from  Scotland,  and  it  was 
well  he  was  killed  to  prevent  his  do- 
ing more  mischief. 

In  February  following,  the  Battle 
of  the  "Cowpens"  was  fought,  and  a 
complete  victory  gained  by  our  troops 
commanded  by  Genl  Morgan  over 
Col.  Tarlton  and  his  legion  of  horse 
and  regulars.  These  two  victories 
were  a  decisive  blow  to  the  British 
arms  in  that  section  of  Country,  and 
the  same  fatality  pursued  them 
throughout  the  remainder  of  the  War, 
until  Cornwallis  was  taken  at  little 
York  in  Virginia,  which  was  the  last 
battle  fought  between  the  Americans 
and  British  in  the  Revolutionary  War. 

Accumulating  Wealth  in 
Early  Land  Speculation 

In  April  1781  I  returned  to  Ruther- 
ford, built  a  cabin  on  my  father's  land 
at  the  mouth  of  Cain  Creek.  Betsy 
was  born  in  September  1782.  I  re- 
moved in  a  year  to  the  mouth  of 
Green  River,  settled,  cultivated  my 
farm  and  attended  to  the  duties  of  my 
office  as  Clerk  of  Court,  there  resided 
to  the  year  1787.  These  five  years 
were  my  halcyon  days,  the  millenium 
of  my  life.  I  gathered  property,  lived 
comfortable  with  my  little  family,  in 
friendship  with  the  world  and  gen- 
erally at  peace  with  myself. 

But,  alas,  my  restless  propensity 
which  I  fondly  hoped  was  abated,  was 
only  slumbering  to  rouse  with  double 
solicitude.  A  dazzling  prospect  of 


<JDtt   tljp   Inrtorlattfc   Wtttf   latttd   Soon* 


the  Western  country  presented  to  my 
view  the  ten  thousand  advantages  that 
I  might  acquire,  with  such  irresist- 
ible force,  that  I  resigned  my  office 
with  a  fixed  resolution  to  remove 
there  in  a  few  months. 

""  Fond  man  the  vision  of  a  moment  made, 
Dream  of  a  dream  and  shadow  of  a  shade." 

YOUNGE 

This  was  the  greatest  error  I  ever 
committed  in  my  temporal  transac- 
tions through  life.  I  had  considera- 
ble property,  owed  nothing  and  re- 
.signed  an  office  worth  $1,000  per  an- 
num. Col.  Lewis  in  whose  favor  I 
resigned  office,  made  a  fortune  worth 
$50,060  in  thirty  years.  But  being 
providentially  prevented  (as  I  be- 
lieve) from  going  to  the  West,  I 
went  down  to  York  District,  lived 
there  one  year,  1790,  returned  to 
Rutherford,  purchased  a  part  of  my 
father's  old  plantation  at  the  mouth 
of  Cain  Creek,  settled  and  lived  there 
17  years.  My  children  Betsy  Stan- 
hope, Elvira  Watson,  Felix  Hampton, 
Joseph  Emanuel,  Jefferyson  and  Isa- 
bella were  born  there,  after  I  was  set- 
tled and  fixed  in  my  residence.  My 
acquaintance  and  intercourse  had  been 
and  was  then  very  extensive.  I  had 
the  confidence  and  friendship  of  soci- 
ety in  general.  They  put  up  my 
name  for  the  Assembly,  and  I  was 
•elected,  losing  few  votes,  in  the  year 
1792.  The  Assembly  then  sat  at 
Newburn,  N.  C. 

On  my  return  from  the  Assembly, 
1  commenced  merchandise  with  a  tol- 
erable capital,  for  the  country,  which 
prevented  me  from  continuing  in  the 
Legislature.  I  pursued  that  line  of 
'business  about  5  years.  Went  to 
Maryland  and  Virginia  and  pur- 
chased several  droves  of  negroes.  I 
was  now  much  in  the  spirit  of  the 
world,  and  like  to  have  forgotten  I 
was  purged  from  my  old  sins,  but  on 
reflection,  collecting  my  scattered 
fragments  and  little  remaining 
strength,  abandoned  the  iniquitous 
practice  of  buying  and  selling  human 
"beings  as  slaves,  which  I  found  to  be 
•a  violation  of  my  conscience,  in  direct 

59 


opposition  and  in  the  very  face  of  all 
morality  and  religion,  and  have  ever 
since  that  conviction  abhorred  the 
principle  and  the  practice. 

In  the  year  1795  I  engaged  in  a 
large  land  speculation  in  the  Western 
counties  of  Buncombe  and  Haywood, 
calculated  I  had  made  an  immense 
fortune  by  entering  lands.  I  was  not 
mistaken,  and  had  the  line  between 
the  United  States  and  the  Cherokee 
Indians  been  run  according  to  treaty, 
I  would  have  realized  a  fortune  in- 
deed ;  but  it  was  run  otherwise  by  the 
commissioners,  and  divested  me  of 
10,000  acres  of  the  best  land  I  en- 
tered. What  I  saved  I  was  forced 
into  a  lawsuit  with  Col.  A  very  for  12 
years.  Although  I  gained  it,  it  prof- 
ited me  little,  having  expended  so 
much  money  in  the  defense  of  the 
suit. 

On  Floor  of  Congress 

in  Early  Days  of  Republic 

In  the  year  1799,  I  was  again  elect- 
ed to  the  General  Assembly  by  almost 
a  unanimous  vote,  and  continued,  with 
the  exception  of  a  few  years,  to  rep- 
resent the  County  until  the  year  1806, 
which  was  the  last  year  I  was  in  the 
Assembly.  At  length,  becoming 
weary  of  the  drudgery  of  legislation, 
I  fled  from  the  scenes  of  popular  so- 
licitations and  removed  to  the  moun- 
tains of  Haywood  in  1808,  warned  by 
the  langour  of  life's  evening  ray, 
thought  I  would  house  me  in  some 
humble  shed,  with  full  intention  of 
lasting  retirement  for  the  remainder 
of  my  life.  But,  as  says  a  great  man, 
the  spider's  most  attenuated  thread  is 
cord,  is  cable,  to  man's  feeble  ties, 
I  consented  to  have  my  name  an- 
nounced for  Congress.  The  compe- 
tition was  with  Governor  Pickens, 
late  Governor  of  Alabama.  He  beat 
me  by  a  small  majority.  I  was  then 
opposed  by  Judge  Paxton.  I  ob- 
tained my  election  by  a  good  major- 
ity, and  continued  to  represent  the 
District  of  Morgan  for  six  years  in 
succession. 

My  situation  was  so  enviable  that  I 


nf   a 


was  opposed   every  election,  but   so 
feebly  as  scarcely  to  be  felt. 

In  the  year  1823,  Doctor  Vance  of 
Buncombe,  Genl  Walton  of  Ruther- 
ford, Col.  Reyburn  of  Haywood,  all 
offered  for  Congress.  Walton  had 
978  votes,  Reyburn  492,  Vance  and 
myself  tied  at  1913  votes  each.  The 
Sheriff  of  Burk  gave  the  county  vote 
to  Vance  and  elected  him.  It  was 
well  known  that  Walton  and  Rey- 
burn bore  on  my  interest.  Had 
Vance  and  myself  met  single  hand,  I 
should  have  beat  him  1,200  votes;  and 
it  was  afterwards  ascertained  I  had  a 
majority  of  71  votes  over  Vance, 
although  in  counting  the  ballots  they 
made  a  miscount  or  misdeal.  The 
next  election  my  name  was  announced 
as  a  candidate,  but  on  considering  my 
age  and  growing  infirmities,  and  con- 
sulting my  feelings  which  seemed  to 
forbid  the  bans,  I  withdrew  my  name 
from  the  list  and  dropped  out  of  the 
circle,  to  the  disappointment  of  the 
great  majority  of  the  District.  Such 
was  my  standing  when  I  shut  the 
door  on  public  life. 

Admitting  Missouri,  Mississippi, 
Maine,  Illinois  into  Union 

Through  the  whole  course  of  my 
life  I  have  been  a  close  observer  of 
providential  occurrences,  especially 
as  it  regards  myself  and  my  similar 
concerns,  and  do  verily  believe  it  was 
a  particular  direction  of  a  wise  and 


unseen  Director  who  knows  what  is 
the  best  for  his  creatures  and  cannot 
err,  (by  the  unexpected  event)  to 
arrest  my  further  progress  in  public 
life,  to  save  me  from  some  fatality  to- 
which  I  might  be  liable,  and  lessen  my 
responsibility  in  the  affairs  of  State; 
a  gracious  donation,  to  give  my  few 
remaining  years  to  retirement,  and 
appropriate  the  remainder  of  my  days 
to  obtain  a  better  inheritance  in  a  bet- 
ter world. 

Since  my  release  from  the  bondage 
of  serving  the  busy  world,  I  find  my- 
self perfectly  regenerated,  and  so 
averse  am  I  at  the  present,  that  no. 
compensation  could  induce  me  to- 
accept  of  any  public  vocation. 

My  standing  in  Congress  is  pretty 
generally  known.  I  took  a  share  in. 
public  debates,  with  what  credit  so- 
ciety must  judge.  We  must  all  sub- 
mit to  public  opinion.  I  was  one  who- 
advocated  with  the  utmost  ability  the 
conduct  of  Genl  Jackson  in  the  Semi- 
nole  War.  Also  in  most  of  the  most 
interesting  and  popular  discussions,  I 
threw  in  my  mite  on  the  floor — the 
Missouri  questions,  the  reduction  of 
the  army,  the  Revenue  and  Bank- 
ruptcy bill  were  all  debated  in  my 
time.  The  State  of  Missouri,  the 
State  of  Mississippi,  the  State  of  Illi- 
nois and  the  State  of  Maine  (4  new 
states)  were  admitted  into  the  Union 
during  my  service  in  Congress,  under 
Mr.  Monroe's  Administration. 


A     WEDDING     SUIT     IN     1756 
TRANSCRIBED  BY  FANNIE  M.  HACKETT  OF  BIDDEFORD,  MAINE 
Jonathan  Merrill  and  Hannah  Hackett  were  married  December  29,  1756.  This  is  the 
receipt  for  his  wedding  suit: 

SALISBURY  Decemrye  27  A.  D.  1756. 

This  is  to  Sertify  all  whom  it  may  Consearn  that  Jonathan  Morrill  hath  paid  Suf- 
ficent  Bevrage  for  a  Suit  of  Cloths  a  Coat  of  a  light  Coulourd  Drab  Cloth  with 
Darkish  Satine  lining  moheir  Buttons  a  full  Coat  and  Briches  of  Sd  Drab  and  a  Jacket 
of  light  Couloud  bleu  Shag  Velvet  with  Tick  lining  and  green  moheir  and  flanied 
(flanged?)  Brass  Buttons  as  witness  our  hands 

DAVID  PURINTUN 
MOSES  ROWELL 


|br00ttal  Ifo  tfrra  of  {timtwr  AmmrattH 


H  into  JFimr-Btamrb  unit  alumni  Jnftrriptjrrablr  (Cnrrmpnuiirurr 
ItairaUng  tbr  fctrmuj  (Cbarartrr.  (CansrtattUras  thiro.  Unmrstir  (CaatumH,  Vtut- 
nr  BJB  3ntr  grttg  anb  (Cuitragf  nua  ifarbitfnad  nf  JFirst  (Citterns  of  the  Republic 


LETTER    SENT  BT  POST-BOY  FROM  WILLIAM  PREXTI8S.  DURING  THE 

PLAGUE     IN     PHILADELPHIA,    TO    DOCTOR    JEREMIAH    BARKER. 

FALLMOUTH,  CASCO    BAT,    MASSACHUSETTS,    IN    1793 

THASTHCHIBKI}     KBOM    OKIO1STAI,    BT 

ABBIE  F.  CARPENTER  OF  PORTLAND.  MAINE 

DESCENDANT  or  DOCTOR  BARKER 

PHILADELPHIA  25th  Septr  1793. 
DEAR  DOCTOR: 

I  left  this  for  North  Carolina  last  Febry  Intending  to  return  in  6  or  8  weeks 
but  was  taken  sick  and  did  not  get  back  untill  last  month  when  I  rec'd  your 
Esteemed  favour  of  ist  May  last — happy  in  hearing  of  yours  and  Families  health, 
with  those  of  our  Dear  friends  at  Gorham — Respecting  Mr.  Osgood  I  hope  you 
have  pursued  him  in  the  law  so  as  to  bring  him  to  do  Justice — as  to  my  selling  his 
Bills  so  it  was  stock  in  the  English  I  sold  it  when  he  Ordered  and  at  market  price 
at  the  Date — If  he  can  make  it  appear  other  ways,  I  submit — as  to  too  much 
Interest — he  has  the  amt  as  I  settled  it  with  him  and  will  appear  for  itself — I 
believe  no  Interest  is  charged  untill  6  or  9  ms  from  Goods  being  shipped,  if  not 
his  objections  must  be  futile — However  my  Dear  Sir  if  you  find  he  is  not  able  to 
pay  the  whole — I  leave  the  matter  wholly  with  you  to  compromise,  or  settle  as 
shall  appear  right,  so  as  to  bring  it  to  a  spedy  settlement.  I  have  returned  to  this 
City  about  one  month,  since  which  time  the  heaviest  Judgments  have  attended 
us — about  20,000  citizens  have  moved  out  and  the  rest  are  Dying  by  hundreds — 
for  15  or  20  Days  past  have  been  buried  from  30  to  50  of  a  day  and  some  days 
upwards  of  100 — All  Stores  and  Business  are  to  stop  and  all  communication  cut 
of  from  the  Country — and  between  this  and  New  York,  Baltimore  &c. — what 
alarms  us  more  is  a  proper  war  between  the  principal  Physitions  some  calling 
and  Treating  it  as  of  a  Putrid  nature — others  as  wholly  Inflammatory — however 
as  it  is  most  that  are  taken  Die — some  in  3 — 4 — 5  to  8  days  which  none  scarcely 
exceed  except  they  recover — From  the  Symptoms  &c  I  have  no  doubts  of  its  being 
the  Plague — it  is  traced  being  Introduced  by  a  Vessell  with  Passengers  from 
Ireland.  The  Yellow  Fever  never  could  spread  from  a  Country  whose  lattitude  is 
53  and  that  surrounded  by  Salt  Water — Its  the  Plague — but  the  reason  its  not  so 
general  here  as  in  Old  countries,  is — we  have  Spacious  streets  that  are  kept  clean 
and  of  course  have  always  a  free  and  clear  circulation  of  air — we  have  clean 
Houses  and  not  crowded — In  those  countries  where  this  fatal  disorder  generally 
sweeps  whole  cities  as  it  where  They  are  quite  the  reverse — To  add  to  our  Calam- 
ities the  commissions  have  return'd  without  concluding  the  Treaty  with  the 
Indians.  Therefore  we  may  expect  a  Bloody  Indian  War — God  only  knows 
how  our  distresses  will  end — we  are  in  the  hands  of  a  merciful  being,  and  while 
his  Judgments  are  abroad  in  the  land  may  the  Inhabitants  learn  righteousness  and 
be  humble. 

We  intended  to  have  left  the  city  but  one  thing  and  another  has  hindered  us — 
and  now  I  fear  we  are  shut  in 

My  Brother  Saml  mentioned  to  me  about  finding  a  Vessell  with  sundries  to 
No.  Carolina — tell  him  if  e  can  send  one  with  suitable  articles — such  as  his  crock- 
cry — Beef — home  cloth — West  India  Goods  &c.  to  Plymouth  Roanoke  River  No. 

61 


ctf 

Carolina  I  think  Henry  could  do  well  for  him  Corn,  Pork,  Pease,  Tar  &c — but  he 
must  get  his  Vessell  on  low  Terms — If  Caleb  is  with  him  tell  him  I  will  write  him 
by  first  private  conveyance — Henry  keeps  store  up  the  River  above  Plymouth — 
but  Plymouth  is  the  place  Vessells  load  at — please  to  give  Our  most  affectionate 
Love  to  them  and  Brother  Gorham's  family — Sister  Bacon  if  with  you  and  accept 
the  same  to  you  and  yours — with  every  Good  wish  for  your  Healths  and  Happi- 
ness. WM.  PRENTISS. 

I  send  this  by  Post — the  expense  shall  be  happy  in  Refunding  when  I  see 
you — which  hope  will  be  in  course  of  next  Winter  or  Spring. 


LETTER  "WRITTEN  TO  REVEREND  CHANDLER  ROBBINS   OF  PLYMOUTH, 
MASSACHUSETTS.  BY  REVEREND   LITTLE  IN  BIRMINGHAM.  ENG- 
LAND, DISCUSSING  THE  MORAL  PROBLEMS  IN  1797 

THANSCRIBKD     BY 

MRS.  LYDIA  J.  KNOWLES  OF  BANGOR,  MAINE 

"BIRMINGHAM  MARCH  7  1797 
REVD.  &  DEAR  SIR  : 

Upon  reviewing  your  letter  of  Oct  7  1796  I  feel  regret  that  I  have  suffered 
twelve  months  to  elapse  without  sending  a  line  to  so  kind  a  corispondant.  this  I 
did  not  intend  to  do  last  fall  when  I  spent  six  weeks  at  Plymouth  but  could  find 
no  ship  during  that  period  bound  to  Boston. 

I  should  be  ashamed  to  trouble  you  with  so  many  queries  concerning  Dr. 
Hopkins's  System  &c  did  I  not  feel  persuaded  that  your  kindness  and  readyness  to 
communicate  would  not  even  find  a  sort  of  gratification  therein, — For  which  you 
are  entitled  to  my  thanks.  Some  of  your  answers  have  removed. my  objection 
from  the  Dr.  and  others  have  confermed  me  in  the  opinion  that  good  men  from 
different  habits  and  modes  of  reasoning  may  think  very  differently  yet  very  sin- 
cerely on  the  same  subject.  I  doubt  not  a  great  part  of  the  felicity  of  heaven  will 
result  from  the  clear  unobstructed  views  we  shall  have  of  Divine  truth.  Every 
difficulty  will  then  be  cleared  up — and  full  evidence  of  the  glorious  propriety  and 
consistency  of  the  moral  government  of  Jehovah  will  blaze  on  every  mind.  Hence 
the  perfect  union  of  the  assembly  of  glorified  Saints. 

It  will  be  one  indivisible — harmonious — blessed  society — without  a  discord- 
ant Word  or  Idea !  My  soul  longs  for  that  perfection !  and  I  would  say  with  the 
psalmist  'Then  shall  I  be  satisfied  when  I  awake  with  thy  likeness!'  But  while 
this  happiness  is  withheld,  O !  for  grace  to  supply  in  brotherly  affection  what  is 
deficient  in  understanding. 

I  would  not  forget  to  tell  you  what  little  evangelical  Intelligence  I  have  to 
communicate.  The  missionary  Society  have  compleated  their  first  mission  To  the 
South  Sea  Islands. 

In  a  few  months  the  subscription  amounted  to  Thirteen  Thousand  pounds,  a 
striking  proof  that  the  hearts  of  all  men  are  in  the  hands  of  the  Lord.  The  silver 
and  the  gold  of  the  earth  are  His !  nor  can  be  better  appropriated  than  as  a  sacri- 
fice at  the  gospel  shrine.  Men  were  not  more  difficult  to  procure  than  money. 

Several  came  forward  and  offered  themselves  to  embark  in  the  arduous  under- 
taking of  carrying  the  news  of  Salvation  by  our  precious  Emanuel  to  a  perishing 
heathen  World !  A  ship  called  the  Duff  was  purchased  last  year  by  the  Society 
and  fitted  out  and  stored  by  the  voluntary  contributions  of  benevolent  individuals. 
The  spirit  which  appeared  on  this  occasion  was  Singular.  A  ship-wright  em- 
ployed in  fitting  the  ship  for  her  voyage,  whose  work  could  not  be  estimated  at 
less  than  200  pounds  Stirling,  made  a  formal  charge  to  the  directors  of  the 
Society  of  5  shillings  for  the  whole  business. 


0f    H0n??r   Am?rtran0 


A  gentleman  gave  a  table  worth  200  pounds  and  hundreds  of  private  famileys 
contributed  lots  of  smaller  articles  such  as  linnin  —  hardware  —  Books  —  pickets  and 
evry  other  necessary  and  convenience  for  so  long  a  voyage.  A  pious  man  who 
had  been  a  Capt  in  the  east  Indian  Service  twenty  years  —  but  had  retired  in  afflu- 
ence to  spend  the  remainder  of  his  days  in  ease  at  home  —  was  drawn  forth  by  the 
attractive  influence  of  so  noble  an  undertaking,  but  still  more  (we  trust)  by  the 
love  of  Christ,  to  offer  himself  to  conduct  the  expedition.  His  piety  —  sensibility 
and  sweetness  of  disposition  endeared  him  to  the  Directors  and  Missionaries.  His 
nephew,  an  agreeable  serious  young  man  accompanyed  him  as  Chief  Mate.  The 
whole  ships  crew  were  selected  from  professing  Christians.  The  mission  con- 
sists of  27  men  not  all  of  them  preachers,  but  some  of  them  intended  to  assist  as 
mechanics  in  the  intended  settlement.  But  all  of  them  as  far  as  human  under- 
standing can  judge,  partakers  of  ardent  love  to  Christ,  and  unconquerable  desire 
for  the  salvation  of  immortal  souls,  —  five  godly  women  wifes  of  some  of  them  — 
and  3  infant  children:  37  persons  in  all,  there  sailed  from  Spit-head  on  Thursday 
22  of  Sept  1796  —  and  were  bound  to  Otaheite. 

It  is  the  intention  for  the  whole  mission  to  stay  in  that  Island  3  months  till 
they  have  formed  a  good  notion  of  their  language,  customs  &c  and  obtained  a 
peacable  footing  among  the  natives  —  after  which  as  many  as  can  be  spared  are  to 
remove  to  adjacent  Islands,  of  which  the  language  is  precisely  the  same.  I  feel 
no  small  gratification  in  having  among  this  truly  honourable  Company  —  two 
young  men  —  the  fruit  of  my  ministry  —  and  one  of  whome  continued  under  my 
care  sometime  previous  to  embarking  in  this  work.  You  will  doubtless  unite  your 
prayers  with  Thousands  in  this  land  for  a  blessing  on  this  important  undertaking  ! 
This  bread  of  Life  is  cast  upon  the  waters  —  We  need  persevering  faith  prayer  and 
patience  to  waite  and  it  shall  be  seen  after  many  days!  All  the  promises  and 
prophecies  are  in  our  favour.  God  has  long  said  to  the  North  give  up  —  He  will 
also  say  to  the  South  —  ke.ep  not  back  !  Great  obstacles  are  indeed  in  the  way." 


LETTER    SENT    BY    GEORGE    WASHINGTON    IN    1797    TO    HON.  OLIVER 

ELLSWORTH.    A    FRAMER     OF   THE     CONSTITUTION,    MINISTER 

TO  FRANCE,  AND  CHIEF  JUSTICE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

THAN  .^CKIlllIIJ     Fl:<)M     <  >  K  1  c  i  I  N  A  1 .      1.  V 

AD  ALINE  B.  ELLSWORTH  ROBERTS  OF  OLLANA.  ILLINOIS 

PHILADELPHIA,  8th  Mar.  1797. 
DEAR  SIR: 

Before  I  leave  the  city,  which  will  be  within  less  than  twenty-four  hours,  per- 
mit me  in  acknowledging  the  receipt  of  your  kind  and  affectionate  note  of  the  6th, 
to  offer  you  the  thanks  of  a  grateful  heart  for  the  sentiments  you  have  expressed 
in  my  favour,  and  for  those  attentions  with  which  you  have  always  honored  me. 
In  return,  I  pray  you  to  accept  all  my  good  wishes  for  the  perfect  restoration  of 
your  health,  and  for  all  the  happiness  this  life  can  afford.  As  your  official  duty 
will  necessarily  call  you  to  the  southward,  I  wish  to  take  the  liberty  of  adding,  that 
it  will  always  give  me  pleasure  to  see  you  at  Mount  Vernon  as  you  pass  and  repass, 
With  unfeigned  esteem  and  regards,  in  which  Madam  Washington  joins  me,  I 
am  always  and  affectionately  yours  G.  WASHINGTON. 

63 


27, 


Ofctttatanj  of  an  Ammratt 


BlaliButurth.  iCungfrUnui  —  Horn   at  Portland,  iftainr. 
IBflr—  Slfb  at  (Hambr%r,   iMaaBartfusfttu,   lHarrlj    24.    1BB2 


The  Poet  Longfellow  frequently  remarked  to  his  friends  that  a  Man's  Work  is  his  best 
memorial  —  On  this  Centenary  of  the  Poet  four  of  his  Sonnets,  two  of  which  are 
translations  from  that  Master  -Artist  Michael  Angelo,  are  here  inscribed  to  his  memory 


OLD   AGE 

From  the  Italian  of  Michael  Angelo 

The  course  of  my  long  life  hath  reached 

at  last, 

In  fragile  bark  o'er  a  tempestuous  sea, 
The   common   harbor   where   must   ren- 
dered be 

Account  of  all  the  actions  of  the  past 
The  impassioned  phantasy,  that,  vague  and 

vast, 

Made  art  an  idol  and  a  king  to  me, 
Was  an  illusion,  and  but  vanity 
Were    the    desires    that    lured    me    and 

harassed. 
The  dreams  of  love,  that  were  so  sweet  of 

yore, 
What  are  they   now,   when  two   deaths 

may  be  mine, — 

One  sure,  and  one  forecasting  its  alarms? 
Painting  and  sculpture  satisfy  no  more 
The  soul  now  turning  to  the  Love  Divine, 
That  oped,  to  embrace  us,  on  the  cross  its 
arms. 

Ill 
BURIAL  OF  THE   POET 

In  the  old  churchyard  of  his  native  town, 
And    in   the   ancestral   tomb   beside   the 

wall, 
We  laid  him  in  the  sleep  that  comes  to 

all, 

And  left  him  to  his  rest  and  his  renown. 
The  snow  was  falling  as  if  Heaven  dropped 

down 
White  flowers  of  Paradise  to  strew  his 

pall  ;— 
The  dead  around  him  seemed  to  wake, 

and  call 

His  name,  as  worthy  of  so  white  a  crown. 

And  now  the  moon  is  shining  on  the  scene, 

And  the  broad  sheet  of  snow  is  written 

o'er 

With  shadows  cruciform  of  leafless  trees, 
As  once  the  winding  sheet  of  Saladin 
With  chapters  of  the  Koran ;    but,  ah ! 

more 

Mysterious    and    triumphant    signs    are 
these. 


II 
FIRE 

Prom  the  Italian  of  Michael  Angelo 

Not  without  fire  can  any  workman  mould 
The  iron  to  his  preconceived  design, 
Nor  can  the  artist  without  fire  refine 
And  purify  from  all  its  dross  the  gold; 
Nor  can  revive  the  phoenix,  we  are  told, 
Except  by  fire.    Hence  if  such  death  be 

mine 

I  hope  to  rise  again  with  the  divine, 
Whom   death   augments,   and   time  cannot 

make  old. 
O    sweet,   sweet   death!     O   fortunate   fire 

that  burns 

Within  me  still  to  renovate  my  days, 
Though  I  am  almost  numbered  with  the 

dead! 

If  by  its  nature  unto  heaven  returns 
This  element,  me,  kindled  in  its  blaze, 
Will  it  bear  upward  when  my  life  is  fled. 


IV 


MY   CATHEDRAL 

Like    two    cathedral    towers    these    stately 

pines 
Uplift  their  fretted  summits  tipped  with 

cones ; 
The  arch  beneath  them  is  not  built  with 

stones, 
Not   Art  but   Nature   traced   these   lovely 

lines, 
And    carved    this    graceful    arabesque    of 

vines ; 
No  organ  but  the  wind  here  sighs  and 

moans, 

No  sepulchre  conceals  a  martyr's  bones, 
No  marble  bishop  on  his  tomb  reclines. 
Enter!   the  pavement,  carpeted  with  leaves, 
Gives  back  a  softened  echo  to  thy  tread ! 
Listen!  the  choir  is  singing;  all  the  birds,. 
In  leafy  galleries  beneath  the  eaves, 
Are   singing!    listen,    ere   the   sound   be 

fled, 

And  learn  there  may  be  worship  without 
words. 


i  I:\MAI.     HAS     in-:  i.    1:1      I  ^oT-l  !>O7 

I'.-.      I.««i   is      \.    (.1   I.I,KI;OI>.     Mi-:\ii!Kit    OF    TIM: 

\Allo\\i.      SCULPTURE      SoilKTY      K  X  KITTK  I)      Fl )  It      T11K 

IN  \i  «.i   i,- A  i.     \IMI;I:K    ••!-•    Tin:    .JOIUNAI.    <>i      A  M  i-:  UICAN     Hisroitr    AS    A     MI:M«MUAL 

TO     TUB      POET     OF     T1IK      A.MKItlCA.N      11KAHT     ON     THE     ONE    HUNDREDTH     A.NNI  \   i:  I;  s  A  I,'  t      «>l       HIS    IMItTH 


of  Irailj  tn  lEarhj  Ammra 

fUauuarript  bg 

tlfr  Rrurrrnb  Suarpb.  BUrbb  ..•* 

itorn  in  Ifififi  an&  an  Jlutrllrrtual  and 

Moral  Cra&rr  of  3?ta  fTtmra  •*  ©rraatnnrii  by  tljr 

flrminr  af  iflajur  JKatljan  CSulb.  in  1C 33,  mhn  ntaa  furrmufit  in 

ifaliitral,  fHtlttarg  anb  Errlrataattral  Affatra    o*    (Original  &rrmim  Erauarribrfc 

BY 

MRS.  ELIZABETH  HUBBELL  SCHENCK 

WASHINGTON,  DISTRICT  OP  COLUMBIA 


"Strange,  is  it  not,  that  of  the  myriads  who 
Before   us   passed   the    door   of   Darkness 

through, 

Not  one  returns  to  tell  us  of  the  road, 
Which  to  discover  we  must  travel  too?" 


mystery  of  death  is  one 
of  the  few  problems  that 
civilization  fails  to  solve. 
The  first  philosophers 
argued  its  perplexities 
only  to  come,  like  the 
wise  Socrates  more  than 
four  hundred  years  before  Christ,  to 
the  conclusion:  "We  go  our  ways  —  I 
to  die,  and  you  to  live.  Which  is  bet- 
ter, God  only  knows." 

Not  until  the  writing  of  that 
wonderful  scroll  —  the  scriptures  —  in 
which  is  embodied  the  fundamentals 
of  all  sciences,  has  light  been  thrown 
onto  the  bleakness  of  the  hereafter, 
and  these  revelations  while  establish- 
ing hope  and  faith  in  a  life  to  come, 
veil  death  with  a  mystery  that  centu- 
ries have  been  unable  to  lift. 

The  six  thousand  orthodox  years 
since  the  creation  find  theologians  and 
scientists  still  parleying  over  the  dis- 
position of  man  after  he  has  left  this 
earth.  That  death  is  the  emancipa- 
tion of  the  soul  and  that  it  rises  to  the 
light  of  eternal  life  is  the  view  of  the 
orthodox  world,  supported  by  multi- 
tudinous evidences. 

That  even  the  orthodox  view  of 
death  is  subject  to  a  continual  process 
of  change,  and  that  its  dire  terrors  are 
being  illuminated  with  the  light  of 
reason  until  'its  beautiful  aspects  are 

6s 


more  discernible,  is  shown  by  a  com- 
parison of  the  funeral  orations  of  the 
church  to-day  with  those  of  the  earli- 
est in  America. 

In  possession  of  Mrs.  Elizabeth  B. 
Gould  of  Fairfield,  Connecticut,  is  the 
original  age-seared  manuscript  of  the 
funeral  sermon  preached  over  the  re- 
mains of  Major  Nathan  Gold,  a  lead- 
ing citizen  of  his  times,  for  fifty  years 
a  compatriot  of  the  Burrs  and  the 
Ludlows,  foremost  in  ecclesiastical, 
political  and  military  affairs,  and  the 
progenitor  of  the  Gould  family  in 
America,  one  branch  of  which  has  be- 
come eminent  through  its  accumula- 
tion of  great  riches  and  the  philan- 
thropy of  one  of  its  daughters.  Major 
Gold  died  on  March  4,  1693,  and  the 
funeral  sermon  here  recorded  was 
preached  by  the  Reverend  Joseph 
Webb,  eminent  for  his  scholarship 
and  as  a  theologian. 

While  this  sermon  with  its  quaint 
diction  and  construction  is  an  inter- 
esting study  in  homiletics,  its  real 
worth  is  as  a  witness  of  the  thought 
and  spirit  of  its  generation,  revealing 
the  tendencies  and  leading  character- 
istics of  the  age  and  life  of  which  it 
was  a  part.  It  views  death  as  a 
calamity — as  a  rebuke  from  God — 
and  there  is  in  it  an  eccentric  strain 
of  perplexity  that  a  pious  man  should 
die.  It  is  here  presented  as  a  basis 
for  the  study  of  the  intellectual  and 
religious  movement  in  America,  es- 
pecially in  relation  to  the  final  dispo- 
sition of  mankind. 


bg  an 


we  are  at  this  day 
under  ye  terrible  rebukes 
of  God;  that  God  hath 
I  I  not  only  formerly  but 
now  very  lately  written 
bitter  things  agst  us  in 
this  place.  I  suppose 
none  of  us  are  ignorant.  Tis  to 
be  feared,  all  are  not  soe  affected 
with  or  circumstances  as  they  ought 
to  be,  and  as  it  could  be  wished 
they  were,  but  none  can  be  all- 
together  without  ye  knowledge  of 
them.  It  seems  to  be  a  day  wherein 
ye  Lord  is  calling  us  to  weeping, 
mourning,  boldness  and  girding  on  of 
sackcloth.  The  Lord  hath  bin  be- 
speaking this  from  us  by  ye  loud 
voice  of  an  awfull  and  solemn  provi- 
dence, in  wch  he  hath  bin  striking  a 
very  dismall  blow  at  or  head  and  hath 
made  a  very  sorrowfull  breach  there. 
Wt  is  ye  duty  of  the  day  hath  bin 
well  and  very  pathetically  laid  before 
us  by  a  pious  and  faithfull  Servant  of 
Jesus  Christ  from  yt  text  I  Samll :  25, 
i.  And  Samuel  died  and  all  ye 
Israelites  were  gathered  together  and 
lamented  him  and  buried  him  in  &c. ; 
And  oyt  there  were  such  an  heart  in 
us  to  practice  according  to  wt  was 
from  thence  soe  solemnly  and  affec- 
tionately pressed  upon  us  as  or  duty. 
This  is  ye  best  way  to  prevent  further 
wrath  from  coming  upon  us  here  and 
to  provide  for  a  comfortable  account 
of  wt  we  yn  heard  in  ye  great  day. 

Considering  yt  we  cannot  be  too 
well  acquainted  wth  or  duty  at  such  a 
time,  I  was  willing  (according  to  ye 
small  mite  received)  to  endeavr  wt 
might  be  for  or  further  information 
and  instruction.  Such  a  providence 
as  this,  I  could  not  by  any  means 
silently  pass  over, — but  would  take 
such  notice  of  it  as  to  endeavr  some 
spirituall  improvemt  of  and  benefit 
by  it.  And  wt  we  shall  say  will  be 
from  ye  words  now  read  unto  us, 
which  hold  forth  an  account  of  ye 
sickness  and  death  of  a  great  and 
good  man  together  wth  ye  effect  it 
had  upon  a  person  of  great  dignity 
and  honour. 


in   1H33 


(1)  There's  observable  ye  sickness 
and  death  of  a  great  and  holy  man 
"Now  Elisha  was  fain  sick  of  ye  sick- 
ness whrof  he  died  &c. ;    Ye  person 
we  see  is  here  described  by  his  name 
Elisha,  he  was  a  man  of  great  note, 
one  in  a  publick  capacity,  or  of  pub- 
lick  use  and  place.     Tis  true  his  office 
and  sanction  was  sacred,  he  was  a 
prophet,  but  wt  is  here  said  concern- 
ing him  is  very  applicable  unto  those 
who  have  a  civill  charge  committed 
to  them.     It  is  a  truth  as  well  con- 
cerning godly  magistrates  as  minis- 
ters yt  they  are  liable  to  sickness  and 
death,  and  yt  they  are  ye  chariots  of 
Israel  and  horsemen  thereof,  wch  are 
ye    things    we    design    to    speak    to. 
Thus  for  ye  person.     As  to  his  sick- 
ness it  is  not  particularly  expressed 
wt  it  was,  but  wt  ye  kind  of  it  be  wt 
it  will,  it  seems  it  was  mortall,  it  had 
malignity  enough  in  it  to  kill  ye  ani- 
mall  spirrits  and  to  cause  a  seperation 
between  his  soul  and  body,  it  was  (as 
ye  text  saith)  his  sickness  whrof  he 
died. 

(2)  Here's    allsoe    observable    ye 
effect  it  had  upon  a  person  of  honour. 
And  Joash  ye  King  of  Israel  came 
down  and  wept  over  his  face  and  he 
said  o  my  father  my  father  &c. ;    ( i ) 
The    person    is    described    from    his 
name  Joash;    (2)  From  his  office,  he 
was  King  wch  is  amplifyed  from  his 
subjects  wm  he  more  werthy  reigned 
over.     Israel   ic  ye  ten  tribes;    (3) 
Here's  ye  effect  it  had  upon  him.  viz. 
it  brought  him  to  see  him  and  to  weep 
over  him  &c.     It's  said  he  came  down 
unto    him    &c.     The    names    of    ye 
prophets'  sickness  brought  him  from 
his  palace,  from  his  castle  to  pay  him 
a  visit  and  ye  prospect  of  his  death 
drew  tears  from  his  eyes  (i)  he  wept 
over  his  face,  partly  because  he  loved 
him,  and  partly  because  of  ye  great 
loss  his  death  would  be  to  ye  King- 
dome.     (2)  Here's  ye  lamentation  he 
broke    forth   into,   o   my   father,   my 
father,  ye  chariot  of  Israel  and  ye 
horsemen  yreof   [before  we  come  to 
ye   observations   designed   it   will   be 
necessary  to  hint  at  ye  meaning  of 


66 


nf 


in    lEarlg     Antrim 


those  phrases  O  my  father  my  father] 
thus  he  calleth  him  out  of  love,  reve- 
rince  and  respect;  but  assuredly  tis 
not  a  bare  and  empty  complement,  yre 
is  a  great  deal  in  it,  he  was  a  father  to 
him  and  all  ye  people,  as  godly  min- 
isters and  magistrates  are  as  we  may 
hear  afterwards. 

(The  chariots  of  Israel  and  ye 
horsemen  thereof.)  there  were  char- 
riots  of  war  and  yre  were  chariots  of 
L'tate  in  a  time  of  peace;  not  only 
such  as  were  for  ye  defence  of  a  land, 
but  allsoe  such  as  were  for  ye  glory 
and  honour  of  great  men.  2.  Samll: 
15.1.  And  Absalom  prepaired  him 
chariots  &c. ;  i  e  for  his  greater  hon- 
our and  dignity.  The  expressions 
are  metaphorical!  and  signific  yt  Elisha 
was  ye  glory,  strength  and  power  of 
Israeli.  The  strength  of  a  people  in 
war  lay  most  in  chariots  and  horse- 
men they  are  as  it  were  ye  strength 
and  stay  of  ye  land,  soe  are  pious  rul- 
ers either  in  church  or  State,  and  the 
interpreters  expound  ye  phrases  only 
concerning  ye  security,  stay  and  de- 
fence of  a  people  yet  inasmuch  as  ye 
words  will  well  bear  wthout  ye  least 
straining  ym  ye  other  interpretation 
viz ;  concerning  ye  glory  and  honour 
of  a  people  we  shall  add  this  allsoe  in 
or  discourse  from  ym. 

i.  Doct.  yt  Pious  men  of  publick 
use  and  place  must  die  as  well  as  oth- 
ers. 2.  Doct.  That  pious  and  holy 
men  especially  those  who  are  in  a  pub- 
lick  capacity  are  ye  fathers,  the  glory, 
and  the  strength  of  a  people  among 
wm  they  live  and  over  wm  they  are, 
O  my  father,  my  father  ye  chariot  of 
Israel  &c. ;  i.  Doct.  Holy  men  of 
publick  use  and  place  n.ust  die  as  well 
as  others.  Such  are  no  more  exempt- 
ed from  this  stroke  yn  others.  The 
godly  are  indeed  delivered  from  ye 
sting  of  death,  but  not  from  ye  stroke 
of  it.  Neither  goodnes,  nor  greatness 
is  sufficient  to  procure  for  any  a  dis- 
charge in  yt  war.  8.  Eccl:  8 — yre  is 
noe  man  yt  hath  power  over  ye  spirit 
to  retain  ye  spirit ;  neither  hath  he 
power  in  ye  day  of  death :  and  yre  is 
noe  discharge  in  yt  war,  and  as  he  ads 

67 


in  ye  last  clause  of  ye  verse,  neither 
shall  wickednes  deliver  those  who  are 
guilty  of  it,  for  it  may  be  said  neither 
can  righteousnes  prevail  unto  this. 
Good  men  tho  never  soe  usefull  to, 
tho  never  soe  much  loved  and  respect- 
ed by  those  among  wm  they  live  must 
sooner  or  later  away  to  ye  grave. 
Godly  rulers  must  die  tho  eminently 
holy  and  serviceable  unto  yr  people. 
It  hath  bin  soe;  it  is  soe,  and  will  be 
soe.  Wt  is  become  of  Moses,  of 
Joshua,  Samuel,  David,  Josiah  and  of 
many  other  worthies,  great  and  good 
men  who  have  served  God  and  yr  own 
generation  according  to  ye  will  of 
God  ?  Why !  they  are  long  since  dead. 
The  Scriptures  wch  record  ye  en- 
trance into,  and  ye  behavior  in, 
this  world  have  allsoe  recorded  their 
exit  out  of  it.  34.  Deut.  5.  Soe 
Moses  ye  servt  of  ye  Lord  died  yre  in 
ye  land.  24.  Josh.  29.  And  it  came 
to  pass  after  these  things  yt  Joshua  ye 
Son  of  Nun  ye  Servt.  of  ye  Lord  died, 
and  i.  Sam:  25:1.  i  Kings  2.10.  and 
2  cron:  35.24.  Hence  we  see  yt  it 
hath  bin  thus,  and  yt  it  is  thus  by  an 
awfull  and  sad  instance  among  or- 
selves;  and  soe  it  shall  be  soe  here- 
after. 

And  yn  doe  those  yt  minister  about 
holy  things  fare  any  whit  better  ?  Are 
ye  Servants  of  God  in  ye  ministry  any 
more  exempted  than  his  servants  in 
ye  magistracy?  Where  are  the  an- 
cient prophets  and  teachers  of  God's 
church  ?  They  are  long  since  gone  to 
ye  place  of  silence.  Elisha  must  die 
as  in  ye  text,  and  ye  rest  of  ye  proph- 
ets have  submitted  to  death,  i.  Zech : 
5.  Yor  fathers  wre  are  they?  and  ye 
prophets  doe  they  live  forever  i.  e. 
they  doe  not,  they  are  dead  and  gone 
to  yr  long  home  as  well  as  other  men. 
But  I  need  not  enlarge  to  confirm  a 
truth  wch  is  verifyed  by  soe  many 
dayly  instances. 

If  we  enquired  after  ye  reasons  of 
it,  why  and  whence  is  it  yt  pious  mag- 
istrates and  ministers  must  die  as  well 
as  others.  Answ.  (!)  It  is  because 
they  are  under  ye  Same  condition  and 
circumstances  of  mortality  wth  other 


bg  an  Eminent 


in   1H93 


men.  That  wch  is  the  cause  of  the 
death  of  others  is  to  be  found  wth 
and  is  extended  even  unto  ym  and 
yrefore  yre  is  noe  discharge  for  ym 
in  this  war,  any  more  than  for  others. 
See  ye  illustration  of  this  in  three  par- 
ticulars, i.  They  are  of  ye  same 
earthy  and  compounded  constitution 
with  other  men.  This  is  the  internall 
cause  of  man's  mortality  vizt  ye  com- 
position of  his  body.  It  is  made  up 
of  contrary  elements  and  qualities 
wch  are  continually  warring  one  agst 
another  and  will  continue  soe  to  doe 
untill  ye  controversie  be  decided  by  ye 
destruction  of  yt  wch  is  thus  com- 
pounded. This  is  ye  condition  of  all 
bodies,  they  are  made  of  earth,  dust 
&c.,  hence  tis  said  of  men  in  generall 
yt  they  dwell  in  houses  of  clay  and 
yt  yr  foundation  is  in  ye  dust.  4.  Job. 
19.  and  this  is  yre  laid  down  as  a  rea- 
son why  they  are  soe  frail  and  brittle, 
soe  exposed  to  death,  soe  easily 
crushed  before  ye  moth  as  ye  phrase 
yre  is.  Good  and  great  men  are 
made  of  this  matter  as  well  as  others. 
Such  an  one  as  Abraham  could  say 
concerning  himself  yt  he  was  dust  and 
ashes.  18:  Gen:  27.  The  honour 
wch  men  are  advanced  to  here  doth 
not  refine  yr  natures,  soe  as  to  dimin- 
ish yt  dreggishnes  wch  is  ye  inward 
cause  of  mortality.  Neither  doth 
conversion  and  holiness  make  any 
physicall  change  in  men.  Grace  doth 
not  physically  but  only  morally  alter 
yr  natures.  Soe  yt  seing  great  and 
good  men  are  of  ye  same  constitution 
wth  othrs  wch  is  a  cause  of  yr  death, 
it  must  needs  be  yt  they  be  mortall 
like  them.  (2)  They  have  had  to  doe 
wth  Sin  as  well  as  others  and  there- 
fore are  mortall  as  well  as  they.  Sin 
is  another  cause  of  mans  being  under 
a  necessity  of  seing  corruption.  Sin 
wch  hath  brought  death  into  ye  world. 
Death  was  first  threatned  unto  and  in 
case  of  Sin.  2.  Gen:  17.  This  hath 
invited  death  into  ye  world,  and  this 
is  given  as  ye  reason  why  all  must 
come  under  ye  reach  of  death  vizt  be- 
cause they've  touch  i  ye  unclean  thing, 
Sin.  5.  Rom:  12.  wherefore  as  by  one 


man  sin  entred  into  ye  world  and 
death  by  sin  and  soe  death  passed 
upon  all  men,  because  all  have  sinned. 
If  any  say  hath  not  Christ  died  for 
believrs  why  yn  must  they  die,  should 
they  not  have  a  discharge  yn  upon  his 
acct!  I  answr  they  have  a  discharge 
from  ye  sting  of  death,  from  death  as 
a  curse :  they  die  not  to  satisfie  justice 
in  part  for  yr  sins  as  Christhes  sinnrs 
doe,  but  they  have  sinned  since  yr  be- 
ing in  Christ  and  there  is  of  ye  lep- 
rosie  of  sin  cleaving  unto  ym  and  yre 
it  will  be  untill  it  be  abolished  by  ye 
taking  down  this  earthly  house  of  ye 
tabernacle.  Therefore  'tis  noe  un- 
righteous thing  for  God  to  subject  ym 
unto  ye  stroke  of  death. 

Pious  magistrates  and  ministers 
must  yrefore  die  as  well  as  other  men, 
because  they  have  sinned  as  well  as 
others.  (3)  They  are  under  ye  same 
law  of  mortallity  with  other  men. 
Death  is  established  by  an  irrevocable 
decree.  There  is  a  statute  law  of 
heaven  concerning  ye  progress  of 
death,  and  by  this  law  all  are  doomed 
unto  this  stroke  9.  Heb.  27.  It  is  ap- 
pointed for  men  i.  e.  all  men  once  to 
die.  Now  as  they  are  men  tho  they 
are  holy  and  honourable  they  come 
under  ye  force  of  this  law,  and  are  by 
it  obliged  to  pay  this  debt  unto  na- 
ture. 

(2  Rea:)  Great  and  good  men  must 
die  as  well  as  others  yt  soe  they  may 
give  up  yr  account.  The  great  God 
stands  in  ye  relation  of  a  judge  unto 
all  ye  Sons  of  Adam.  He  hath 
brought  ym  under  a  law,  and  hath 
betrusted  ym  wth  such  and  such  tal- 
ents according  to  his  pleasure  and 
hath  required  such  and  such  an  im- 
provemt  of  ym.  Accordingly  he  hath 
laid  ym  undr  a  necessity  of  being 
accountable  to  him  for  wt  they  have 
received  and  done.  And  even  godly 
rulers  both  in  civill  and  sacred  re- 
spects come  under  this  obligation. 
Those  yt  are  in  civill  autority  have  yr 
power  from  God,  he  calls  ym  to  ye 
places  they  are  in,  and  bctrusts  ym 
wth  ye  power  they  have  13.  Rom:  i. 
For  yre  is  noe  power  but  of  God, 


63 


il0H0plfg     0f 


in     lEarlg 


hence  they  are  said  in  ye  execution  of 
ye  office  to  act  for  God.  2  Cron:  13.6 
— for  ye  judge  not  for  man  but  for  ye 
Lord. 

And  yn  as  to  ministers  they  are  said 
to  be  stewards  of  God.  i.  Tit.  7.  wch 
supposeth  ym  under  an  engagemt  to 
give  up  an  account  of  wt  they  have 
bin  and  received.  And  this  account 
is  refered  unto  ye  other  world,  there 
it  is  to  be  given  up.  Therefore  these 
men  must  die  as  well  as  others  yt  soe 
they  may  make  yr  appearance  before 
ye  great  judge,  and  be  accountable  for 
wt  they  have  done  in  ye  flesh  9.  Heb. 
27.  Judgemt  is  yre  to  follow  imedi- 
ately  after  death.  (3  Rea.)  They 
must  die  that  soe  they  may  rest  from 
ye  labour  and  toil  appointed  ym  in 
this  world.  All  men  have  work  to 
doe  in  this  world.  They  have  a  task 
set  ym  by  ye  God  of  heaven.  They 
have  something  to  doe  for  soul  and 
body,  for  time  and  eternity,  for  ym- 
selves  and  others,  and  this  labour  wch 
is  commanded  ym  is  not  wthout  its 
difficultie.  But  these  who  are  in  a 
publick  capacity,  who  have  ye  charge 
of  the  civill  or  sacred  concern's  of  a 
people  have  a  much  greater  burden  to 
bear  than  others.  They  have  very 
often  hands  full  and  hearts  full  wth  ye 
publick  charge  and  truse  comitted  to 
ym.  They  have  besides  yr  own  par- 
ticular burden  ye  burden  of  yr  own 
personall  concerns,  the  burden  of  yr 
own  families,  they  have  ye  burden  of 
ye  comon  wealth,  and  of  ye  church  ly- 
ing upon  ym.  And  o  how  much 
trouble  and  sorrow  and  difficulty  doe 
they  meet  wth  from  those  things! 
How  often  are  yr  hearts  ready  to 
break  and  yr  spirits  ready  to  die  and 
sink  under  ye  weight  of  those  per- 
plexities and  troubles  wch  are  occa- 
sioned unto  ym  by  yr  concerns  wch 
they  are  to  manage  ? 

Now  they  must  not  be  allwayes 
staggering  under  such  weary  loads. 
Their  case  would  be  miserable  indeed 
if  it  were  to  be  soe  wth  ym  allwayes. 
Therefore  God  hath  appointed  ym  a 
resting  time  and  place.  And  wre  is 
this?  Is  it  not  in  ye  grave  3.  Job.  17. 


— there  ye  weary  be  at  rest,  yr  ye  bod- 
ies of  ye  righteous  lie  at  ease  and 
quiet.  And  yr  souls  are  imediately 
upon  yr  death  carried  to  ye  rest  in 
Abrahams  bosome  16  Luk  22.  Hence 
ye  dead  yt  die  in  ye  Lord  are  pro- 
nounced blessed  upon  this  acct  and 
from  ye  time  of  death  they  rest  from 
yr  labours  14.  Rev:  13.  And  I  heard 
a  voice  from  heaven  saying  unto  me 
write  blissed  are  ye  dead  wch  die  in  ye 
Lord  from  henceforth  yea  saith  ye 
spirrit  yt  they  may  rest  from  yr  la- 
bours &c., 

(4  Rea:)  Holy  men  of  publick  use 
and  place  must  die  that  soe  they  may 
receive  yr  reward  Tho  none  deserve 
or  merit  a  reward  for  wt  they  doe, 
yet  God  hath  of  free-grace  promised 
a  reward  to  those  who  faithfully  dis- 
charge yr  trust.  He  will  not  be 
served  for  naught.  He  hath  a  sure 
recompence  of  reward  for  pious  ones, 
especially  for  holy  magistrates  and 
ministers.  God  is  not  unrighteous  to 
forget  yr  work  and  labour  of  love  as 
ye  phrase  is  in  ye  6.  Heb.  10.  By 
this  we  may  see  yt  they  must  be  re- 
warded. And  now  they  are  not 
recompensed  in  this  world.  Here 
they  are  oft  abused  for  ye  love  and 
service,  here  they  meet  wth  scorn, 
contempt  and  reproach,  are  evill 
spoked  of.  Moses  and  Aaron  were 
abused  by  Cora  and  his  company  16. 
Numb.  2.  And  others  have  met  wth 
ye  like  evill  treatment.  Jeremiah  met 
wth  soe  much  as  yt  he  was  ready  to 
exclaim  agst  his  mother  for  bringing 
him  into  ye  world  15  Jer:  n.  woe  is 
me  my  mother  yt  thou  hast  born  me 
a  man  strife,  and  a  man  of  contention 
to  ye  whole  earth — every  one  of  ym 
doth  curse  me.  And  Paul  will  tell  us 
yt  he  was  accounted  as  ye  off-scour- 
ing of  all  things.  I  Cor:  4.13.  we  are 
made  as  ye  filth  of  ye  world  &c. ; 

Their  reward  is  yrefore  in  ye  other 
world  and  they  must  die  yt  soe  they 
may  have  it.  It  is  given  ym  after  yr 
death  14.  Rev.  13.  and  yr  works  doe 
follow  ym,  yr  works,  ie.  ye  gracious 
reward  of  yr  trouble,  hardship  and 
patience. 


$?ntum  bg  an  lEmtnmi   QHpohigian  ttt   1H33 


(5.  Rea.)  Holy  men  of  publick  use 
and  place  must  sometimes  die  to  make 
way  for  ye  wrath  of  God  to  come 
down  upon  a  sinfull  people.  The 
death  of  pious  rulers  is  allwayes  in 
mercy  to  ymselves  and  sometimes  it  is 
in  judgmt  unto  ye  places  where  they 
lived.  The  death  of  such  eminent 
ones  is  a  presage  of  approaching 
calamities,  in  ye  57.  Isai  I.  it's  said 
yt  ye  righteous  are  taken  away  from 
ye  evill  to  come.  God  is  wont  to  take 
such  away  before  he  brings,  and  yt 
soe  he  may  bring  an  overflowing 
Scourge  upon  a  degenerate  and  irre- 
clamable  generation.  Whilst  they 
lived  they  were  a  means  to  keep  off 
judgmts.  God  could  not  to  speak 
after  ye  manner  of  men  soe  freely 
and  fully  pour  out  ye  vialls  of  his 
wrath  upon  an  impenitent  and  sinfull 
people  whilst  they  lived,  and  therefore 
they  must  be  carried  to  ye  grave  yt 
soe  he  may  have  ye  greater  liberty  to 
accomplish  ye  ruin  of  such  as  would 
by  noe  means  be  reformed.  See  this 
illustrated  in  2.  particulars.  (i) 
They  are  taken  away  by  death  that 
soe  they  may  not  see  and  be  grieved 
for  those  miseries  wch  come  upon 
those  amongst  wm  they  lived.  Tho. 
God's  servants  in  ye  magistracy  and 
ministry  may  meet  wth  ill  treatmt 
from,  yet  they  are  truely  sollicitous  for 
ye  wellfare  of  yr  people.  And  it  would 
be  a  sad  and  grievous  thine  to  ym  to 
see  ym  ruined.  To  see  these  and 
those  dismall  calamities  overtake  ym 
would  be  an  heart  breaking  sight  to 
ym.  To  see  yre  land  in  wch  they 
dwell  wasted  and  emptyed  of  its  in- 
habitants by  mortall  sicknes,  by  ye 
sword  &c.,  To  see  yr  neighbrs  perish- 
ing by  famine,  pestilence  and  sword, 
how  would  it  even  grieve  yr  very 
souls  to  death!  How  doth  pious 
Esther  express  ye  intolerable  grief  yt 
ye  destruction  of  her  people  would  be 
unto  her  8.  Esther  6.  For  how  can  I 
endure  to  see  ye  evill  yt  shall  come 
upon  my  people !  or  how  can  I  endure 
to  see  ye  destruction  of  my  Kindred, 
as  if  she  had  said  I  shall  not  be  able 
to  see  it  for  grier.  Now  God  doth 


not  delight  to  grieve  his  children,  nay 
he  will  avoid  it  as  much  as  may  be  soe 
yt  wn  such  terrible  judgments  can  be 
noe  longer  deferred,  he  sends  death 
to  fetch  home  such  precious  ones  yt 
they  be  out  of  ye  noise  of  them.  God 
knew  how  bitter  a  cup  it  would  be  to 
good  Josiah  to  see  ye  ruine  of  Jerusa- 
lem, destruction  of  ye  temple  and  cap- 
tivity of  the  people  and  therefore  he 
gives  him  a  gracious  promise  yt  he 
should  goe  to  ye  grave  before  these 
judgmnts  overtook  them.  2  cron:  34. 
28.  Behold  I  will  gather  thee  to  thy 
fathers  in  peace  and  thou  shalt  be 
gathered  to  thy  grave  in  peace,  neither 
shall  thine  eyes  see  all  ye  evill  yt  I 
will  bring  upon  this  place  and  upon 
ye  inhabitants  of  ye  same.  (2.)  They 
must  die  that  soe  they  may  not  by  yr 
intercession  for  a  sinfull  land  any 
longer  retard  those  judgmts  wch  they 
have  deserved  and  God  is  now  re- 
solved to  bring  upon  ym.  They  are 
ready  to  pity  and  compassionate  ye 
case  and  condition  of  a  sinfull  people. 
These  righteous  ones  are  earnestly 
desirous  of  ye  wellfare  of  yose  among 
wm  they  are  and  wn  they  see  evill 
coming  upon  ym  and  in  a  probable 
way  to  fall  upon  ym,  they  cannot  but 
endeavr  to  yr  utmost  ye  preventing 
of  it:  Wn  God  is  threatning,  a  sin- 
full  generation  they  will  interpose  as 
far  as  they  may  wth  God  on  ye  be- 
halfe  of  those  who  are  threatned.  noe 
unkindness  of  a  People  towards  ym 
shall  put  a  period  to  their  prayrs  for 
ym.  The  people  of  Israel  were  un- 
kind to  Samuel  in  rejecting  his  gov- 
ernmt,  and  asking  a  King,  but  yet  he 
resolves  not  to  cease  praying  for  ym 
i.  Samll:  12:23:  moreover  as  for 
me  God  forbid  yt  I  should  sin  agst  ye 
Lord  in  ceasing  to  pray  for  you. 
And  o  how  earnestly  will  they  plead 
wth  God  for  ye  sparing  of  sinners! 
How  hard  did  good  Abraham  plead 
for  poor  Sodome  See  in  ye  18.  Gen 
from  23  vs.  to  ye  end.  And  tho  ye 
destruction  of  it  was  not  prevented 
yet  it  may  be  remarkt  yt  soe  far  as 
Abraham  requested  God  granted. 
And  assuredly  ye  prayrs  of  Gods  emi- 


nf 


in    Earlg     Am^rira 


nent  Servants  have  a  great  deal  of 
effecacy  to  keep  of  wrath  from  a  peo- 
ple. Lots  prayr  procured  ye  salva- 
tion of  Zoar  from  yt  generall  destruc- 
tion wch  came  upon  ye  other  cities 
about  it.  19.  Gen  20.21. — And  he  said 
unto  him  See  I  have  accepted  thee 
concerning  this  thing  allsoe,  that  I 
will  not  overthrow  this  city  for  the 
which  thou  hast  spoken.  God  is  un- 
w'lling  to  loath  to  deny  ye  jrayrs  of 
his  dear  ones.  The  prayrs  of  his  em- 
inent servants  doe  (wth  holy  reve- 
rence be  it  spoken)  as  it  were  tie  ye 
hands  of  God.  Threfore  he  takes  ym 
away  sometimes  by  death  yt  he  may 
not  be  hindered  by  yr  intercession 
from  cutting  down  a  generation  of 
sinners.  Wn  God  is  resolved  yt 
wrath  shall  come  he  stops  ye  mouths 
of  those  praying  ones,  that  those  shall 
not  pray  whose  prayrs  would  have  bin 
an  hindrance  to  him  in  his  designs. 

APPLICATION ! 
i  vse.  Is  it  soe  yt  pious  men  of  pub- 
lick  use  and  place  must  die  as  well  as 
others,  let  this  teach  us  to  beware  of 
having  too  great  a  dependence  upon 
any,  yet  greatest  and  best  of  men. 
Men  may  indeed  be  both  able  and 
willing  to  doe  us  a  kindnes  in  this  or 
ye  other  respect  whilst  they  live,  but 
we  must  not  depend  overmuch  upon 
ym,  because  of  the  mortality  of  yr 
lives.  It  is  indeed  lawfull  and  a  duty 
to  value  ye  friendship  of  great  and 
good  men,  but  it  is  or  interest  to  re- 
member and  considr  that  they  are  but 
dying  friends  and  soe  to  be  cautious 
of  laying  too  great  a  Stress  upon  ym. 
Upon  this  consideration  ye  Lord  en- 
deavrs  to  take  off  or  confidence  from 
men  because  they  are  mortall  crea- 
tures. 2.  Isai.  22.  Cease  ye  from 
man  whose  breath  is  in  his  nostrills 
for  wherein  is  he  to  be  accounted  of ! 
As  if  he  had  said  yre  is  but  little  help 
to  be  had  from  these,  ye  hear  yt  great 
ones  are  mortall  yre  fore  put  not  yor 
trust  in  men  whose  breath  and  life  is 
in  yr  nostrils ;  Stop  but  yre  mouth 
and  nose  and  they  must  die  imediately. 
Wrein  is  he  to  be  accounted  of"  ye 
meaning  is  wt  is  there  I  pray  in  man 


for  wch  we  should  put  or  trust  and 
confidence  in  him  ?  he  is  nothing  at  all. 
We  are  advised  in  ye  146.  Ps:3.  not 
to  put  or  trust  in  Princes  nor  in  ye 
sons  of  men  and  ye  reason  is  given  in 
ye  next  vs.  his  breath  goeth  forth  and 
he  returneth  to  his  earth. 

(2)  This  truth  teacheth  us  yt  'tis 
ye  great  interest  of  a  people  to  be 
continually  praying  unto  God  yt  he 
would  raise  up  and  qualifie  others  to 
succeed  in  and  to  fill  up  ye  places  of 
those  publick  men  whom  he  from  time 
to  time  calls  out  of  ye  world.  Great 
and  good  men  we  heare  are  mortall 
as  well  as  others,  or  Godly  magis- 
trates and  ministers  who  have  ye  care 
of  or  all  are  dying  and  must  die.  This 
we  are  not  only  told  of  from  ye  word 
of  God  but  have  allsoe  bin  informed 
of  in  the  providence  of  God,  wch  hath 
not  only  formerly  but  more  lately 
sealed  this  truth  to  us.  Now  are  not 
such  men  of  great  use?  Can  a  peo- 
ple be  in  any  tolerable  degree  happy 
wthout  them?  Wt  will  become  of  or 
bodies  and  or  souls  without  such  pub- 
lick  persons.  It  will  be  sad  if  wn  God 
hath  called  any  of  his  worthies  in 
church  and  state  their  places  must 
stand  empty,  and  there  be  none  to 
step  forward  to  make  good  yr  ground. 
Now  if  we  would  have  this  prevented 
we  must  follow  God  wth  dayly  and 
earnest  prayers,  that  he  would  suit- 
ably fit  and  qualifie  those  yt  are  rising 
up  not  only  wth  naturall  but  allsoe 
wth  gracious  abilities  for  wtever  ser- 
vice for  himself  and  for  his  people 
they  may  be  now  or  hereafter  called 
to.  God  only  can  Spirrit  and  fit  men 
for  a  publick  (wch  is  a  very  weighty) 
charge  either  in  civill  or  Sacred  re- 
spects. God  is  acknowledged  as  ye 
authr  of  yt  Knowledge  and  gifts  wch 
meetens  ym  for  curious  work  of  ye 
hand  &c ;  35.  Exod.  35.  Much  more 
are  gifts  and  graces  to  qualifie  for  a 
charge  of  a  more  publick  nature  from 
him.  And  prayer  is  needfull  to  ob- 
tain and  procure  this  pouring  down  of 
his  Spirrit,  upon  those  who  are  to  be 
ye  Successrs  of  or  pious  magistrates 
and  ministers  yt  goe  off  ye  Stage  at 


9?rttum  hg  an  ?Emtn?nt 


in   1693 


this  and  ye  other  time.  Let  us  dayly 
yn  pray  hard  that  we  may  have  Josh- 
ua's to  succeed  or  Moses's,  that  we 
may  have  Solomon's  to  succeed  or 
Davids,  yt  we  may  have  Elisha's  to 
make  good  ye  ground  of  or  Elishas 
when  they  come  to  leave  us.  This  is 
the  way  to  have  or  comonwealth  and 


or  churches  to  flourish,  to  our  owns 
and  or  posterities  wellfare  and  happi- 
ness, both  for  time  and  eternity. 

(3)  And  lastly  If  godly  magis- 
trates and  ministers  must  die  and  are 
dying,  let  this  teach  us  to  secure  ye 
friendship  and  presence  of  an  un- 
changeable God. 


ANECDOTE       OF      AN       AMERICAN        REVOLUTIONIST 


BT  MRS.  J.   R.   COZART   OF   LAMAR.   ARKANSAS 


3   RECALL  these  statements 
made  to  me  by  my  hus- 
band's    father,     Sidney 
Bumpass    Cozart,    which 
he  said,  he  obtained  from 
his    father,    James    Bum- 
pass  Cozart,  prior  to  his 
death     which     occurred     September 
1 7th,  1846. 

James  Bumpass  Cozart's  father's 
name  was  Anthony  Cozart,  who  lived 
in  Orange  County,  North  Carolina, 
his  occupation  was  that  of  a  planter; 
he  married  Winnifred  Bumpass,  a 
sister  of  John  Bumpass,  who  was 
captain  of  a  company  raised  perhaps 
in  1772,  or  1773,  to  demand  some  re- 
dress from  Governor  Tryon.  An- 
thony Cozart  was  a  member  of  this 
company,  which  assembled  at  his 
(Cozart's)  house,  moulded  bullets 
and  discussed  the  methods  of  pro- 
cedure. 

These  deliberations  were  not  to  be 
made  public  until  a  stated  time  as  they 
might  be  considered  insurrectionary 
by  Governor  Tryon,  but  the  news 


reached  the  governor  who  made  prep- 
arations and  dispersed  them.  Cap- 
tain Bumpass  was  arrested  and  sen- 
tenced to  death,  but  from  some  cause 
was  not  executed.  Tryon  then  sent 
men  out,  whom  the  people  called 
"Press  gangs,"  to  take  the  arms  of  all 
engaged  in  this  movement,  but  Co- 
zart's wife,  by  substituting  an  old  gun 
procured  from  a  tenant,  and  hiding 
the  good  one,  saved  it  to  be  after- 
wards carried  by  her  husband  in  the 
Revolution. 

On  the  breaking  out  of  the  war, 
Anthony  and  his  brothers  John  and 
David,  and  his  brothers-in-law,  the 
Bumpasses,  entered  the  Revolution- 
ary Army,  and  served  throughout  the 
war.  The  roster  of  revolutionary 
soldiers,  published  by  the  state  of 
North  Carolina,  shows  that  David 
was  a  sergeant. 

James  Bumpass  Cozart  was  about 
sixteen  years  old  when  the  war  closed 
and  six  or  eight  years  old  at  the  time 
of  the  moulding  of  the  bullets,  and 
could  remember  the  above  described 
circumstances. 


IGifr  £>t0roB  nf  Gallant  Ammratta 


3labn  ilnnr—  Qty?  SCntgljt  of 


BY  HONORABLE  ALBERT  MOORE  SPEAR 

JUSTICB  Of  SuPBKME  JUDICIAL  COUBT  OF  M  AI  N  K 
GRKAT-OBKAT-OBANDSON  OF  MAJOR  JOHN  MOOB 

CONTRIBUTED  BY  MRS.  LINA  MOORE  MCKENNEY.  MADISON.  MAINE 


He  lay  upon  his  dying  bed, 

His  eye  was  growing  dim ; 
When  with  a  feeble  voice  he  called 

His  weeping  son  to  him. 
"  Weep  not,  my  boy,"  the  veteran  said, 

"  I  bow  to  Heaven's  high  will; 
But  quickly  from  yon  antlers  bring 

The  sword  of  Bunker  Hill." 


The  sword  was  brought ;  the  soldier's  eye 

Lit  with  a  sudden  flame, 
And  as  he  grasped  the  ancient  blade, 

He  murmured  Warren's  name. 
Then  said,  "My  boy,  I  leave  you  gold, 

But  what  is  richer  still, 
I  leave  you,  mark  me,  mark  me  now, 

The  sword  of  Bunker  Hill." 


"  Oh,    keep    that   sword "  —  his   accents 
broke — 

A  smile  and  he  was  dead ; 
But  his  withered  hand  still  grasped  the 
blade 

Upon  that  dying  bed. 
The  son  remains,  the  sword  remains, 

Its  glory  growing  still, 
And  twenty  millions  bless  that  sire 

And  the  sword  of  Bunker  Hill. 


as    we    do,    sur- 
rounded   by    a    mighty 
^^  civilization,      occupying 

•  mountain,      valley,      hill 

JF^^^L  and  plain  from  sea  to 
^^^^r  sea;  traversing  space 
with  the  speed  of  the 
winds ;  spanning  the  oceans  with  the 
palaces  of  the  deep;  sending  mes- 
sages with  lightning;  living  amidst 
these  glories  of  the  twentieth  century 
and  the  splendor  of  its  opening  days 
— little  do  we  comprehend  the  sor- 
rows and  the  woes  of  the  dark  days 
when  homes  were  the  clearings  in  the 
forest;  sustenance  the  caprice  of  the 
season;  music  the  bay  of  the  roam- 
ing beasts;  safety  the  mercy  of  the 
Indian's  knife;  hope  the  return  of 
their  patriot  brave. 

It  is  of  one  who  knew  these  hard- 
ships that  I  here  relate — Major  John 

73 


Moor,  whose  bravery  in  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution  won  him  promotion, 
and  who  as  a  captain  in  many  battles 
in  the  French  and  Indian  War  blazed 
the  path  for  civilization.  The  Moor 
family,  of  which  Major  John  was  a 
member,  migrated  from  Scotland  to 
Londonderry,  in  the  north  of  Ireland, 
about  the  year  1616.  From  there 
they  came  to  this  country  in  1718,  and 
settled  in  New  Hampshire.  The 
"Town  Papers  of  New  Hampshire," 
volume  12,  page  429,  show  that  on 
June  21,  1722,  John  Moor  and  one 
hundred  and  seventeen  others  were 
granted  a  township  which  they  had 
incorporated  by  the  name  of  London- 
derry, in  honor  of  the  county  in  Ire- 
land from  which  they  had  emigrated. 
In  religious  belief  they  were  Scotch 
Presbyterians.  The  name  was  origi- 
nally spelled  Moor,  the  letter  e  being 


3f0If«    JKnnr--®lji?    iKmglji    nf    IBmgftrlit 


omitted,  but  later  generations  adopted 
the  present  spelling. 

The  first  record  of  the  name  is  of 
one  Samuel  Moor,  who  married  Deb- 
orah Butterfield  and  settled  in  Litch- 
field,  then  called  Naticott,  New 
Hampshire.  They  had  six  children, 
the  second  of  whom  was  John.  He 
was  born  November  28,  1731.  He 
married  Margaret  (Peggy)  Goffe, 
and  settled  in  Manchester,  New 
Hampshire,  then  called  Derryfield. 
The  family  of  Deborah  Butterfield, 
the  mother  of  our  John  Moor,  came 
from  a  distinguished  Norman  family 
that  arrived  in  England  in  the  twelfth 
century,  the  head  of  the  family  being 
Robert  de  Buterville. 

During  the  French  and  Indian 
War,  when  Colonel  Johnson  led  6,000 
men  against  the  French,  New  Hamp- 
shire furnished  500,  one  company  be- 
ing under  Captain  John  Moor  of 
Derryfield.  On  the  twenty-sixth  of 
August  they  arrived  at  Fort  Edward, 
where  Colonel  Blanchard,  with  a  reg- 
iment from  New  Hampshire,  was  left 
in  charge  of  the  fort.  After  this 
came  the  Battle  of  Lake  George,  in 
which  the  New  England  sharpshoot- 
ers did  valiant  service.  In  the  French 
and  Indian  War  he  won  a  reputation 
for  courage  and  energy.  After  the 
conquest  of  Canada,  he  quietly  set- 
tled down  upon  his  farm  at  Cohas 
Brook. 

When  the  alarm  came  in  1775,  Cap- 
tain John  Moor  of  Derryfield  led  a 
company  of  forty-five  men  to  Lexing- 
ton. Upon  arriving  there  he  found 
that  the  British  had  retired  into  Bos- 
ton. He  marched  to  Cambridge,  and 
on  April  twenty-fourth  was  commis- 
sioned by  the  Massachusetts  Commit- 
tee of  Safety  a  captain  in  Stark's  reg- 
iment. 

John  Moor's  bravery  at  Bunker 
Hill  makes  him  a  hero  whose  name 
should  be  illuminated  on  the  rolls  of 
American  chivalry.  It  was  he,  who 
with  a  few  New  Hampshire  farmers, 
faced  the  Welsh  Fusileers,  the  flower 
of  the  British  Army,  and  the  famous 
regiment  that  had  fought  with  dis- 


tinction at  Minden,  gaining  the  title 
of  the  "Prince  of  Wales  Regiment." 

It  was  on  the  morning  of  June  17, 
J775'  The  American  Revolutionists 
were  inviting  the  king's  soldiers  to  a 
test  of  arms,  and,  with  the  spectacular 
manceuvering  of  the  Old  World  mili- 
tary pageants,  the  British  warriors, 
veterans  of  many  gallantly  won  bat- 
tle-days, moved  toward  the  audacious 
Yankee  farmers  with  the  precision 
and  coolness  of  a  dress  parade,  and 
with  the  confidence  and  fearlessness 
born  of  conflict  with  greater  and 
more  learned  enemies,  the  grenadiers 
and  light  infantry  marching  in  single 
file,  twelve  feet  apart,  the  artillery  ad- 
vancing and  thundering  as  it  ad- 
vanced, while  five  battalions,  moving 
more  slowly,  approached  the  fence, 
breastwork,  and  redoubt,  forming  an 
oblique  line.  The  best  troops  of  Eng- 
land assailed  the  New  Hampshire 
line,  doubtless  expecting  those  half- 
armed  provincials  in  home-spun 
clothes  would  fly  before  the  nodding 
plumes  and  burnished  arms  of  the 
light  infantry  and  before  the  flashing 
bayonets  and  tall  caps  of  the  grena- 
diers. 

Behind  the  fence,  upon  which  they 
had  placed  grass  to  conceal  them- 
selves, lay,  still  as  death,  Captain* 
John  Moor  and  his  men  from  Amos- 
keag,  New  Hampshire. 

Now  and  then  came  a  challenging 
shot  from  the  brilliant  British  pag- 
eant, singing  over  their  heads  and  cut- 
ting the  boughs  of  the  apple  trees  be- 
hind them. 

Colonel  Stark  had  planted  a  stake 
about  eighty  yards  from  the  wall  and 
fence,  and  had  given  orders  to  his 
men  not  to  fire  until  the  advancing 
line  of  the  enemy  should  reach  the 
stake. 

On  came  the  Welsh  Fusileers, 
haughty  and  defiant.  Still  there  came 
no  response  from  the  Yankee  farmers. 

Bang!  Bang!  Bang!  The  dead 
line  had  been  crossed !  Like  a  storm 
of  thunder  and  lightning  and  lead 
there  burst  across  their  vision  a  mass 
of  death-dealing  flame,  so  intense,  so. 


g>t0rt?H     nf    Gallant    Ant^rtrana 


continuous,  so  staggering,  that  the 
flower  of  England  wavered,  recoiled, 
and  fell  back  repulsed. 

Again  and  again  they  rallied  to  the 
attack,  only  to  again  and  again  fall 
back  blinded,  wounded  and  depleted. 
One  by  one  the  brave  grenadiers  and 
light  infantry  fell  before  the  Amos- 
keag  farmers.  One  by  one  the  gal- 
lant officers  staggered  to  the  earth, 
until  broken  in  heart  the  living  broke 
ranks  and  fled  in  dismay  before  the 
musketry  of  the  hunters  from  the 
New  Hampshire  forests. 

And  when  the  smoke  had  cleared, 
ninety-six  lifeless  red-coats  lay  be- 
fore the  feet  of  Captain  John  Moor 
and  his  daring  patriots,  and  nearly 
every  officer  and  aid  of  General  Howe 
lay  wounded  or  dead.  It  is  not  too 
much  to  assume  that  if  the  rest  of  the 
American  lines  had  been  defended 
with  equal  success  the  entire  British 
force  would  have  been  driven  from 
the  hill  or  annihilated. 

When  the  dead  were  counted,  after 
the  battle-day  at  Bunker  Hill,  Major 
McCleary  was  among  the  lifeless,  and 
Captain  John  Moor  was  called  to  the 
rank  of  major.  He  remained  with 
the  army  for  a  few  months,  when  the 
state  of  his  wife's  health  obliged  him 
to  return  to  his  farm.  In  the  spring 
of  1777  Major  Moor  again  enlisted 
among  those  of  Derryfield,  and  re- 
tired from  the  army  in  1778,  when  he 
removed  to  Norridgewock,  at  which 
place  and  North  Anson  he  passed  the 
remainder  of  his  life. 

Goffe  Moor,  son  of  John  Moor, 
was  also  at  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill, 
and  was  a  drummer  boy  in  his  fath- 
er's company.  He  was  also  a  mem- 
ber of  Captain  Thomas  McLaughlin's 


company  in  Stark's  regiment,  in  Octo- 
ber, 1775. 

An  examination  of  the  New  Hamp- 
shire records  discloses  that  Major 
Moor  was  a  man  who  stood  well 
among  his  neighbors  as  a  civilian.  I 
find  that  he  filled  nearly  all  of  the  mu- 
nicipal and  parish  offices  in  the  gift  of 
his  people  before  he  left  New  Hamp- 
shire. As  to  his  career  after  he  came 
to  Maine,  I  quote  from  "Allen's  His- 
tory of  Norridgewock":  "In  1780, 
Major  John  Moor,  who  had  been  an 
officer  in  the  army,  came  to  this  place 
in  his  uniform  with  epaulettes  and  in- 
signia of  rank,  and  excited  considera- 
ble attention  by  his  dress  and  address. 
He  had  four  sons,  who  came  with 
him.  Having  lost  his  wife,  he  mar- 
ried Mrs.  Eunice  Weston  (Eunice 
Farnsworth),  the  widow  of  Joseph 
Weston,  the  first  settler  in  Canaan. 
He  was  a  man  of  more  than  ordinary 
talents,  was  respected  for  his  intelli- 
gence and  activity,  and  was  a  useful 
citizen.  A  financial  report  of  the 
town  affairs,  in  1791,  was  drawn  up 
by  him  in  a  correct  and  business-like 
manner,  and  remains  (1849)  in  the 
files  of  the  town  papers.  When  the 
militia  in  the  vicinity  was  reorgan- 
ized, he  was  chosen  colonel,  and  was 
esteemed  as  an  officer  and  gentleman. 
He  was  granted  a  large  lot,  on  which 
North  Anson  Village  is  now  situated, 
and  died  there  in  1809." 

Major  Moor  had  no  children  from 
his  second  marriage.  The  tender- 
ness of  Major  Moor,  the  most  com- 
mendable quality  of  his  character,  as 
it  is  of  any  man's,  is  a  prominent  feat- 
ure of  the  traditions  concerning  him. 
True  bravery  is  almost  always  the 
twin  brother  of  tenderness. 


O  thus  be  it  ever,  when  freemen  shall  stand 
Between  their  loved  home  and  wild  war's  desolation; 

Blest  with  victory  and  peace,  may  the  heaven-rescued  land, 
Praise  the  Power  that  hath  made  and  preserved  us  a  nation. 

Then  conquer  we  must,  when  our  cause  it  is  just, 

And  this  be  our  motto — "In  God  is  our  Trust !" 


75 


nf 


THXN8CHIPT    FHOM    KUQITIVK    FAPSX    COVTKIBT7TKD    BT 

MRS.  HIRAM  PRICE  DILLON  OF  TOPEKA,  KANSAS 


Stay  one  moment  ;  you've  heard 

Of  Caldwell,  the  parson,  who  once  preached 

the  word 
Down  at  Springfield?  What!   No?   Come  — 

that's  bad  ;    why,  he  had 
All  the  Jerseys  aflame  !  and  they  give  him 

the  name 
Of  the  "rebel  high  priest."    He  stuck  in 

their  gorge, 
For  he  loved  the  Lord  God—  and  he  hated 

King  George  ! 

He  had  cause,  he  might  say  !    When  the 

Hessians  that  day 
Marched  up  with  Knyphausen,  they  stopped 

on  their  way 
At  the  "Farms,"  where  his  wife,  with  a 

child  in  her  arms, 
Sat  alone  in  the  house.     How  it  happened 

none  knew 
But   God  —  and  that  one  of    the    hireling 

crew 
Who  fired  the  shot  !     Enough  !—  there  she 

lay, 
And  Caldwell,  the  chaplain,   her  husband, 

away! 

Did  he  preach  —  did  he  pray?  Think  of 
him  as  you  stand 

By  the  old  church  today,  think  of  him  and 
his  band 


Of  militant  plow  boys!  See  the  smoke  and 
the  heat 

Of  that  reckless  advance, — of  that  strag- 
gling retreat! 

Keep  the  ghost  of  that  wife,  foully  slain, 
in  your  view, 

And  what  could  you,  what  should  you, 
what  would  you  do? 

Why,  just  what  he  did !    They  were  left  in 

lurch 
For  the  want  of  more  wadding.     He  ran  to 

the  church, 
Broke  the  door,    stripped   the  pews,   and 

dashed  out  in  the  road, 
With  his  arms  full  of  hymn  books,  and 

threw  down  his  load 

At  their  feet !    Then,  above  all  the  shout- 
ing and  shots, 
Rang  his  voice,    "  Put    Watts  into   'em, 

boys ;  give  'em  Watts!" 
And  they  did.   That  is  all.    Grasses  spring, 

flowers  blow, 
Pretty  much  as  they  did  ninety-three  years 

ago. 
You  may  dig  anywhere  and  you'll  turn  up 

a  ball,— 
But  not  always  a  hero  like  this — and  that's 

all. 

— BRET  HARTE 


^^^/^T  was  in  New  Jersey, 
distant      rumble      of 


J 


The 
ap- 

proaching war  had  aroused 
the  people  to  intense  ex- 
citement. In  the  little 
community  of  Elizabeth- 
town  was  one  James  Cald- 
well, a  preacher,  whose  devotion  to 
his  faithful  flock  was  their  strongest 
support  in  this  time  of  peril.  The 
good  parson  was  of  that  sturdy  Scotch 
ancestry  that  knows  no  cowardice  — 
the  blood  that  flows  in  the  veins  of  the 
Virginians  and  that  infused  fortitude 
into  American  character. 

His  father,  John  Caldwell,  came  to 
America  and  settled  in  the  southern 
part  of  Virginia,  in  what  is  now 
Charlotte  county,  where  James,  the 
youngest  of  his  seven  children,  was 
born  in  April,  1734.  The  place  was 
called  "Caldwell  Settlement."  A 
daughter  of  one  of  his  brothers,  also 
born  there,  was  mother  of  the  Hon- 
orable John  Caldwell  Calhoun,  of 


South  Carolina,  the  noted  senator  and 
statesman  of  the  South. 

James  Caldwell  prepared  for  col- 
lege under  the  instruction  of  the  Rev- 
erend Todd.  After  hearing  the  Rev- 
erend Whitefield  preach  several  times, 
he  received  a  life-long  impulse  for 
good.  James  graduated  from  col- 
lege in  1759,  and  received  a  call  from 
the  church  of  Elizabethtown,  New 
Jersey,  1761.  In  1763  he  married 
Hannah,  daughter  of  John  Ogden,  of 
Newark,  New  Jersey. 

The  causes  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution now  aroused  the  people  of  New 
Jersey.  No  other  parish  in  the  land 
took  a  bolder,  nobler  stand,  and  few 
were  more  efficient  in  their  country's 
cause  than  Reverend  Caldwell. 
Among  his  congregation  were  Gov- 
ernor Livingston,  Elias  Boudinot, 
afterwards  president  of  the  Continen- 
tal Congress ;  Abraham  Clark,  one  of 
the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence; Honorable  Robert  Og- 


of    Gallant 


den,  speaker  of  the  Assembly;  and 
from  this  congregation  went  forth 
about  forty  commissioned  officers  to 
fight  the  battles  of  independence. 

The  journals  of  Congress  show  that 
in  March,  1777,  "$200  were  ordered 
to  be  paid  to  the  Reverend  James 
Caldwell,  of  Elizabethtown,  for  extra- 
ordinary services." 

Reverend  Caldwell  was  chaplain  to 
the  Jersey  brigade  and  assistant  com- 
missary general  from  1777  to  1779. 

The  old  parsonage  was  destroyed 
by  the  torch  of  the  enemy  that  year. 
The  campaign  of  1780  opened  late, 
after  the  severe  winter.  Confident  of 
success,  General  Knyphausen,  with 
his  Hessian  troops,  now  in  command 
of  a  part  of  the  British  army,  began 
an  invasion  of  East  Jersey.  An  eye- 
witness of  the  passage  of  the  troops 
says:  "The  Queen's  Rangers,  with 
drawn  swords  and  glittering  helmets, 
mounted  on  fine  horses  and  followed 
by  infantry  composed  of  Hessian  and 
English  troops,  about  6,000,  all  clad 
in  new  uniforms,  gorgeous  with  bur- 
nished brass  and  polished  steel,  en- 
tered Elizabethtown.  Instantly  drums 
beat  to  arms  at  Morristown,  and 
Washington  and  his  troops  marched 
with  all  speed  to  the  post  of  danger." 

The  Reverend  Caldwell  had  a  few 
weeks  before  this  removed  his  family 
from  Elizabethtown  to  Connecticut 
Farms  for  safety,  and  had  taken  pos- 
session of  the  vacant  parsonage. 

When  the  British  troops  passed 
through  the  Farms,  Mrs.  Caldwell, 
with  her  maid,  retired  to  a  secluded 
apartment  with  the  children.  The 
girl  looked  out  of  the  window  and 
said :  "A  red-coat  soldier  has  jumped 
over  the  fence  and  is  coming  towards 
the  house  with  a  gun." 

The  youngest  child  but  one,  Elias 
Boudinot  Caldwell,  two  years  old, 
playing  on  the  floor,  called  out:  "Let 
me  see!"  and  ran  to  the  window. 
Mrs.  Caldwell  arose  from  her  chair, 
and  at  this  moment  the  soldier  fired 
his  musket  through  the  window  at 
her.  It  was  loaded  with  two  balls, 


which  passed  through  her  body,  and 
she  instantly  expired. 

A  correspondent  of  the  New  Jersey 
Gazette  says:  "I  saw  her  corpse,  and 
was  informed  by  the  neighbors  it  was 
with  infinite  pains  that  they  obtained 
leave  to  bring  the  body  from  the 
house  before  they  set  fire  to  it." 

It  is  related  of  Reverend  Caldwell 
that  in  the  battle  that  followed  he 
showed  the  utmost  ardor  in  the  fight, 
as  if  he  would  revenge  himself  for  the 
murder  of  his  beloved  wife.  He  gal- 
loped to  the  church  near  by  and 
brought  back  an  armful  of  Psalm 
books  to  supply  the  men  with  wad- 
ding for  their  fire-locks,  and  shouted: 
"Now  put  Watts  into  them,  boys; 
put  Watts  into  them."  The  work  of 
plunder  began;  nineteen  houses  and 
the  Presbyterian  church  were  de- 
stroyed. 

In  October,  Lord  Cornwallis  sur- 
rendered his  army  and  munitions  of 
war  to  General  Washington.  Though 
the  war  was  over,  a  class  of  adven- 
turers and  desperadoes  were  let  loose 
on  society,  and  several  noted  citizens 
became  their  victims,  and  among 
them  the  Reverend  James  Caldwell. 

The  New  Jersey  Gazette  of  No- 
vember 28,  1781,  says:  "Last  Satur- 
day Reverend  James  Caldwell,  minis- 
ter of  the  Dissenting  Congregation  at 
Elizabethtown,  was  shot  dead,  with- 
out any  provocation,  by  a  native  of 
Ireland  named  Morgan.  The  coro- 
ner's inquest  brought  a  verdict  of 
'willful  murder.'  It  was  thought  the 
ruffian  was  bribed  by  the  enemy  to  do 
the  dreadful  deed.  The  British  au- 
thorities had  offered  a  reward  for  the 
assassination  of  Governor  Living- 
ston, and  next  to  him  Chaplain  Cald- 
well was  most  dreaded  by  the  enemy. 
The  funeral  services  were  performed 
on  Tuesday,  the  twenty-seventh,  the 
whole  town  suspending  business  and 
gathering  in  uncontrollable  grief  at 
the  obsequies.  An  opportunity  to 
view  the  body  of  Mr.  Caldwell  was 
given  in  front  of  the  house  on  the 
open  street.  After  all  had  taken  the 
last  look,  and  before  the  coffin  was 


nf 


closed,  Judge  Boudinot  came  for- 
ward, leading  nine  orphan  children  of 
the  deceased,  and,  placing  them 
around  the  bier  of  their  parent,  he 
made  an  address  of  surpassing  pathos 
to  the  multitude  in  their  behalf.  The 
procession  slowly  moved  to  the  grave, 
weeping  as  they  went.  He  was  laid 
by  the  side  of  his  wife's  remains,  and 
over  his  body  was  placed  a  marble 
slab  with  the  following  inscription: 
'Sacred  to  the  memory  of  Reverend 
James  Caldwell  and  Hannah  Ogden, 
his  wife,  who  fell  victims  to  their 
country's  cause  in  the  years  1780  and 
1781.'" 

Honorable  Elias  Boudinot  took 
upon  himself  the  administration  of  the 
small  estate  and  the  care  of  the  chil- 
dren left  by  Reverend  Caldwell.  The 
patrimony  was  eventually  rendered 
productive,  and  the  children  were 
well  educated. 

They  were  greatly  befriended  by 
General  Washington,  Marquis  de  La 
Fayette,  General  Lincoln,  and  by 
Mrs.  Noel  who  adopted  the  baby. 
Marquis  de  La  Fayette  obtained  the 
privilege  of  adopting  and  educating 
the  eldest  son.  On  his  departure, 
young  Caldwell  accompanied  him  to 
France  and  became  a  member  of  his 
family.  He  remained  abroad  until 
1791,  when,  owing  to  the  horrors  of 
the  French  Revolution,  he  returned  to 
America.  He  married  Mrs.  Van 
Wyck,  and  renounced  papacy,  which 
he  had  embraced  in  France,  and  be- 
came a  member  of  the  Cedar  Street 
Presbyterian  Church,  New  York,  de- 
voting himself  to  works  of  benevo- 
lence. He  died  in  1819. 

Elias  Boudinot  Caldwell,  the  young- 
est son  of  James  Caldwell,  was  adopt- 
ed by  the  distinguished  citizen  for 
whom  he  was  named.  He  was  grad- 
uated at  Princeton  College,  New  Jer- 
sey; then  studied  law  with  Judge 
Boudinot  and  inherited  his  fine  law 
library.  He  was  appointed  clerk  of 
the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States,  at  Washington,  at  the  age  of 
twenty- four,  in  the  year  1800,  and 
continued  to  hold  the  office  until  his 


death,  in  1825.  In  the  war  of  1814 
Lawyer  Caldwell  commanded  a  troop 
of  cavalry  in  Maryland  until  the  Bat- 
tle of  Bladensburg.  The  British  then 
marched  into  Washington  and  set  fire 
to  the  Capitol.  Mr.  Caldwell  had  only 
time  to  remove  the  archives  of  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court,  leav- 
ing his  law  library  and  other  valuable 
property  at  the  mercy  of  the  enemy. 
It  was  all  destroyed  at  the  burning  of 
the  Capitol,  August  24,  1814.  This 
valuable  library  was  in  the  north  wing 
of  the  Capitol.  It  was  placed  there  by 
Mr.  Caldwell  for  the  use  of  the  judges 
of  the  Supreme  Court.  The  British 
also  greatly  damaged  Lawyer  Cald- 
well's  residence,  which  still  stands  on 
Pennsylvania  avenue,  204  and  206, 
southeast,  Capitol  Hill,  at  which  place 
the  United  States  Supreme  Court  held 
its  sessions  for  a  short  time  after  the 
Capitol  was  burned. 

The  Caldwell  home  was  the  seat  of 
hospitality,  and  the  honored  and  dis- 
tinguished statesmen  of  that  day  were 
guests  at  his  table.  On  one  occasion 
he  gave  a  dinner  party,  and  among 
the  guests  were  Mr.  Webster,  Mr. 
Clay,  and  Mr.  Calhoun.  In  the  course 
of  conversation  the  subject  of  wealth, 
brains,  and  good  blood  was  intro- 
duced. Mr.  Webster  said :  "If  I  had 
my  choice,  I  would  take  wealth."  Mr. 
Clay  said:  "I  would  prefer  noble 
blood."  Mr.  Calhoun  and  Mr.  Cald- 
well desired  to  be  good,  useful  men, 
and  to  live  such  lives  as  to  be  respect- 
ed and  loved  by  the  community.  Per- 
haps it  was  because  each  had  good 
blood,  brains  and  enough  wealth  for 
those  days. 

When  the  Marquis  de  La  Fayette 
visited  this  country,  in  1824,  Mr.  Cald- 
well went  with  his  youngest  daughter 
in  his  carriage  as  far  as  Bladensburg 
to  meet  him.  He  brought  him  to  his 
house,  where  he  remained  some 
days.  There  was  a  strong  friendship 
between  the  families. 

Though  Mr.  Caldwell  was  a  re- 
ligious man,  he  was  very  liberal  in 
his  ideas.  His  children  when  old 
enough  wished  to  go  to  dancing 

78 


Htf> 


of    (gallant    Am^rtrana 


school.  He  consented,  and  some  of 
the  other  elders  of  the  church  waited 
on  him  to  know  if  such  were  the  case. 
"Yes,"  said  he,  "my  children  have 
dancing  in  their  feet,  and  I  prefer 
that  it  should  come  out  gracefully." 

Elias  Caldwell  was  one  of  the 
founders  of  the  American  Coloniza- 
tion Society,  of  which  he  was  corre- 
sponding secretary  until  his  death. 
One  of  the  towns  of  Liberia  bears  his 
name,  and  his  last  public  prayer  and 
the  last  note  he  wrote  were  for  the 
enlightenment  of  the  "Dark  Conti- 
nent." He  was  a  member  of  the  First 
Presbyterian  Church,  then  located  on 
Capitol  Hill.  He  had  been  licensed 
to  preach  by  the  Presbytery,  and  was 
accustomed  to  occupy  vacant  pulpits 
on  the  Sabbath.  He  was  noted  for 
his  generosity  and  benevolence.  His 
name  was  connected  with  every  good 
object  of  the  day,  and  his  life  was 
crowned  with  blessings.  He  some- 
times said :  "I  fear  the  Lord  does  not 
love  me,  as  I  have  been  prosperous  in 
everything  I  have  undertaken  and 
happy  in  all  the  relations  of  life." 

Mr.  Caldwell  made  a  request  that 
his  funeral  should  be  plain,  as  an  ex- 
ample to  the  poor,  and  that  his  re- 
mains should  be  placed  in  a  pine  cof- 


fin, much  to  the  disapproval  of  the  un- 
dertakers, who,  however,  draped  the 
coffin  with  black  cloth. 

Mr.  Caldwell  was  married  twice. 
The  first  wife  was  Miss  Boyd,  of 
Georgetown;  the  second  was  Miss 
Lingan,  of  Baltimore.  He  left  eight 
children,  all  of  whom  inherited  the 
traits  of  their  remarkable  ancestors. 

The  room  of  the  clerk  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  at  the  Capitol  has  now 
historic  interest.  The  portraits  of 
men  who  have  filled  that  important 
office  are  hanging  upon  the  walls,  and 
among  them  that  of  Elias  Boudinot 
Caldwell,  the  patriot,  the  scholar,  and 
the  refined  Christian  gentleman. 

The  portrait  was  taken  from  a 
miniature  when  Mr.  Caldwell  was 
twenty-four  years  old.  The  finely 
cut  features,  the  clear  blue  eyes,  and 
the  fresh  complexion  are  reproduced. 
The  hair  is  powdered,  as  was  the 
fashion  in  those  days. 

Mr.  Caldwell  was  dignified  in  per- 
sonal appearance,  polished  in  man- 
ners, zealous  in  his  public  perform- 
ances, and  prompt  to  meet  every  de- 
mand that  was  made  upon  his  ample 
fortune.  He  exerted  a  gentle  influ- 
ence not  only  over  his  own  family 
and  friends,  but  also  over  many  of 
the  leading  minds  of  his  day. 


(AN  OLD  TAVERN  SONG) 


Our  life  is  nothing  but  a  winter's  day, 
Some  only  break  their  fast  and  so  away ; 
Others  stay  dinner  and  depart  full  fed ; 
The  deepest  age  but  sups  and  goes  to  bed. 
He's  most  in  debt  who  lingers  out  the  day, 
Who  dies  betimes,  has  less  and  less  to  pay. 


ESTATE   OF  A      WELL.-TO-DO  "  AMERICAN  IN   1689 

"THIS  IS  AN  INVENTORY  OF  THE  WHOLE  ESTATE 
OF  JOSEPH  TAINTER,  SENIOR,  OF  WATERTOWN, 
WHO  DYED  THE  2OTH  OF  FEBRUARY,  ANNO 
DOM  1689.  TAKEN  THIS  11TH  OF  MARCH" 

TRANSCRIBED     FROM     ORIGINAL     BT 

M.  AUGUSTA  HOLMAN  OF  LEOMINSTER,  MASSACHUSETTS 

£     S      D 
In  cash 34    01    oo 

Wearing  Apparrell  of  all  sorts 05    01    oo 

IN  THE  LODGING  ROOMS. 
A  feather  bed  with  all  belonging  to  it,  with  bedstead,  curtains  &  valance, 

as  it  stands 07  oo  oo 

A  trundle  bed-stid  with  a  feather  bed  &  what  belongs  to  it  as  it  stands. ...  03  oo  oo 

A  Fine  pair  of  sheets ;  seven  pillow  coates 01  oo  oo 

Three  table  cloathes,  Eighteen  napkins,  six  towels 02  08  oo 

One  Chest,  two  boxes,  two  chairs,  two  cushions oo  12  oo 

A  warming  pann,  A  glass  case  with  a  parcel  of  glas  bottles oo  07  oo 

A  wodden  mortar,  A  parcel  of  trenchers oo  05  oo 

A  parcel  of  Books 01  10  oo 

A  piece  of  Black  cloth oo  10  oo 

IN  THE  FIRE  ROOME. 

Twenty  pewter  platters,  six  pewter  porringers,  one  pewter  flagon,  one 
pewter  drinking  pot,  four  pewter  drinking  cups,  two  cups  of  tin,  two 
basins  of  pewter,  three  pewter  platters,  one  candle  stick,  one  salt-seller, 
one  little  bottle,  all  of  pewter,  &  a  pewter  chamber  pot,  four  saucers. . .  03  oo  oo 

Two  brasse  kettles,  two  brasse  poles,  two  skillets  of  brasse,  a  little  brasse 

morten  &  pestle,  brass  candlestick,  a  brasse  skimer  &  baleing  ladle 02  10  oo 

Two  iron  pots,  one  Iron  kittle,  an  iron  morten  &  pestle,  an  iron  candle- 
stick, an  Iron  skillet,  two  paire  of  pott  hooks,  a  spit,  a  paire  of  cob  irons, 
two  tramels  fire  pan  &  tongs,  a  grid  iron 02  05  oo 

Two  small  tables,  power  chairs,  a  smoothing  box,  eleven  vessels  of  chiny 
ware,  a  dozen  of  trenchers,  A  fowling  piece,  two  muskets,  a  case  of 
pistols  with  holsters,  power  swords,  with  scabbardes  and  belts,  two 
pair  of  bandolers*  with  ammunitions 05  04  oo 

*  Ancient  cartridge  boxes  being  a  belt  of  raw-hide  filled  with  wooden  bottles,  each  containing  a  charge  of 
powder. 

IN  THE  CHAMBER. 

£  S  D 

A  feather  bed  with  the  bedstead  and  apertinances  to  it,  as  it  stands 03  10  oo 

A  flock  bed  with  the  bedstead  and  the  apertinances  to  it,  as  it  stands 02  oo  oo 

Several  remnants  of  new  cloath 01  05  oo 

Two  moos  skins  ready  dressed,  and  a  parcel  of  small  skins 03  oo  oo 

One  chest,  two  trunks  &  a  parcel  of  button  In  one  of  the  trunk 02  10  oo 

Furniture  for  a  horse,  as  bridles,  saddles,  pannels,  and  a  wodden  basin, 

and  a  small  lot  of  waiters,  A  parcel  of  ground  malt 01  10  oo 

andrie..                                                            or  15  oo 


In  Memory  of  General  Robert  E.   Lee,  on  this  Centenary  (1807-1907)  of  his  Birth 

This,  His  Last  Portrait,  is  Published,  Knowing  the  Fondness  with  which  he 

Treasured  it — Taken  on  his  Old  War  Horse  "Traveller"  in  the  Garden 

of  his  Home  on  the  Campus  of  Washington  and  Lee  University  at 

Lexington,  Virginia,  after  his  Return  from  the  Great  Struggle, 

and  during  his  Presidency  of  that  Historic  Institution — 

He  was  born  at  Stratford,  Virginia,  January  19,  1807— 

He  Died  at  Lexington,  October  12,  1870 — On 

This,  His  Centenary,  the  American  People 

Offer  Tribute  to  his  Memory  as  a  Master 

Military  Tactician — Great  in  War  — 

Great  in  Peace— Beloved  by 

Friend  and  Foe 


CENTENARY     OF     ROBERT     E.     L.EE — A  TRIBUTE  BY    THEODORE    ROOSEVELT 

Robert  E.  Lee  will  undoubtedly  rank  as,  without  any  exception,  the 
very  greatest  of  all  the  great  captains  that  the  English-speaking  peoples 
have  brought  forth — and  this,  although  the  last  and  chief  of  his  antagonists 
may  himself  claim  to  stand  as  the  full  equal  of  Marlborough  and  Wellington 

By  Permission  of  the  President   on  this  Centenary  of  the  Distinguished  American's  Birth  from  his  "  Life  of  Thomas  H.  Benton" 


of  mt 


Journal  of 

Captain  fcamnrl  ifngi  •* 

Bom  in  1T44  anb  follotorh  tlje  Smrfng 

of  Ijia   (Srnrrutum  J*   Hifr  on  a  <f  u;,litiua 

off  Ifauana,    (Cnna,   in    1TB2    J*   Exwrrirurra  aa  a 
r  on  a  Jlrinatm   o*  ffianorrtnga  as  a  Jngitiu*  almtg    Amrriran  (Coast 

TRANSCRIBED 
BY 

JULIUS    WALTER    PEASE 

Now  IK  HIS  NINETY-THIRD  YEAR  AND   A  GRANDSON  or  CAPTAIN  SAMUTL  HOTT 


adventurous  life  of  the 
<A  early  American  in  the 
age  when  tlu  land  was  an 
I  I  unknown  wilderness  and 
the  high  seas  were  the 
more  familiar  highways 
is  vividly  pictured  by  the 
old  journal  left  by  one  Captain  Samuel 
Hoyt,  an  ambitious  American  youth 
who  led  the  roving  life  of  his  genera- 
tion and  fought  in  the  early  wars  of 
his  country. 

The  journal  of  this  rugged  pioneer 
seaman  is  here  recorded.  The  stal- 
wart character  behind  the  strong  hand 
that  inscribed  it  may  be  suggested  by 
the  knowledge  that  Samuel  Hoyt  was 
the  son  of  one  of  the  New  World's 
first  families.  The  Hoyts,  who  spelled 
their  names  variously,  such  as :  Hoyte, 
Hoite,  Hoit,  Hait  and  Haight,  had 
their  beginning  in  America  through 
Simon  Hoyte,  who  was  born  in  1595, 
probably  at  Curry  Rivel,  Somerset- 
shire, England,  and  came  to  this  coun- 
try in  1628  in  the  ship  "Abigail"  with 
Governor  John  Endicott,  landing  at 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  and  exploring 
and  settling  Charlestown.  In  1630 
he  became  one  of  the  settlers  of  Dor- 
chester and  in  1631  was  made  one  of 
the  first  freemen  in  Massachusetts. 
From  Dorchester  he  went  to  Scituate 
in  1633  and  then  became  one  of  the 
settlers  of  Windsor,  Connecticut, 
about  1639;  thence  to  Fairfield  about 
1649,  a°d  then  to  Stamford,  where  he 
died  in  1657,  after  having  been  either 


an  early,  or  one  of  the  first  settlers  in 
seven  New  England  towns. 

Samuel  Hoyt,  whose  journal  is  here 
recorded,  is  a  product  of  this  family 
in  a  later  generation.  His  parents 
had  migrated  into  the  old  seaport 
town  of  Guilford,  Connecticut,  where 
he  was  born  at  East  Guilford  (now 
in  Madison)  April  3,  1744.  From  his 
own  notes  one  is  informed  of  his  ex- 
periences. He  was  twice  married, 
the  first  occasion  being  to  Clotilda 
Wilcox  who  was  born  April  29,  1745, 
and  second  to  Mary  Stone,  a  widow, 
who  was  born  November  3,  1756. 
After  eighty-two  years  of  pioneer  life 
Captain  Samuel  Hoyt  died  on  October 
5,  1826,  at  Madison. 

The  manuscript  left  by  Captain 
Samuel  Hoyt  illuminates  the  indomit- 
able courage  of  the  pioneer  Ameri- 
cans, their  hardships  and  their  suffer- 
ings. It  gives  one  a  better  under- 
standing of  what  it  meant  to  have 
lived  in  the  earlier  years  of  the  New 
World.  The  contributor  recalls  hear- 
ing his  mother,  who  was  the  daughter 
of  the  narrator,  tell  of  her  father's  ex- 
periences much  the  same  as  here  re- 
corded, and  also  of  hearing  her  tell  of 
scenes  in  the  American  Revolution. 
In  transcribing  the  old  journal  it  is 
edited  only  as  necessary  to  preserve 
an  illuminating  story  of  the  period. 
It  is  evident  that  Captain  Hoyt  re- 
wrote his  story  from  notes  and  mem- 
ory in  his  mature  years,  probably 
shortly  before  his  death. 


an    Ammran 


On  a  Fighting  Ship 

in  Havana,  Cuba,  in  1762 


first  pages  of  the  an- 
cient  journal  seem  to 
have  been  lost  and  the 
story  abruptly  begins 
with  a  record  of  experi- 
ences  in  Havana,  Cuba, 
about  1762,  when  he  was 
eighteen  years  of  age,  and  an  attack 
on  Morro  Castle  and  states  that  after 
the  reduction  of  Morro  Castle  they 
proceeded  up  the  harbor. 

That  the  Hobson  strategy  of  sink- 
ing a  ship  in  the  channel  to  bottle  up 
the  enemy  in  the  recent  Spanish- 
American  War  was  practiced  some 
one  hundred  and  thirty  years  previ- 
ously is  shown  by  one  of  the  first  en- 
tries in  this  quaint  journal.  It  says: 
"We  had  not  gone  far  before 
our  progress  was  impeded  by  a 
large  chain  thrown  across  the  channel 
and  fastened  at  each  end  so  firmly  that 
it  was  impossible  to  force  our  way 
through.  We  were,  however,  suc- 
cessful in  raising  it  upon  the  forecas- 
tle of  one  of  the  smallest  vessels  when 
the  carpenters,  with  their  chisels,  suc- 
ceeded in  cutting  it  in  two.  A  short 
time  after  we  were  again  brought  up 
by  a  seventy-four  gunship,  which  the 
inhabitants  had  sunk  to  prevent  the 
rpproach  of  the  enemy.  We,  how- 
ever, soon  removed  this  impediment. 
Before  we  arrived  so  near  the  town 
as  to  aid  the  land  forces  we  were  a 
second  time  obliged  to  stop  on  account 
of  a  ninety  .  .  .  ship  placed  in  a 
similar  manner  to  the  other.  As  soon 
as  the  commandant  of  Cuba  saw  that 
the  fleet  had  succeeded  in  clearing  the 
channel  of  the  obstacles  that  were 
thrown  in  the  way  he  immediately 
capitulated  and  thus  a  further  effusion 
of  blood  was  prevented." 

"It  was  not  without  horror,"  says 
the  journal,  "that  I  beheld  a  large 
number  of  bodies  that  were  alive  this 
morning  in  the  enjoyment  of  health, 
now  floating  upon  the  surface  of  the 
water,  having  been  thrown  overboard 
from  the  ships." 


Subsequent  to  the  taking  of  Cuba 
Captain  Crane  received  compensation 
for  his  services  and  sailed  on  the 
"Friendship,"  a  vessel  bound  for  New 
York.  The  lad,  Samuel  Hoyt,  was 
his  cabin-boy.  A  short  time  after  they 
left  Cuba  they  sighted  an  American 
vessel,  which  had  been  captured  by  the 
French  and  afterwards  retaken  by 
her  own  crew.  Their  situation  was 
hazardous  and  they  requested  Cap- 
tain Crane  to  take  them  and  part  of 
their  cargo  on  board  the  "Friendship." 
He  complied  with  their  request  and 
while  performing  this  benevolent  act 
of  humanity  lost  sight  of  his  company 
and  for  two  or  three  days  proceeded 
on  his  voyage  without  interruption. 
"At  length  a  sail  came  into  sight," 
says  the  journal.  "For  some  time 
he  kept  on  his  way  ^'Jthout  seeming 
to  regard  them,  but  as  the  signals 
were  often  repeated  he  was  induced 
at  length,  by  motives  of  humanity, 
to  bear  down  for  her.  He  soon 
after  discovered  her  to  be  a  small 
sloop,  and  from  her  appearance  con- 
cluded her  to  be  the  same  one  from 
which  he  parted  three  days  before,  but 
as  he  advanced  nearer  he  felt  less  pos- 
itive about  it,  and,  recollecting  that  his 
orders  were  (it  being  time  of  war)  to 
speak  no  vessel  and  let  none  speak 
with  him,  attempted  to  haul  his  wind 
and  get  at  a  greater  distance." 

A  Cabin-Boy's  Experiences  as 
Prisoner  on  a  Privateer 

The  journal  says  that  it  was  then  a 
little  past  sunset  and  unfortunately  an 
almost  perfect  calm  succeeded.  They 
had  not  remained  long  in  this  anxious 
condition  before  they  heard  the  sound 
of  oars  coming  from  a  distance  and 
soon  after  were  summoned  to  strike  to 
a  French  privateer.  Captain  Crane 
felt  no  great  disposition  to  surrender 
his  hard-earned  property  and  delayed 
a  compliance  in  hopes  of  being  over- 
taken with  a  favorable  gale;  but  as 
he  was  unprovided  with  the  means  of 
resistance,  and  delaying  was  danger- 
ous, he  surrendered  his  ship  as  a 
.  .  .  prize  and  his  men  as  prison- 


Snuntal  nf  (Eaptam  £>amtt?l  Sjngt — 2tora  in  1744 


crs.  When  the  officers  had  taken  for- 
mal possession  of  this  brig  they  took 
the  captain  and  several  of  his  men  on 
board  their  own  vessel  and  left  a  prize 
master  with  a  number  of  others  to 
plunder  at  their  leisure.  Immediately 
upon  their  arriving  on  board  the  pri- 
vateer a  fresh  breeze  sprung  up  and 
the  remainder  of  the  prisoners  (after 
having  been  stripped  of  nearly  all 
their  clothing)  were  forced  to  con- 
tinue on  deck  the  remainder  of  the 
night.  In  the  morning  they  were  re- 
moved on  board  the  privateer  and  con- 
fined in  her  hold.  When  they  entered 
their  new  habitation  they  found  the 
vessel's  company  which  sailed  with 
them  from  Cuba.  She  was  captured 
immediately  after  parting  with  the 
"Friendship"  and  sent  off  in  another 
direction  that  the  privateer  might  bet- 
ter succeed  in  decoying  her  compan- 
ion. Here  they  were  kept  on  a  short 
allowance  of  provision  and  were 
allowed  no  water  but  what  they 
sucked  through  a  gun-barrel  three 
feet  in  length,  and  even  this  privilege 
was  not  granted  them  but  one  minute 
in  twenty-four  hours.  Yet  notwith- 
standing the  great  severity  of  the  cap- 
tors Captain  Crane  had  the  address  to 
obtain  from  them  the  chest  which  con- 
tained the  ...  of  his  voyage. 
The  captain  of  the  privateer,  upon  ex- 
amining his  prisoners,  observed  many 
of  them  to  be  almost  or  quite  naked, 
having  been  stripped  of  their  coats, 
hats  and  breeches,  upon  which  he 
made  an  immediate  inquiry  into  the 
affair,  and  finding  out  the  true  cause 
of  their  present  appearance,  ordered 
his  men,  upon  pain  of  his  displeasure, 
to  deliver  up  those  things  they  had  so 
barbarously  forced  from  them. 

After  relating  his  experiences  as  a 
prisoner  on  a  privateer,  Samuel  Hoyt 
in  his  journal  says  that  his  captors, 
having  taken  a  number  of  prizes,  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Gulf  of  Florida,  where 
she  was  met  by  an  English  battleship, 
which  came  for  the  purpose  of  ex- 
changing prisoners.  The  captives 
were  then  ordered  on  deck  and  taken 
on  board  the  "Beneato,"  a  vessel  of 


twenty  guns.  Here  their  situation 
was  somewhat  more  comfortable,  but 
the  rigorous  discipline  which  they  ex- 
perienced in  the  ship  soon  made  them 
sigh  to  regain  their  native  liberty. 
Yet  for  the  inestimable  blessing  all  of 
them,  except  Captain  Crane  and  his 
cabin  boy,  sighed  in  vain. 

Samuel  Hoyt  tells  this  anecdote  of 
his  fidelity,  as  a  cabin-boy,  to  his  mas- 
ter: "Upon  Captain  Crane's  leaving 
the  ship,  observing  the  first  officer 
walking  the  quarter  deck,  I  went  to 
him,  and  pulling  off  my  hat,  requested 
leave  to  go  on  shore  in  company  with 
Captain  Crane.  The  officer  immedi- 
ately made  this  reply:  'We  cannot 
spare  you  at  present.'  For  the  sake  of 
consolation  he,  however,  told  me  I 
might  go  on  shore  when  the  main- 
mast went.  Not  long  after,  having 
sprung  the  mainmast,  they  took  it  out 
and  carried  it  on  shore.  When  the 
boat  was  just  shoving  off,  recollect- 
ing the  promise  given  by  the  first 
lieutenant,  I  immediately  stepped  up 
to  him  with  my  hat  under  my  arm 
and  reminded  him  of  his  promise, 
when  the  mate,  laughing  heartily  at 
the  joke,  told  me  I  must  wait  until 
the  foremast  went  on  shore." 

Life  on  the  High  Seas  off  the 
American  Coast  in  Early  Wars 

The  thrilling  adventures  of  the 
cabin  boy,  who  later  became  a  cap- 
tain, are  now  best  told  in  his  own 
words.  The  story  in  his  journal, 
from  this  point,  is  narrated  with  the 
clearness  and  vigor  of  a  born  narra- 
tor as  well  as  navigator.  Here  is  the 
story  as  transcribed  from  the  old 
manuscript : 

"After  parting  from  the  privateer 
the  'Beneato'  returned  to  South  Car- 
olina and  continued  to  cruise  off  the 
coast  several  months.  One  day  we 
discovered  a  large  ship,  and  as  we 
took  her  to  be  an  envoy  the  vessel  was 
immediately  cleared  for  action  and  all 
agreeably  were  we  surprised  when 
we  found  it  was  a  British  packet 
which  brought  intelligence  that  a 
treaty  of  peace  had  been  signed  be- 


nf    an    Amrruatt 


tween  the  sovereigns  of  France  and 
Great  Britain.  Upon  this  news  all 
hands,  dropping  their  arras,  sprang 
upon  the  yards  and  saluted  the  packet 
with  three  cheers  and  being  answered 
on  board  the  packet  we  immediately 
hove  about  and  stood  for  Charleston 
in  company.  The  great  joy  at  the 
news  of  peace  was  somewhat  damped 
upon  opening  the  mail  from  London 
wherein  were  orders  for  the  immedi- 
ate return  of  the  'Beneato.'  This 
made  the  prisoners  somewhat  sorrow- 
ful. However,  their  manly  courage 
never  forsook  them.  A  few  days 
after,  while  lying  at  anchor,  it  being 
very  early  in  the  morning,  a  midship- 
man was  ordered  to  go  on  shore  for 
the  purpose  of  filling  the  water  casks. 
The  midshipman,  proceeding  accord- 
ing to  orders,  we  lashed  the  casks  to- 
gether, and,  throwing  them  over- 
board, proceeded  to  man  the  boat 
when  the  officer,  calling  to  the  captain, 
requested  more  men.  His  answer 
was:  Take  what  number  you  shall 
think  necessary.'  Upon  the  midship- 
man hearing  this  he  called  out  to  the 
men  on  board,  saying:  'Come,  my 
boys,  jump  into  the  boat.' 

"I  was  on  deck  at  this  critical  time 
and  knowing  that  if  I  left  this  chance 
to  slip  unimproved  I  must,  of  course, 
go  to  England,  the  hopes  of  again 
seeing  my  friends  and  escaping  from 
such  cruel  masters  stimulated  my 
drooping  spirits  and  made  me  resolve 
to  try  my  legs  if  I  should  be  so  fortu- 
nate as  once  more  to  feel  terra  firma 
under  me.  Having  made  this  re- 
solve and  hearing  the  officer  call 
out  at  the  same  time  for  more  men 
I  immediately  sprang  into  the  boat 
and  sliding  under  one  of  the  benches 
lay  secreted  until  we  all  landed 
near  the  watering  place.  It  be- 
ing still  duskish  on  account  of  the 
earliness  of  the  hour  I  assisted  in  get- 
ting the  casks  out  of  the  water  and 
helped  to  secure  the  boat  when  the 
officer,  calling  to  his  men,  says: 
'Come,  my  boys,  we  will  go  and  drink 
some  bitters  before  we  proceed  any 
further  in  our  work.'  Fortune  at  last 


seemed  to  favor  me,  and,  lagging  a  lit- 
tle behind,  I  gladly  saw  them  enter  the 
house  without  observing  my  reluc- 
tance to  follow  them.  The  house  was 
situated  about  forty  or  fifty  rods  from 
the  boats.  On  the  opposite  side  of  the 
watering  place  was  a  lofty  pine  forest 
with  thick  underbrush  at  the  entrance. 
"A  neighbor  by  the  name  of 
John  Murray,  who  belonged  on  board 
the  'Friendship'  at  the  time  of  her  cap- 
ture, happened  at  this  time  to  be 
appointed  boat-keeper.  I  made  known 
my  determination  to  Murray  and  re- 
quested him  to  accompany  me.  He  at 
first  thought  my  undertaking  to  be 
foolish  in  the  extreme.  I  told  him  I 
had  no  time  to  lose  and  was  resolved 
to  try  it  myself  should  he  still  persist 
in  his  resolution  of  not  accompanying 
me.  I  then  began  to  walk  toward  the 
woods;  when  I  had  gone  but  a  few 
rods,  looking  back  I  saw  Murray  fol- 
lowing close  at  my  heels.  We  contin- 
ued to  walk  until  we  gained  the  woods, 
when,  looking  back,  we  saw  the  officer 
and  men  coming  out  of  the  house 
where  they  had  gone  for  their  bitters 
and  walking  very  moderately  down  to 
the  boat.  This  was  the  last  time  we 
saw  this  gentleman  officer. 

A  Fugitive's  Wanderings  along 
the  Desolate  Atlantic  Shore 

"We  had  but  just  entered  the  woods 
when  we  began  to  try  our  skill  in  run- 
ning. We  directed  our  course  into 
the  thickest  of  the  forest  and  ran  until 
nearly  out  of  breath  when  we  beheld, 
to  our  great  joy,  a  safe  asylum  from 
our  pursuers.  A  large  pine  had,  it 
seemed,  been  broken  off  near  the 
ground;  the  tree  being  hollow  we 
both  crept  into  it  where  we  remained 
through  the  day.  When  night  ap- 
proached we,  creeping  out  of  our  den 
or  hole  like  the  wild  beasts  of  forest, 
pursued  our  way  unmolested;  taking 
the  stars  for  our  guide  we  proceeded 
in  an  easterly  direction  until  we 
found  a  road  running  to  the  north- 
east. We  kept  this  road,  walking  as 
fast  as  possible  through  the  whole 
night. 


3I0untal  nf  (Eaptatn  £>amu?l  Ijngt — Snra  in  1744 


"Whenever  we  saw  anybody  trav- 
eling to  meet,  interrupt  or  over- 
take us  we  immediately  sprang  into 
the  woods,  so  fearful  were  we  of  be- 
ing apprehended.  The  next  day  we 
quit  the  road  and  traveled  in  the 
woods,  taking  the  sun  for  our  guide. 
The  next  night  we  proceeded  in  a 
quick  pace,  following  the  road 
through  the  night.  The  distance  we 
had  traveled  gave  us  some  hopes  of 
escaping  and  we  traveled  through  this 
day  without  leaving  the  road.  We, 
however,  kept  a  suspicious  eye  on  all 
travelers  we  met;  our  fears  of  being 
taken  somewhat  subsiding,  we  found 
to  our  surprise  we  had  appetites,  not 
having  eaten  anything  for  the  span  of 
three  days.  We  had  no  quarreling  jn 
the  road,  for  money,  the  bane  of  soci- 
ety and  source  of  all  evil,  was  not  in 
our  possession,  the  officers  being  very 
cautious  while  on  board  not  to  corrupt 
our  morals  by  leaving  us  the  possibil- 
ity of  becoming  spendthrifts.  Our 
only  resort  now  was  to  beg,  which  we 
tried,  but  without  success,  the  inhabi- 
tants agreeing  with  the  external  ap- 
pearance of  the  cottage,  it  being  a 
wretched  hovel,  not  fit  for  stabling 
cattle.  Necessity  knows  no  law ; 
neither  will  hunger  permit  a  man  to 
slight  the  meanest  hovel  while  there  is 
a  possibility  of  obtaining  the  least 
morsel  of  food  to  satiate  an  enraged 
stomach  growling  for  its  prey.  We, 
however,  made  a  shift  to  keep  on  our 
journey,  but  our  steps  were  feeble  and 
slow  through  the  remainder  of  the 
day. 

In  an  old  Southern  Mansion 
before  America  was  a  Nation 

"Just  at  sunset  we  discovered  a 
large  and  beautiful  house  standing 
upon  a  plantation.  We  quickened  our 
pace  and  reaching  the  house  a  short 
time  after  sunset  immediately  knocked 
for  admittance.  When  being  told  to 
walk  in  we  obeyed  and  were  shown 
into  a  room  where  a  gentleman  sat 
alone  by  the  fire  playing  upon  a  violin 
for  his  own  diversion.  Immediately 
upon  our  entering  the  room  the  gen- 


tleman ordered  us  to  be  seated.  When 
we  had  told  our  story  (one  which  we 
had  framed  before)  he  ordered  one  of 
the  servants  to  boil  us  a  small  kettle  of 
rice  and  in  the  meantime  began  to 
question  us.  At  length,  laughing  at 
our  fictitious  stories,  he  gave  us  to  un- 
derstand he  was  fully  persuaded  we 
were  runaways,  but,  to  silence  our 
fears,  told  us  he  would  not  expose  us. 
Having  eaten  very  heartily  of  the 
boiled  rice  he  ordered  for  our  lodging 
a  couple  bundles  of  straw  which  were 
laid  on  the  floor  before  the  fire.  We 
slept  well  and  arose  in  good  season  to 
proceed  on  our  way. 

"We  traveled  onward  till  near  the 
middle  of  the  afternoon  when  we  came 
to  a  ferry  where  we  were  hindered  for 
some  time  before  we  could  get  across, 
not  having  anything  with  which  to  re- 
ward the  ferryman  for  his  trouble. 
We,  however,  at  length  prevailed  upon 
him  to  let  his  negro  man  set  us  across. 
After  thanking  him  we  proceeded  on 
our  journey.  Sometime  after  sunset  we 
were  stopped  by  a  narrow  river  which 
was  very  deep.  We  now  perceived 
that  we  were  on  an  island  which  was 
not  inhabited.  We  cast  our  eyes 
around  and,  though  it  was  night,  we 
perceived  a  large  magnificent  house 
on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river. 
Upon  this  discovery  we  immediately 
hailed  the  ferryman  as  loud  as  we 
could  holler,  and  being  answered  by  a 
large  negro  it  was  not  long  before  we 
were  safe  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
river. 

"As  soon  as  we  were  across  we 
thanked  the  negro  and  telling  him  we 
were  entirely  unable  to  reward  him  as 
he  deserved,  were  about  to  proceed  on 
when  he  gave  us  to  understand  we 
must  go  see  massa.  We  obeyed 
accordingly  and  following  the  negro 
through  a  spacious  hall  we  were  at 
last  introduced  into  an  elegant  room 
where  sat  a  young  man  and  three 
ladies.  The  eldest  of  the  family 
appeared  to  be  about  sixty  years  of 
age  and  had  become  a  widow  but  a 
short  time  since.  There  we  were  left 
standing  for  some  time;  at  length, 


an    Ameruan 


after  having  surveyed  us  with  appar- 
ent astonishment,  he  at  last  ordered  us 
in  a  stern  voice  to  be  seated.  After 
we  had  obeyed  the  young  man  and 
taken  our  seats  we  immediately  began 
our  lamentable  story.  He  seemed  to 
listen  to  it  very  attentively  until  we 
informed  him  that  we  were  landed  at 
Charlestown,  when  he  interrupted  us 
to  inquire  why  we  did  not  seek  a  pas- 
sage by  water  as  there  were  always 
plenty  of  northern  vessels  in  Charles- 
town.  We  told  him  the  small-pox 
was  very  prevalent  there  when  we 
arrived  at  that  port,  and,  as  we  had 
neither  of  us  had  it,  we  preferred  go- 
ing by  land  to  Georgetown  and  taking 
a  passage  from  there.  'You  lie,'  said 
he,  'you  rascals!  You  have  deserted 
from  a  man-of-war  and  in  the  morn- 
ing I  will  take  you  back  to  Charles- 
town  as  I  am  authorized  to  return  all 
deserters  and  receive  five  pounds  ster- 
ling for  every  one  I  deliver.'  We, 
however,  (like  old  Job)  held  fast  our 
integrity  while  he  proceeded  to  exam- 
ine and  cross-examine  us  at  his  lei- 
sure. 

"When  he  had  pursued  this 
method  for  some  time  to  no  purpose 
he  became  very  humorsome  and  asked 
us  a  variety  of  questions  about  the 
amusements  of  the  Yankees  and  the 
different  productions  of  the  New 
England  states,  etc.,  etc.,  but  in  the 
meantime  he  took  care,  now  and  then, 
to  advert  suddenly  to  the  old  subject 
in  hopes,  no  doubt,  of  making  us  con- 
tradict our  former  assertions.  We 
were,  however,  too  much  on  our  guard 
to  be  ensnared  by  this  artifice ;  recol- 
lecting the  old  saying  that  'a  lie  well 
stuck  to  is  as  good  as  the  truth*  we 
adhered  to  our  story  so  firmly  that  he 
at  last  appeared  to  be  convinced  of  our 
innocence.  The  aforementioned  old 
lady,  whom  we  took  to  be  the  mother 
of  this  young  man,  speaking  to  her 
son,  said:  'I  wonder  you  can  be  so 
much  pleased  in  teasing  those  young 
men.  I  really  believe  they  are  honest 
lads  and  speak  the  truth.'  Before  this 
we  observed  she  was  setting  an  ele- 
gant table  and  concluded  that  the  fam- 


ily had  not  drank  tea  before  we 
arrived.  Then  judge  of  our  surprise 
and  astonishment  when  the  old  lady 
informed  us  that  this  elegant  enter- 
tainment had  been  prepared  solely  for 
us  and  gave  us  a  cordial  invitation  to 
help  ourselves  to  whatever  we  liked 
best.  We  had  been  some  time  without 
food  and  should  probably  have  in- 
jured our  health  had  not  the  idea  of 
being  carried  back  and  delivered  up  as 
deserters  taken  away  our  appetites. 

"As  soon  as  we  had  supped  the  old 
lady  commanded  us  to  follow  her ;  we 
obeyed  and  being  led  through  numer- 
ous apartments  we  at  length  arrived 
in  a  small  bed-room  which  was  ele- 
gantly furnished,  when  the  old  lady, 
pointing  to  a  bed  in  a  corner  of  the 
room  and  setting  down  the  light,  says : 
'My  lads,  you  must  sleep  there,'  telling 
us  at  the  same  time  not  to  run  away  in 
the  morning  before  she  was  up  and 
bidding  us  'Good  evening,'  left  us  to 
our  repose.  On  the  ensuing  morning 
we  arose  early  and  the  old  lady,  get- 
ting up  soon  after,  loaded  us  with 
victuals,  and,  giving  us  some  bitters, 
told  us  we  now  were  at  liberty  to  pro- 
ceed on  our  journey.  As  soon  as  we 
had  left  the  house  we  observed  the  ne- 
gro, who  had  ferried  us  across  the 
preceding  evening,  coming  to  meet  us. 
Upon  seeing  him  we  told  him  his  mas- 
ter had  given  us  liberty  to  depart. 
'Very  well,  massa,'  was  his  reply. 
We  then  proceeded  to  state  our  pov- 
erty to  him,  making  that  as  an  excuse 
for  our  not  rewarding  him  for  his  ser- 
vices to  us  the  evening  before.  While 
racking  my  brains  how  to  reward  him 
I  bethought  myself  of  a  pair  of  flannel 
drawers  which  I  had  constantly  worn 
for  near  three  months.  These  I  de- 
termined at  length  to  make  him  a 
present  of.  This  I  did  the  more  will- 
ingly for  two  special  reasons ;  the  first 
was,  the  weather  being  so  warm  as  to 
render  them  uncomfortable;  the  sec- 
ond reason  being  far  the  most 
weighty,  as  no  doubt  everyone  will 
admit  when  they  come  to  be  informed 
that  they  contained  living  animals 
almost  innumerable.  The  negro 


86 


3lflurnal  of  (Eapiain 


Snrtt  in  1744 


seemed  to  be  highly  pleased  with  his 
present  and  I  of  getting  rid  of  so  large 
a  quantity  of  live  stock,  so  that  all 
parties  being  suited,  we  parted  on 
good  terms — he  to  his  daily  labor  and 
we  to  our  occupation  of  traveling  and 
begging. 

In  the  old  Seaport  Town  of 
Newport,  145  Years  Ago 

"We  arrived  at  Georgetown  just  be- 
fore the  sun  left  the  earth  for  the 
lesser  lights  to  rule.  We  walked 
round  amongst  the  shipping  for  some 
time  without  being  able  to  find  any 
vessel  which  belonged  to  New  York. 
We,  however,  at  last  agreed  with  a 
certain  captain,  belonging  to  a  brig, 
for  our  lodging  on  board  of  his  vessel. 
We  continued  in  this  situation,  work- 
ing hard  for  the  span  of  fifteen  or  six- 
teen days,  and  all  the  wages  we  re- 
ceived was  our  daily  bread.  We  at 
length  engaged  a  passage  on  board  of 
two  different  vessels  bound  to  Rhode 
Island.  We,  however,  got  separated 
soon  after  we  left  Georgetown  by  a 
gale  of  wind  from  the  northeast, 
which  continued  to  blow  for  the  span 
of  twenty-four  hours  with  unabated 
fury.  After  the  storm  subsided  we 
proceeded  on  our  way  without  any- 
thing remarkable  taking  place.  I  shall 
only  observe  that  after  fourteen  days' 
passage  we  arrived  safe  in  Rhode 
Island  about  thirty  miles  east  from 
Newport,  where  I  arrived  just  after 
sunset  the  same  day. 

"After  arriving  at  Newport  I  spent 
the  evening  in  wandering  about  the 
town  and  among  the  shipping  in  hopes 
on  finding  some  one  of  my  acquaint- 
ance who  would  be  humane  enough 
to  find  me  a  lodging,  I  being  wholly 
destitute  of  money,  not  even  having 
anything  I  could  barter  for  a  lodging. 
At  length,  my  strength  and  fortitude 
leaving  me,  I  seated  myself  upon  a  log 
and  wept  over  my  cruel  fate.  I  re- 
mained in  this  melancholy  train  of  re- 
flection for  some  time  till  at  length, 
arousing  from  this  horrible  train  of 
ideas,  I  determined,  if  possible,  to  get 
liberty  to  sleep  in  some  vessel's  hold, 


that  the  deck  might  cover  me  from  the 
dews,  which  were  very  large  at  this 
season  of  the  year.  I  had  not  pro- 
ceeded far  down  the  wharf  with  this 
intention,  when  lo!  to  my  astonished 
sight,  I  beheld  Captain  Thomson, 
an  old  acquaintance.  He  imme- 
diately invited  me  on  board  of  his  ves- 
sel which  lay  down  at  the  end  of  the 
long  wharf.  When  we  arrived  on 
board  he  gave  orders  for  a  supper  to 
be  got  ready  as  soon  as  possible.  After 
supper  I  was  requested  by  all  present 
to  give  them  a  relation  of  my  adven- 
tures. 

"According  to  their  request  I  gave 
them  a  true  account  of  the  dangers 
and  hardships  I  had  gone  through, 
which  kept  us  up  to  a  very  late  hour. 
We  at  length,  however,  retired  to  rest 
and  arose  the  ensuing  morning  in  high 
spirits,  being  refreshed  by  that  all- 
powerful  god,  called  by  the  ancients 
Morpheus,  who  befriends  the  misera- 
ble and  revives  the  drooping  spirits  of 
the  meanest  slave.  The  vessel  which 
I  slept  on  board  of,  sailing  the  next 
morning,  I  found  myself  once  more 
alone,  without  friends  or  acquaint- 
ance. I  once  more  sat  myself  down 
without  knowing  what  to  do  or  which 
way  to  go.  While  I  remained  in  this 
situation  I  once  more  cast  a  wistful 
look  upon  the  harbor  in  hopes  of  see- 
ing some  vessel  enter  it  with  some 
acquaintance  on  board  who  might 
contribute  to  my  relief,  or,  to  state  my 
still  stronger  hopes,  I  was  trying  my 
utmost  to  find  a  vessel  in  which  I 
might  embark  for  New  Haven  or  even 
New  York.  After  looking  some  time 
I  at  length  beheld  a  vessel  beating  up 
the  harbor  (the  wind  being  ahead). 

"After  looking  some  time  at  the 
vessel,  I  again  falling  into  my  old 
train  of  melancholy  reflections,  con- 
tinued to  ponder  over  my  unhappy 
fate  until  I  was  broken  off  by  having 
my  name  called  in  an  audible  voice, 
when,  standing  up,  I  looked  around 
me  with  amazement,  wondering  who 
the  person  could  possibly  be,  as  I  had 
no  acquaintance  in  Newport.  After 
looking  for  some  time  without  being 


of    an    Ammratt 


able  to  learn  from  whence  the  voice 
proceeded  I  was  again  about  to  reseat 
myself  and  concluded  it  was  nothing 
more  than  disturbed  imagination  when 
my  ears  were  again  saluted  by  hearing 
my  name  called  a  second  time,  more 
distinctly  and  much  louder  than  I  did 
the  first  time.  I  again  looked  around 
me,  somewhat  perplexed  at  my  not  be- 
ing able  to  find  the  person  who  had  re- 
peated my  name  twice  undiscovered. 
At  length,  however,  I  espied  the  per- 
son who  had  been  hailing  me  standing 
upon  the  windlass  of  a  vessel  I  have 
mentioned  before  that  was  beating  up 
the  harbor. 

"Upon  observing  the  person  more 
narrowly  I  recognized  my  old 
friend  and  fellow-sufferer,  Murray 
(who  came  from  Georgetown  in 
another  vessel  and  had  been  separated 
from  us  by  a  storm  soon  after  we  left 
that  place.)  As  soon  as  the  vessel 
reached  the  wharf  we  were  in  each 
other's  arms  and  resolved  not  to  sep- 
arate again,  let  what  would  take  place, 
until  we  should  arrive  safe  at  home. 
N.  B.  This  makes  the  old  proverb 


good,  'Misery  loves  company.'  I  be- 
ing happy  in  the  acquisition  of  my  old 
friend,  Murray,  we  remained  together 
through  the  day.  It  growing  towards 
night,  we  thought  it  advisable  to  look 
about  us  for  a  lodging ;  walking  down 
the  wharf  for  this  purpose,  we  saw  a 
vessel  just  arrived,  and  going  on 
board,  inquired  of  the  captain  where 
she  was  bound,  and  being  embarked 
on  board  and  arrived  safe  in  New 
Haven  the  next  day  before  sunset. 
We  immediately  went  on  shore  and 
proceeded  as  far  as  East  Haven,  when 
we  took  up  our  lodging  with  a  distant 
relative  of  mine  for  that  night. 

"The  next  morning  we  arose  early, 
and  not  having  anything  to  impede 
our  progress,  proceeded  on  our  jour- 
ney with  alacrity  and  arrived  home  at 
Guilford  soon  after  the  sun  had  passed 
the  meridian,  where,  to  the  no  small 
joy  and  surprise  of  our  friends,  we 
were  received  with  exclamations  of 
satisfaction  and  wonder  almost  ex- 
ceeding belief.  We  on  our  part  were 
highly  delighted  with  the  idea  of  hav- 
ing arrived  safe  home  after  having 
been  absent  twelve  months." 


ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  INSTANCES  OF  BOYCOTT  IN  AMERICA 

Major  Peter  Norton  was  born  In  Edgartown,  Massachusetts,  September  9, 1718.  He  was  a 
prominent  citizen  holding  the  office  of  sheriff  and  attained  the  rank  of  major  in  the  Continental 
Army.  He  was  a  leader  in  overt  acts  in  resisting  British  policies  and  died  February  3,  179* 

TRANSCRIPT  PROM  ORIGINAL  CONTRIBUTED  BY 

ELLA  S.  DUNCAN  OP  KEOKUK,  IOWA 
GREAT-OREAT-ORCAT-QRANDDAUSHTKR    OF    MAJOR    NORTON 

We  the  subscribers,  inhabitants  of  the  town  of  Edgartown,  do  sincerely  and  truly 
covenant  and  agree  to  and  with  each  other,  that  from  and  after  the  first  day  of  January 
A.  D.  1775,  that  we  will  not  directly  nor  indirectly  by  ourselves  or  any  for  or  under 
us,  purchase  of  any  person  or  persons  whatever  for  the  use  of  our  families  any  kind  of 
goods,  wares  or  merchandise  of  the  growth,  produce  or  manufacture  of  Great  Britain 
or  of  the  East  Indies,  imported  from  Great  Britain,  except  tools  for  manufactures  and 
husbandry,  nails,  pins  and  needles,  until  our  Charter  Rites  be  restored,  and  the  Port 
of  Boston  be  opened,  and  if  any  person  or  persons  belonging  to  said  town  shall  refuse 
to  sign  this  or  a  similar  agreement  at  or  before  the  said  first  day  of  January,  that  we 
will  deem  them  enemies  to  the  country  and  supporters  of  the  Oppressive  Acts  of  the 
British  Parliament.  And  whereas  many  of  us,  the  subscribers,  are  owners  of  sheep, 
we  also  agree  that  we  will  sell  our  wool  for  one  shilling  per  pound  until  our  Rites  are 
restored  as  aforesaid. 

Witness  our  hands  at  Edgartown  November  the  8—1774. 

PETER  NORTON 

WM.  JERNIGAN. 


83 


in  lEarlg  Hara  in  Amtnnt 


&torw.  of 

an  Ambitiiwfl  Amrriam 

\JmtiIj  mini  at  &iximt  ftrara  of 

mas  5f  trrii  uutlt  thr  Spirit  of  $Jatriuttam  and 

against  tlj?  Will  of  Ijta  |Jarruto  marched  to  tb.r  Sattlr-linr 

in  Drfruar  of  ijia  (Cumttry  o*  (Original  Journal  of  Pctrr  Pond,  Vont  in  1  T40 

TRANSCRIBED 
BT 

MRS.  NATHAN  GIXLETT  POND 

AN   EMINENT    AMERICAN  GENEALOGIST  AND  WIFK  OF  THE  LATE  GREAT-GRANDNEPHZW  or  PETER  POWD,  THB 

WHITER  or  T:IU  ANCIENT  JOURNAL 


HAVE  in  my  possession 
old  manuscripts,  almost 
indecipherable  which  I 
believe  to  be  of  much  im- 
port, throwing  as  they 
do,  a  strong,  clear  light 
on  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant periods  in  American  history. 

The  ancient  manuscripts  were  found 
by  me  in  1868,  about  to  be  destroyed 
with  waste  paper  in  the  kitchen  of  the 
home  of  Hon.  Charles  Hobby  Pond, 
governor  of  Connecticut.  A  member 
of  the  family  was  tearing  off  pages 
from  an  old  time-stained  document. 

"What  is  that?"  I  inquired,  "It 
looks  interesting." 

"Why,  it's  nothing  but  old  'Sir'  Pe- 
ter Pond's  journeys,"  she  replied,  "It's 
not  worth  anything.  You  are  wel- 
come to  it." 

In  my  young  days  I  cultivated  the 
habit  of  devouring  everything  that 
looks  interesting,  and  that  characteris- 
tic seems  to  have  served  me  well  in 
this  instance.  In  deciphering  the  mus- 
ty sheets  I  was  fascinated  by  the 
quaint  diction  and  phonetic  spelling. 
It  indeed  is  a  model  for  the  modern 
reformers  who  would  carry  our  Eng- 
lish orthography  back  to  its  most 
primitive  elements. 

89 


I  find  that  "Sir"  Peter  Pond  in  his 
journal  relates  his  experiences  in  this 
very  romantic  period  to  which  Wash- 
ington Irving  gives  this  significance: 
"Two  leading  objects  of  commercial 
gain  have  given  birth  to  wide  and  dar- 
ing enterprise  in  the  early  history  of 
the  Americans ;  the  precious  metals  of 
the  South,  and  the  rich  peltries  of  the 
North.  These  two  pursuits  have  been 
the  pioneers  and  precursors  of  civili- 
zation. Without  pausing  on  the  bor- 
ders, they  have  penetrated  at  once,  in 
defiance  of  difficulties  and  dangers,  to 
the  heart  of  savage  countries;  laying 
open  the  hidden  secrets  of  the  wilder- 
ness; leading  the  way  to  remote  re- 
gions of  beauty  and  fertility  that  might 
have  remained  unexplored  for  ages, 
and  beckoning  after  them  the  slow 
and  pausing  steps  of  agriculture  and 
civilization.  The  Indians,  as  yet  unac- 
quainted with  the  artificial  value  given 
to  some  descriptions  of  furs,  in  civil- 
ized life,  bartered  them  away  for 
European  trinkets  and  cheap  commod- 
ities. Immense  profits  were  thus  made 
by  the  early  traders,  and  the  traffic 
was  pursued  with  avidity." 

The  journal  is  of  such  length  that 
at  this  writing  I  will  record  only  the 
portion  of  it  which  relates  to  his  boy- 
hood in  the  early  wars  of  America. 


in  lEarl     War0  in  Ammra 


3  WAS  born  in  Milford  in  the  countey  of  New  Haven  in  Conn  the  18 
day  of  Jany  1740  and  lived  thare  under  the  Government  and  pro- 
tection of  my  parans  til  the  year  56.  A  Part  of  the  British  troops 
which  Ascaped  at  Bradixis  Defeat  on  ye  Bank  of  the  Monagahaley 
in  Rea  the  french  fortafycation  which  is  now  Cald  fort  Pitmen 
Cam  to  Milford.  Toward  spring  Government  bagan  to  Rase 
troops  for  the  Insewing  Campaign  aganst  Crown  point  under 
the  Comand  of  General  Winsloe.  Beaing  then  sixteen  years  of  age  I  Gave 
my  Parans  to  understand  that  I  had  a  Strong  Desire  to  be  a  Solge.  That 
I  was  detarmind  to  enlist  under  the  Oficers  that  was  Going  from  Milford  & 
joine  the  army.  But  thay  forbid  me,  and  no  wonder  as  my  father  had  a  Larg 
and  yung  famerly  I  Just  Began  to  be  of  sum  youse  to  him  in  his  afairs.  Still 
the  same  Inklanation  &  Sperit  that  my  Ansesters  Profest  run  thero  my  Vanes. 
It  is  well  Known  that  from  fifth  Gineration  downward  we  ware  all  waryers 
Ither  by  Sea  or  Land  and  in  Dead  so  strong  was  the  Popensatey  for  the  arme 
that  I  could  not  with  stand  its  Temlations.  One  Eavening  in  April  the  Drams 
an  Instraments  of  Musick  ware  all  Imployed  to  that  Degrea  that  thay  Charmed 
me.  I  repaird  to  a  Publick  house  whare  Marth  and  Gollatrey  was  Highly  Go- 
ing on.  I  found  Miney  lads  of  my  Aquantans  which  Seamd  Determined  to 
Go  in  to  the  Sarvis.  I  talkt  with  Capt  Baldwin  and  ask  him  weather  he  would 
take  me  in  his  Companey  as  he  was  the  Recruiting  Offeser.  He  Readealey 
agread  and  I  set  my  hand  to  the  orders.  My  Parans  was  so  angry  that  thay 
forbid  me  making  my  apearance  at  Home.  I  taread  about  the  town  among  my 
fello  Solgers  and  thought  that  I  had  made  a  profitable  Exchange  giting  a  Rigi- 
mintal  Coate  in  Plase Hard  Cloth.  At  Length  the  time  Came  to  Re- 
port. Early  in  June  we  imbarked  on  bord  a  Vessel  to  join  the  Arme  at  the 
randivoere.  We  said  from  Milford  to  New  York  proceeded  up  North  river  and 
arrived  safe  at  Albany.  I  cam  on  Smartly  as  I  had  sum  of  my  Bountey  Mon- 
ey with  me.  I  did  not  want  for  Ginger  Bread  and  Small  Bear  and  sun  forgot 
that  I  had  left  my  Parans  who  were  Exseedingley  trubeld  in  Minde  for  my 
wellfair.  After  taring  thare  sum  Weakes  the  Prinsabel  Part  of  the  Armey  got 
togather  and  we  Proseaded  up  to  the  Halfmoon  and  thare  lay  til  the  hole  of  the 
Armey  from  Differant  Parts  of  the  hole  Countray  Got  to  Gather.  In  the  mean- 
time Parties  and  Teamsters  ware  Imploid  In  forwarding  Provishon  from  Post 
to  Post  and  from  Forte  Eadward  to  the  head  of  Lake  George.  It  was  supposed 
that  we  should  Crose  Lake  George  and  make  a  Desent  on  ticondaroge  But  be- 
fore that  could  be  a  Complished  the  sumer  ended.  Fall  of  Year  Seat  in  and 
we  went  to  work  at  the  fort  George  which  lay  on  the  head  of  the  Lake  by  that 
name.  In  November  it  Groed  two  cold  to  sleap  in  tents  and  the  men  began  to 
Mutanie  and  say  that  thay  had  sarved  thare  times  out  for  which  thay  ware  in- 
listed  and  would  return  Home  after  Satisfying  them  with  smooth  words  they 
ware  Prevailed  on  to  Prolong  the  Campain  a  few  weakes  and  at  the  time  prom- 
est  by  the  Ginarel  the  Camp  broke  up  and  the  troops  returned  to  thare  respect- 
ive Plasis  in  all  parts  of  ye  Country  from  which  thay  came  But  not  without 
leaving  a  Grate  Number  Behind  which  Did  with  the  Disentary  &  other  Diseases 
which  Camps  are  sub  jet  to  Appesaley  among  Raw  troops  as  the  Amaracans 
ware  at  that  time  and  thay  Beaing  Strangers  to  a  holesome  Mod  of  Cookeraray 
it  mad  Grate  Havock  with  them  in  making  youse  of  Salt  Provishons  as  thay 
did  which  was  in  a  grate  part  Broyling  &  Drinking  water  with  it  to  Exses. 

The  year  insewing  which  was  57  I  taread  at  home  with  my  Parans  so  that 
I  ascaped  the  Misfortune  of  a  number  of  my  Countrey  men  for  Moncalm  came 
against  fort  George  &  Capterd  it  &  as  the  amaracans  ware  Going  of  for  fort 
Edward  a  Greabel  to  ye  Capatalasion  the  Indians  fel  apon  them  and  mad  grate 
Havack. 

In  ye  year  58  the  Safety  of  British  Amaraca  required  that  a  large  Arme 


ainurttal  nf  |J?t*r  Petti* — Uartt  in    1T40 

should  be  raised  to  act  with  the  British  Troops  against  Cannaday  and  under 
^the  command  of  Gineral  Abercrombie  against  ticonderoge.  I  found  tareing 
at  home  was  too  Inactive  a  Life  for  me  therefore  I  joined  many  of  my  old 
Companyans  a  secont  time  for  the  Arme  of  ye  end  of  the  Campain  under  the 
same  Omsers  and  same  Regiment  under  the  command  of  Cornl  Nathan  Whit- 
ing. In  the  Spring  we  embarked  to  gine  the  Arme  at  Albany  whare  we  arrived 
safe  at  the  time  appointed.  We  ware  emploid  in  forwarding  Provishuns  to 
Fort  Edward  for  the  youse  of  the  Sarvis.  When  all  was  readey  to  cross  Lake 
George  the  Armey  Imbarked  consisting  of  18000  British  &  Provincals  in  about 
1 200  Boates  and  a  number  of  whalebotes,  floating  Battery,  Gondaloes,  Rogal- 
leyes  &  Gunbotes.  The  next  day  we  arrived  at  the  North  end  of  Lake  George 
and  landed  without  opposition.  The  french  that  were  encampt  at  that  end  of 
the  Lake  fled  at  our  appearance  as  far  as  Ticonderoge  &  joined  thare  old  com- 
mander Moncalm  &  we  ware  drawn  up  in  order  and  divided  into  Collams  and 
ordered  to  March  toward  Montcalm  in  his  camp  before  the  fort — but  unfortu- 
nately for  us  Moncalm  like  a  Gineral  dispatched  Five  hundred  to  oppose  us  in 
our  landing  or  at  least  to  Imbarres  us  in  our  March  so  he  might  put  his  Camp 
in  some  sort  of  defense  before  our  Arme  could  arrive  &  thay  did  it  most  com- 
pletely. We  had  not  Marcht  more  than  a  Mile  &  a  Half  Befoare  we  Meat  the 
falon  Hope  for  Such  it  Proved  to  be.  The  British  troops  Kept  Rode  in  One 
Collam  the  Amara  Cans  Marcht  threw  ye  Woods  on  thare  Left.  On  ye  Rite 
of  the  British  was  the  Run  of  Water  that  Emteys  from  Lake  George  into  Lake 
Champlain.  The  British  &  French  Meat  in  the  Open  Rode  Verey  Near  Each 
Other  Befoar  thay  Discovered  the  french  On  a  Count  of  the  Uneaveneas  of  the 
Ground.  Lord  How  held  the  secont  Place  in  Command  &  Beaing  at  the  Head 
of  the  British  troops  with  a  small  sidearm  in  his  hand  he  Ordered  the  troopes 
to  forme  thare  front  to  ye  Left  to  atack  the  french  But  While  this  Was  Dueing 
the  french  fird  &  his  Lordship  Receaved  a  Ball  &  three  Buck  shot  threw  the 
Senter  of  his  Brest  &  Expired  without  Spekeing  a  word.  But  the  french  Pade 
Dear  for  this  Bold  atempt.  It  Was  But  a  Short  time  Befoare  thay  ware  Sur- 
ounded  By  the  Hole  of  the  Amaracan  troops  &  those  that  Did  not  Leape  into 
the  Raped  Stream  in  Order  to  Regan  thare  Camp  ware  Made  Prisners  or  Kild 
&  those  that  Did  Went  Down  with  the  Raped  Curant  &  Was  Drounded.  From 
the  Best  Information  I  Could  Geat  from  ye  french  of  that  Partea  was  that 
thare  was  But  Seven  men  of  ye  five  Hundred  that  Reacht  the  Campt  But  it 
answered  the  Purpas  Amaseingly.  This  afair  Hapend  on  thirsday.  The  troops 
Beaing  all  Strangers  to  the  Ground  &  Runing  threw  the  Woods  after  the  Dis- 
parst  frenchmen  Night  came  on  and  thay  Got  themSelves  so  Disparst  that  thay 
Could  not  find  the  way  Back  to  thare  Boates  at  the  Landing.  That  Nite  the 
British  did  Beatter  haveing  the  Open  Rod  to  Direct  them  thay  Got  to  ye  Lake 
Sid  Without  trubel.  A  Large  Party  of  ye  amaracans  Past  the  Nite  within  a 
Bout  half  a  Mile  of  the  french  Lines  With  Out  noeing  whare  thay  ware  til 
Morning.  I  was  not  in  this  Partey.  I  had  wanderd  in  ye  Woods  in  the  Nite 
with  A  Bout  twelve  Men  of  my  aquantans — finealey  fel  on  the  Rode  a  Bout  a 
Mile  North  of  ye  spot  whare  the  first  fire  began.  Beaing  in  the  Rode  we 
Marched  toward  Our  boates  at  ye  Water  Side  But  Beaing  Dark  we  Made  But 
a  Stumbling  Pece  of  Bisness  of  it  &  Sun  Coming  aMong  the  Dead  Bodeyes 
Which  ware  Strewed  Quit  thick  on  the  Ground  for  Sum  Little  Distans.  We 
Stumbled  over  them  for  a  while  as  long  as  thay  Lasted.  At  Lengh  we  Got  to 
the  Water  just  Before  Day  Lite  in  the  Morn.  What  Could  be  found  of  the 
troops  Got  in  sum  Order  &  Began  our  March  a  Bout  two  a  Clock  in  ye  After- 
noon Crossing  the  Raped  Stream  &  Left  it  on  Our  Left  the  rode  on  this  Side 
was  Good  &  we  advansd  toward  the  french  Camp  as  fars  the  Miles  About  a 
Mile  from  the  Works  &  thare  Past  the  Night  Lying  on  Our  Armes.  This  De- 
lay Gave  the  french  What  thay  Wanted — time  to  secure  thare  Camp  which  was 


in  ?Earl     Hara  in  Anurira 


Well  Executed.  The  Next  Day  which  was  Satterday  about  Eleven  we  ware 
Seat  in  Mosin  the  British  Leading  the  Van  it  was  about.  They  ware  Drawn 
up  Before  Strong  Brest  Work  but  more  in  Extent  then  to  Permit  four  thous- 
and five  Hundred  acting.  We  had  no  Cannon  up  to  the  works.  The  Intent 
was  to  March  over  this  work  But  thay  found  themselves  Sadly  Mistaken.  The 
french  had  Cut  Down  a  Grate  number  of  Pinetrease  in  front  of  thare  Camp  at 
som  distance.  While  som  ware  Entrenching  Others  ware  Imployed  Cuting  of 
the  Lims  of  the  Trease  and  Sharpening  them  at  Both  Ends  for  a  Shevoe  Du- 
frease,  others  Cuting  of  Larg  Logs  and  Geting  them  to  the  Brest  Works.  At 
Lengh  thay  ware  Ready  for  Our  Resaption.  About  twelve  the  Parties  Began 
thare  fire  &  the  British  Put  thare  Plan  on  fut  to  March  Over  the  Works  But 
the  Lims  and  tops  of  the  Trease  on  the  Side  for  the  Diek  Stuck  fast  in  the 
Ground  and  all  pointed  at  upper  End  that  thay  Could  not  Git  threw  them  til 
thay  ware  at  Last  Obliged  to  Quit  that  plan  for  three  forths  ware  Kild  in  the 
atempt  But  the  Grater  Part  of  the  armey  Lade  in  the  Rear  on  thare  fases  til 
Nite  while  the  British  ware  Batteling  a  Brest  work  Nine  Logs  thick  in  Som 
plases  which  was  Dun  without  ye  Help  of  Canan  tho  we  had  as  fine  an  Artilrey 
Just  at  Hand  as  Could  be  in  an  armey  of  fifteen  thousand  Men  But  thay  ware 
of  no  youse  while  thay  ware  Lying  on  thare  fases.  Just  as  the  Sun  was  Seat 
ing  Abercrombie  came  from  left  to  Rite  in  the  rear  of  the  troops  ingaged  and 
Ordered  a  Retreat  Beat  and  we  left  the  Ground  with  about  two  thousand  two 
hundred  Loss  as  I  was  Informed  By  an  Officer  who  saw  the  Returns  of  ye  Nite 
Wounded  and  Mising.  We  ware  Ordered  to  Regain  our  Boates  at  the  Lake 
Side  which  was  Dun  after  traveling  all  Nite  so  Sloley  that  we  fell  asleep  by  the 
Way.  About  Nine  or  tenn  in  the  Morning  we  ware  Ordered  to  Imbark  & 
Cross  the  Lake  to  the  Head  of  Lake  George  But  to  Sea  the  Confusion  thare  was 
the  Solgers  Could  not  find  thare  One  Botes  But  Imbarked  Permisherley  whare 
Ever  thay  Could  Git  in  Expecting  the  french  at  that  Heales  Eaverey  minnet. 
We  arived  at  the  Head  of  the  Lake  in  a  short  time  —  took  up  our  Old  Incamp- 
ment  which  was  well  fortefied.  After  a  few  Days  the  armey  Began  to  Com  to 
themselves  and  found  thay  ware  safe  for  the  hole  of  the  french  in  that  Part  of 
the  Country  was  not  more  than  three  thousand  men  and  we  about  fortee  thous- 
and. We  then  Began  to  Git  up  Provishan  from  fort  Edward  to  the  Camp  But 
the  french  ware  so  Bold  as  to  Beseat  our  Scouting  Partey  Between  the  the  Camp 
and  fort  Edward  &  Cut  of  all  the  teames,  Destroy  the  Provishun,  Kill  the  Par- 
ties and  all  under  thare  ascort.  We  Past  the  Sumer  in  that  Maner  &  in  the 
fall  Verey  late  the  Camp  Broke  up  and  what  Remaned  Went  into  Winter  Qa- 
ters  in  Differant  Parts  of  the  Collanees  thus  Ended  the  Most  Ridicklas  Cam- 
pane  Eaver  Hard  of. 

The  year  59  an  armey  was  Rased  to  go  aganst  Niagaray  to  Be  Command- 
ed by  Gineral  Broduck.  As  the  Connecticut  troops  ware  not  to  Be  Imploid  in 
that  Part  of  the  armey  I  went  to  Long  Island  and  Ingaged  in  that  Sarvis.  In 
the  Spring  we  Repaird  to  Albany  &  Gined  the  armey  as  that  was  the  plase  of 
Rondevuse.  We  ware  Imploid  in  Geating  forward  Provisons  to  Oswego  for 
the  Sarvis  of  the  Campain.  When  we  asemeled  at  Osawaga  Col  Haldaman 
took  Part  of  the  troops  under  his  Command  &  Incampt  on  the  Ontarey  Side 
But  the  troops  that  ware  Destind  to  Go  aganst  Niagara  Incampt  on  the  Opaset 
Side  of  the  River  under  the  Command  of  Genneral  Bradduck  But  the  Com- 
paney  I  Belonged  to  was  not  ordered  Over  the  Lake  at  all  But  Col  Johnson  who 
was  in  the  Garsea  Sarvis  sent  for  me  In  Partickler  to  Go  Over  the  Lake.  I 
wated  on  him  and  Inquired  of  him  how  he  Came  to  take  me  the  Ondley  Man 
of  the  Company  Out  to  Go  Over  the  Lake.  He  sade  he  had  a  mind  I  should  be 
with  him.  I  then  asked  him  for  as  maney  of  the  Companey  as  would  make  me 
a  Seat  of  tent  mates.  He  sun  Complid  &  we  went  &  Incampt  with  the  troop 
for  that  Sarvis.  CaptVanvater  Commanded  the  Company  we  joind.  We  sun 


Journal  0f  $I?t*r  JlnttJi — IBnrtt  in    1740 

Imbarkt  and  Arived  at  Nagarey.  In  a  few  Days  when  all  ware  Landead  I 
was  Sent  By  the  Agatint  Mr.  Bull  as  Orderley  Sarjant  to  Genaral  Braduck. 
I  was  Kept  so  Close  to  my  Dutey  that  I  Got  neither  Sleape  nor  Rest  for  the 
armey  was  up  Befoare  the  Works  at  the  fort  and  the  General  was  Down  at 
Johnsons  Landing  four  Miles  from  the  acting  Part  of  the  armey.  I  was  forced 
to  Run  Back  &  forth  four  miles  Nite  and  Day  til  I  Could  not  Sarve  Eney 
Longer.  I  sent  to  Mr.  Bull  to  Releave  me  by  Sending  another  Sargint  in  my 
Plase  which  was  Dun  &  I  Gind  my  friends  agane  and  fought  In 
the  trenches  aganst  the  fort.  Befoar  we  had  Capterd  the  fort 
the  Gennarel  had  gind  the  arme  &  himself  &  my  frend  Col  Johnson  ware 
Both  Kilt  in  One  Day  and  Col  Shaday  of  the  New  York  troops  shot  threw  the 
Leag.  This  was  a  Loss  to  Our  Small  armey — three  Brave  Offesars  in  One 
Day.  We  Continued  the  Seage  with  Spereat  under  the  Command  of  Sir  Wil- 
liam Johnson  who  it  fell  to  after  the  Death  of  Braduck.  I  was  faverd — I  Got 
but  One  Slite  wound  Dureing  the  Seage.  At  the  End  of  Twenty  five  Days  the 
fort  Capatalated  to  leave  the  Works  with  the  honners  of  war  &  lay  down  thare 
Armes  on  the  Beach  whare  thay  ware  to  Imbark  in  Boates  for  Schanectady 
under  an  escort.  After  apointing  troops  to  Garsen  the  fort  we  Returnd  to 
Oswago  and  Bilt  a  fort  Cald  fort  Erey.  At  the  Close  of  the  Campain  what  was 
alive  returned  Home  to  thare  Native  places  But  we  had  left  a  number  Behind 
who  was  in  thare  Life  Brave  Men.  On  my  Arival  at  Milford  I  found  Maney 
of  the  Prisners  I  had  Bin  so  Industres  in  Captering  ware  Billeated  in  the 
town.  I  Past  the  winter  among  them. 

In  1760  I  Receaved  a  Commission  and  Entered  a  forth  time  in  the  armey. 
We  then  Gind  the  Armey  at  the  Old  Plase  of  Rondavuse  and  after  lying  there 
a  few  weakes  in  Camp  Duing  Rigimental  Dutey  General  Armarst  Seat  of  in 
pourshen  to  Carre  the  Baggage  to  Oswago  whare  Part  of  the  Armey  had  all 
readey  arived.  I  was  Ordered  on  this  Command — four  Offesers  &  Eighty 
Men.  On  our  arrival  at  Oswago  the  Genarel  gave  the  other  three  Offesers  as 
Maney  Men  as  would  man  One  Boate  &  Ordered  them  to  Return  to  thare  Rigi- 
ment.  Me  he  Ordered  to  Incamp  with  my  Men  in  the  Rear  of  his  fammerley 
til  farther  Orders  with  Seventy  Men  til  Just  Befoar  the  armey  Imbarkt  for 

S and  then  Gind  my  Rigiment.  Sun  after  thare  was  apointed  a  Light 

Infantry  Companey  to  be  Pickt  Out  of  Each  Rigiment — Hats  Cut  Small  that 
thay  mite  be  youneform.  I  was  apointed  to  this  Company.  When  orders  ware 
given  the  Armey  about  Nine  thousand  Imbark  in  a  Number  of  Boates  &  went 
on  the  Lake  toward  Swagochea  whar  we  Arived  safe.  Thare  we  found  Pash- 
oe  that  had  Bin  taken  at  Niagarey  the  sumer  Before  Commanding  the  fort  and 
Semed  to  Be  Detarmined  to  Dispute  us  &  Give  us  all  the  trubcl  he  Cjuld  But 
after  Eight  or  a  few  more  Days  he  was  obliged  to  Comply  with  the  tkrmes  of 
Our  Victoras  armey  a  second  time  in  les  than  One  year.  We  then  Left  a 
Garrson  &  Defended  the  River  til  we  Reacht  Montreal  the  Ondley  Plase  the 
french  Had  In  Possession  in  Canaday.  Hear  we  lay  one  Night  on  Our  Armes. 
The  next  Day  the  town  Suranderd  to  Gineral  Amharst. 

In  the  years  while  I  was  in  the  Armey  all  Canaday  was  in  the  Hands  of  the 
British  Nor  have  thay  Had  aney  Part  of  it  Sins.  All  Canaday  subdued  I 
thought  thare  was  no  bisnes  left  for  me  and  turned  my  atenshan  to  the  Seas 
thinking  to  make  it  my  Profesion  and  in  Sixtey  one  I  went  a  Voige  to  the 
Islands  in  the  West  Indees  and  Returnd  Safe  but  found  that  my  father  Had 
gon  on  a  trading  Voig  to  Detroit  and  my  Mother  falling  Sick  with  a  feaver  Dide 
Before  his  Return.  I  was  Oblige  to  Give  up  the  Idea  of  going  to  Sea  at  that 
time  and  take  Charge  of  a  Young  fammaley  til  my  father  Returnd  after  which 
I  Bent  my  Mind  after  Differant  Objects  and  tared  in  Milford  three  years  which 
was  the  Ondley  three  years  of  my  Life  I  was  three  years  in  One  Plase  Sins  I 
was  Sixteen  years  old  up  to  Sixtey. 


BILL    OF    SALE    OF   A    NORTHERN    SLAVE    IN   1721 


Transcribed  by  ELIZA  COMSTOCK,  of  New  Canaan,  Connecticut 

GRBAT-GRBAT-GBANDDAUGHTEB  OF  THE  SLAVE  HOLDER 


M 


great  -  great  grandfather 
was  a  slave  owner.  Among 
his  old  papers,  that  have 
come  down  through  the 
generations,  I  find  a  bill  of  sale  of  a 
twelve  year  old  negro  boy,  named 
"  Cesar,"  in  1721.  I  also  find  a  will 
left  by  this  same  negro  "  Cesar"  in 

1773- 

These  documents  give  an  insight 
into  the  trade  which  had  become  an 
established  American  custom  in 
these  early  days  of  the  colony.  They 
are  of  stronger  evidence  than  volumes 
of  written  theories  or  arguments. 

It  is  significant  that  "Cesar,"  the 
slave,  accumulated  property,  as  is 
shown  by  his  "  last  will  and  testa- 


ment," and  that  while  he  was  unable 
to  sign  his  own  name,  his  property 
consisted  largely  of  books.  I  have 
transcribed  it  accurately  from  the 
copy  of  the  will  still  in  my  possession. 
I  find  that  this  will  was  admitted  to 
probate  in  Norwalk,  Connecticut, 
and  is  on  the  records  of  that  prob- 
ate district. 

These  documents  tell  their  own 
story.  It  is  unnecessary  for  me  to 
elucidate  them  other  than  to  men- 
tion that  "  Dwer  "  and  "  Belinda," 
to  whom  "  Cesar"  made  bequests  in 
his  will,  were  fellow-slaves.  I  re- 
member hearing  my  father  speak 
of  them.  The  quaint  documents  are 
here  recorded  : 


To  all  People  to  whom  these  preasents  shall  Come,  greeting — 

Know  ye  that  I  John  Davice  of  the  Town  of  Bastable  in  the  County 
of  Bastable  in  ye  Province  of  ye  Machejusett  Bay,  for  and  in  Consideration  of 
the  sum  of  fifty  and  eight  pounds  in  Current  Money  of  the  Colony  of  Con- 
necticut: to  me  in  hand  Payed  by  Moses  Corns tock  of  the  town  of  Norwalk  in 
the  County  of  Fair  field  in  ye  Colony  of  Connecticut  j  have  given  granted 
bargained  sold  and  by  these  presents  Delivered  unto  the  aforesaid  Moses  Corn- 
stock  a  Cartain  Negro  boy  (aged  about  twelve  years)  Caled  and  known  by  the 
Name  of  Cesar:  for  him  to  have  and  to  hold  said  Negro  boy  to  him  the  said 
Moses  Comstock,  his  heirs,  Executors,  Administrators  and  assignes  during 
the  term  of  said  Negros  Natural  Life;  and  in  witness  wheareof  1  heare 
hereunto  sett  my  hand  and  seal  this  26th  day  of  April  Anno  1721. 

Signed  sealed  and  delivered 

In  presence  of 

Berys  A.  Lines.  John  Davice.     (Seal) 

Jacob  Hays. 


94 


QUAINT     WILL     OF     A     NEGRO    SLAVE     IN     1773 

y  CESAR  Negro  Man  of  Abijah  Comstock  of  Norwalk  in  the  County 
of  Fairfield  and  Colony    of    Connecticut,     Being  of  sound  Mind 
and  Memory  And  Calling  To  Mind  my  Mortallity,   Knowing  it  is 
Appointed  for  all  Men  once  to  Die   With   the  approbation  of  my  Above  s'd 
Master  Do  make  and  ordain  this   my  Last  Will  and  Testament.     As  fol- 
lows, Viz. — 

ist  I  give  to  my  master  Abijah  Comstock  my  Great  Bible,  Confession  of 
Faith,  Mathew  henry  upon  the  Sacrament  one  old  Trap  of  my  Deceased 
Masters  and  woppit.  Furthermore — 

2nd  I  give  to  my  Master's  son  David  my  small  Bible  &*  psalm  Book, 
Willison's  Explanation,  Joseph  Allen,  Thomas  Gouge,   My  new  chest    And 
young  Bobben  trap  and  half  of  my  Money  Except  a  reserve  Hereafter   made 
even  the  price  of  a  silver  Spoon  Left  at  the  Discrition  of  my  Master  to  pur- 
chase &•(. 

3rd  I  give  to  my  Masters  son  Enoch,  Joseph  Sewall,  Dr.  Watts 
Catechism,  Thomas  Shepperd  Solomon  Stodard  and  S  Wright  My  clasp 
paper  pocket  Book  My  New  Bever  hat  and  Case  And  hayt  trap  And  the 
other  half  of  my  Money  Except  the  Value  of  one  silver  spoon. 
David  and  }  At  Masters  Decease  my  Great  Bible  to  David  And  the 
Enoch.  \  rest  to  Enoch. 

If  Either  of  my  Masters  above  sd.  sons  Dye  without  heirs  The  survivors 
to  take  what  I  gave  to  the  Deceased. 

My  silver  spoon  to  Hannah        j 

A  silver  spoon  to  Dinah  r      My  Master's  Daughters 

A  silver  spoon  to  Deborah 

To  Thomas  My  Masters  Eldest  son  The  Dissenting  Gentlemans  Anss. 

To  Abigail  Eells     \ 

To  Moses  Eells       \  ^e  Almost  Christians  and  when  Deced. 

To  Hannah  hanford — Four  Books — Viz.  Law  &  Grace,  John  Bunyon, 
Vincens  Sudden  and  Certain  Appearance  to  Judgment — Vine  ens  Explana- 
tion uf>on  the  Catechism.  John  Fox,  Time  &•  End  of  time. 

To  Phineas  hanford  one  trap  called  old  Bobben. 

To  Samuel  hanford  one  Book  a  Cordial  to  the  fainting  Saint. 

My  silver  shoe  Buckles  or*  knee  buckles  <5r»  clasps  which  was  above  for- 
gotten With  my  Tankard  Quart  pot  and  Bason  To  David  with  my  sleeve 
Buttons  and  Gloves. 

My  old  chest  to  Dwer  and  then   to  Dwer  and  Belinda  all  my  caps  and 
handkerchiefs,  old  shoe  buckles  to  Dwer  and  knee  buckles. 
February  ye  I 3th  A.  D.  ///J.     I  appoint  my  Master  Abijah  Comstock  to  be 

Executor  of  this  my  last  will  and  testament. 
Daniel  Lockwood.  His 

Samuel  Lockwood.  Cesar   x    Seal 

Mark 


A    MOTHER'S    LETTER     TO      HER     SON     IN    1789 

TRANSCRIPT  OF  LETTER  WRITTEN  BY  MRS.  MARY  WRIGHT 
ALSOP,  BORN  FEBRUARY  24,  1740,  TO  JOSEPH  WRIGHT 
ALSOP,  BORN  MARCH  a,  1772— NOW  IN  POSSESSION  OF  A 
DESCENDANT,  JOSEPH  ALSOP  OF  AVON,  CONNECTICUT 

Dear  Joseph : — 

My  great  concern  for  your  Prosperity  in  this  World  and  your  Hap- 
piness hereafter,  have  induced  me  to  give  you  my  Advice  in  writing; 
hopeing  you  will  read  it  frequently,  and  impress  it  on  your  Mind,  and 

regulate  your  conduct  by  it In  the  first  place,  I  wish  you  to  have  a 

due  sense  of  your  dependance  on  God ;  and  that  will  induce  you  to  be 
careful  not  to  be  offensive  in  thought,  word  or  deed Never  Men- 
tion the  word  of  God  but  with  reverence You  must  never  jest  with 

anything  Sacred  or  Religious Attend  Church  constantly,  and  be- 
have with  decency  when  there Carefully  avoid  all  profane  Language, 

for  it  is  very  wicked,  and  no  pleasure  or  advantage  can  arise  from  it 

Execute  the  business  allotted  to  you  with  the  utmost  exactness  and 

fidelity Always  study  to  give  satisfaction  to  those  with  whom  you 

live Be  not  difficult  to  please  with  respect  to  your  diet,  or  anything 

else;  for  it  argues  an  insolent  temper,  and  will  gain  the  ill  will  of  every- 
one that  lives  with  you;  and  you  will  not  only  loose  the  esteem  of  the 
family  but  will  fare  worse  in  every  respect 

Avoid  gameing  of  every  kind;  it  is  a  pernicious  Vice ;  Many  have 
been  ruined  by  it:  shun  it  in  the  smallest  degree  for  it  will  lead  you 
imperceptibly  on  to  destruction.  God  grant  my  advice  on  this  head  may 

be  unnecessary ;  as  I  hope  you  have  no  propensity  to  gameing 

Shun  the  company  of  idle  dissolute  people;  never  on  any  account  as- 
sociate with  such;  if  you  do  they  will  most  certainly  hurt  your  Morals, 
and  your  character  will  be  ruined 

Be  careful  never  to  offend  any  one;  but  if  you  should  inadvertently 
do  it,  readily  make  a  proper  acknowledgment;  for  candidly  to  confess  our 

faults,  argues  a  generous  mind,  and  we  are  more  esteemed  for  it 

Be  not  too  ready  to  take  or  resent  an  affront;  it  is  much  better  to  pass 
over  trifles,  than  to  be  continually  irritated ;  a  person  of  that  temper 

frequently  take  offense  when  there  was  none  intended But  if  an 

affront  is  really  intended,  resent  it  properly,  but  not  with  ill  language, 
or  too  vulgar  behaviour 

Be  decent  in  your  Dress  but  not  fopish  or  extravagant;  for  you  will 
not  be  esteemed  by  those  whose  opinion  are  of  any  consequence  for 
your  dress  but  for  your  good  behaviour 

I  flatter  myself  it  is  not  needful  for  me  to  mention  Honesty  and  in- 
tegrity to  you 

If  there  is  anything  more  than  I  have  not  particularly  mentioned, 
your  own  reflections  will  suggest  them  to  your  mind,  and  supply  the  de- 
ficiency  

I  hope  you  will  peruse  this  with   that  attention  which  I  think  my 

great  concern  for  your  present  and  future  welfare  demands That 

God  will  Bless  and  Protect  you,  and  give  you  Grace  so  to  conduct  your- 
self thro'  Life,  that  you  may,  thro'  the  Merits  of  our  Redeemer,  be  ever- 
lastingly happy,  is  the  fervent  prayer  of  your  affectionate  mother 

3oth  March  1789  Mary  Alsop. 

Joseph  W.  Alsop. 


ICtfr  0tt  Attwrinw 


Exptftmtf 

nt"   a   JFrbrral    Inetirr 

mi  thr  (Trail  uf  thr  JJrairir  &rhnnnrra  J* 

(Carritinn,  th,r  Caut  tntn  thr  Ulrstrnt  mubrrnraa  j* 

(Erratics   with    thr   JhtiUauo    aub   thr  Eatabltahmrnt   nf  (Cnurta 

tn  a  Caub  nf  ^ulb  anb  &ilurr  ^  Shr  Sirth  nf  thr  Sirh  Wrat  «^  firminiarrnrra 


JUDGK  LYMAX  E.  Muxsox.  LL.B. 

JUSTICE  or  THE  UNITED  STATES  DISTRICT  COUKT   op    MONTANA  TNUEB  APIHIINTMKNT  OF  PKESIDKNT  LINCOLN  IK 

1865,  AND  WHOSE  JUDICIAL  DKC-ICIONS  WKP.K  INSTRUMENTAL  IN  MOULDINH  THE  TEKRITIIKIAL  DESTINY 

or  WESTERN  AMERICA— HORN  IN  MASSACHUSETTS  IN  1822,  AND  NOW  HETII:ED  KROM 

ACTIVE  PRACTICE  IN  HIS  EHUITY-HIXTII  YEAR 


/ 


birth  of  the  Rich  West 
^  is   one   of   the   most   ro- 

niantic  stories  in  Ameri- 

W  L  can  ^e'  ^  *s  ^e  c^'va'" 
rous  tale  of  the  conquer- 
ing of  mountains  and  can- 
yons,of  forest  and  wilder- 
ness, of  savage  men  and  more  savage 
beasts.  It  is  but  forty-two  years 
ago  that  the  writer  of  this  narrative 
parsed  through  the  experiences  here 
described,  and  to-day  this  same  path- 


less wild  is  aglow  with  untold  wealth 
in  precious  ores,  vast  timber  lands, 
and  rolling  fields  of  grain.  Montana, 
the  scene  of  this  action,  is  alone 
contributing  three  hundred  million 
pounds  of  copper  annually,  and  gold 
and  silver  treasured  at  nearly  twen- 
ty-four million  dollars  yearly,  while 
its  dense  forests  of  more  than  twelve 
million  acres  are  almost  priceless  in 
their  riches  and  its  Great  Falls  offer 
water  power  three  times  that  of 
Niagara. 


of    a     ilmtiana 


ECEIVING  from  Presi- 
dent  Lincoln  in  March, 
1865,  my  commission  as 
one  of  the  three  United 
States  judges  of  the  Su- 
preme  Court  of  Mon- 
tana, I  began  preparing 
for  the  start  into  the  American  wilder- 
ness in  the  service  of  my  country.  I 
will  relate  the  incidents  as  I  experi- 
enced them. 

The  discovery  of  gold  in  Montana 
in  1863  and  1864,  nacl  attracted  wide- 
spread attention,  and  people  flocked 
there  in  wild  enthusiasm  at  the  pros- 
pect of  speedy  wealth,  apparently 
dreaming  that  a  trip  there  would  be 
equivalent  to  a  life-time  of  ease  and 
luxury  in  golden  dreams.  Crime  was 
rampant  with  no  laws  or  courts  for 
its  restraint. 

Congress,  to  meet  the  emergency, 
provided  for  a  territorial  government, 
over  the  country,  by  act  approved 
May  26,  1864.  Under  this  act  as  a 
political  division  of  territorial  area, 
Montana  was  larger  in  extent  than  all 
the  six  New  England  states,  New 
York,  New  Jersey,  Delaware  and 
Maryland  combined. 

At  this  time  no  railroads  crossed 
the  continent,  and  it  was  unsafe  to 
travel  in  those  western  wilds,  except 
in  large  well-armed  parties,  and  even 
-then  the  danger  was  great  on  account 
of  the  Indians  who  struck  terror  to  all 
objects  of  civilized  life  in  their  sur- 
roundings. 

Appointees  for  the  government  of 
Montana,  in  the  summer  of  1864, 
made  rendezvous  at  Omaha,  pur- 
chased their  outfit,  with  three  months' 
provision  for  the  journey,  joined  an 
•emigrant  train  for  Salt  Lake  and 
started,  arriving  at  Virginia  City  in 
Southern  Montana  late  in  the  fall  of 
1864. 

Here  they  found  a  large  popula- 
tion seeking  gold,  and  human  life 
was  a  small  obstacle  in  their  way  of 
getting  it.  Among  this  rough,  law- 
less element,  were  as  brave,  true  men 
as  ever  faced  danger  or  met  duty.  Out 
of  dire  necessity  a  Vigilance  Com- 


mittee had  been  organized  for  protec- 
tion, and  for  a  time  it  was  a  question 
which  would  be  cleaned  out  first,  the 
committee  or  the  banditti.  It  was  a 
trying  crisis  for  the  future  of  the  Ter- 
ritory. Adventurous  men  and  women, 
long  emancipated  from  restraints  of 
home  and  the  refining  influences  of 
virtuous  society,  who  had  followed 
camp  life  on  the  Pacific  slope  as  long 
as  it  was  safe  to  remain  there,  had 
come  to  Montana. ' 

This  committee,  hardly  knowing 
whom  to  invite  in,  or  exclude  from  its 
councils,  with  resolute  purpose,  with 
physical  bravery  and  moral  courage 
that  would  have  crowned  them  mar- 
tyrs at  the  stake  in  any  age  of  the 
world,  went  forward  with  their  work. 
Detective  agencies  sent  out,  the  net- 
work woven — and  at  a  given  signal 
the  net  was  sprung,  criminals  arrest- 
ed, and  brought  in  from  different 
points  to  a  designated  place,  and  there 
charged  with  crime — a  trial  took 
place,  and  five  of  them  were  hanged 
at  one  time.  This  was  the  most  im- 
portant day's  work  ever  done  in  the 
Territory.  Similar  arrests,  trials, 
convictions  and  executions  were 
held,  sometimes  one,  two,  and  three 
executions  at  a  time,  till  between 
the  twenty-first  day  of  December, 

1863,  and  the  third  day  of  February, 

1864,  a  "ttle  over  a  month,  at  Virginia 
City    and    Bannack,    twenty-four    of 
these   outlaws,    including   the    sheriff 
and  two  of  his  deputies,  were  hanged 
by  the  Vigilantes  ;  and  eight  others,  in- 
cluding two  attorneys   who  had   de- 
fended the  criminals  at  the  trial,  were 
banished  from  the  Territory. 

The  sheriff  and  his  deputy  pals  were 
in  league  as  robbers  of  coach  and  pas- 
sengers with  gold  consignments  to 
the  states.  His  official  position 
gained  information  as  to  coach  out- 
fit, and  if  the  outfit  promised  favorable 
results,  the  coach  met  with  masked 
robbers  and  the  robbery  was  com- 
pleted. Success  finally  betrayed  his 
ambition,  and  he  was  brought  to  view 
his  ending  at  the  end  of  a  hangman's 
rope.  The  sheriff  was  a  well-built, 

98 


LEFT    BY    THE    ABORIGINE    AND  TREASURED    TO    HIS    MEMORY 


SIGNING    THE    TREATY    WITH    THE    INDIANS    IN    A    BARTER    FOR    HIS    LANDS 
FROM    COLLECTIONS  OP  THE    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY    OF    MONTANA 


%i>mtntBr?nr*B     flf    a     iHnntana 


all-around  confidence  man,  whose 
position  disarmed  suspicion  and  his 
punishment  too  long  delayed.  Vigi- 
lante execution  was  speedy,  usually 
within  an  hour  after  conviction. 
After  every  execution,  good  people 
breathed  freer;  that  is,  those  who 
could  breathe  at  all,  for  it  was  found 
at  the  trials  by'proof,  confession  and 
otherwise,  that  these  adventurers  be- 
came insane  with  the  greed  for  gold 
and  over  one  hundred  lives  were  sac- 
rificed to  their  sordid  ambitions.  Con- 
science was  temporarily  stupefied  by 
the  stampede  for  riches.  One  victim 
at  the  end  of  the  rope,  confessed  that 
it  was  quicker  and  easier  to  kill  a  man 
for  his  gold  than  to  dig  for  it. 

These  trials  were  before  a  Vigi- 
lante jury,  presided  over  by  one  of 
their  number  with  dignity  and  deco- 
rum, with  a  conscientious  regard  for 
the  rights  of  the  innocent,  as  well  as 
stern  justice  for  the  guilty.  If  on 
trial,  suspicion  was  strong  and  evi- 
dence weak,  the  accused  was  given  so 
many  hours  to  leave  the  Territory,  and 
if  he  did  not  leave  within  the  time 
limited,  he  never  left  at  all.  No 
one,  once  warned,  waited  for  a 
second  call,  and  he  asked  for  no  days 
of  grace  to  the  time  limited. 

The  history  of  the  Vigilance  Com- 
mittee in  Montana  is  so  incorporated 
into  its  early  history,  that  I  feel  justi- 
fied in  alluding  to  it  as  one  of  the  nec- 
essary forces  used  to  eradicate  a  greater 
evil.  The  conscious  existence  of  this 
committee  was  a  wholesome  dread  to 
evil-doers.  It  will  be  remembered 
that,  at  the  time  of  this  active  work  of 
the  Vigilantes,  there  was  not  an  or- 
ganized court  in  the  limits  of  the  Ter- 
ritory, and  not  one  East  between  the 
Rocky  Mountains  and  Yankton,  in 
Dakota,  nearly  one  thousand  miles 
distant. 

When  President  Lincoln  summoned 
me  to  Montana,  I  could  gain  but  little 
information  by  correspondence  or  in- 
quiry, as  to  the  condition  of  affairs  in 
the  Territory — where  I  should  be  lo- 
cated when  there — or  the  best  way  to 


go.  Deciding  upon  the  river  route,  I 
shipped  my  library  to  St.  Louis,  tak- 
ing a  steamer  there  for  Fort  Benton, 
the  head  of  steamboat  navigation, 
three  thousand  miles  distant  by  river 
from  St.  Louis,  and  it  took  over  fifty 
days  to  complete  the  trip,  yet  our 
steamer  was  the  crack  boat  on  the 
river  that  season. 

Passing  Yankton,  in  the  lower  part 
of  Dakota  one  thousand,  one  hundred 
and  eighty  miles  by  river  above  St. 
Louis,  we  entered  a  country  filled 
with  hostile  Indians.  Military  forts 
and  stockades  were  besieged  by  the 
redskins,  and  commanders  of  the  forts 
tried  to  impress  upon  the  captain  of 
our  boat  the  perils  of  the  trip,  and  it 
required  no  stretch  of  imagination  to 
guard  against  possible  adverse  expe- 
riences on  the  way. 

Fort  Rice,  one  thousand  eight  hun- 
dred miles  above  St.  Louis  by  the 
river,  had  been  surrounded  by  them 
for  days,  it  not  being  safe  for  even 
picket  men  to  venture  outside  the  en- 
closure. Mooring  our  boat  to  the 
shore,  Indians  interpreted  our  arrival 
as  reinforcements  for  the  fort  and 
they  left.  Colonel  Reeves,  command- 
ant of  the  fort,  showed  us  a  poisoned 
arrow  taken  from  the  body  of  one  of 
his  soldiers  who  had  died  that  day  in 
great  agony  from  its  effects. 

The  pilot  house  of  our  boat  was 
sheathed  with  boiler  iron,  with  peep- 
holes to  look  out  for  safe  navigation, 
and  other  precautions  taken  for 
safety.  There  was  no  security  in 
traveling  through  the  Indian  country 
at  that  date,  except  in  large,  well- 
armed  parties,  and  even  then  trains 
were  frequently  stampeded  by  the 
bold  dash  and  dreaded  war-whoop  of 
the  Indians,  who  swept  down  like  an 
evil  spirit  of  the  winds  to  help  them- 
selves to  the  scalps  of  drivers  and 
plunder  from  the  trains.  Many  to 
this  day  remember  how  frequently 
the  coaches  on  the  overland  route 
were  attacked  by  the  Indians,  and 
how  thrillingly  graphic  were  the 
scenes  described  by  those  who  escaped 
the  peril. 


A   PIONEER    SETTLEMENT    IN    THE    LAND    OF    GOLD-MONTANA    CITY    IN    1864 


NDIAN     (iRAVK    (>X     THK     TRAIL    BEFORE    THK     INVASION     BY    CIVILIZATION 
FROM      COLLECTIONS    OF    THE    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY    OF    MONTANA 


a 


At  night  our  boat  was  anchored 
with  sentinels  on  guard  to  prevent 
surprise  or  attack. 

On  our  way  up  the  river  we  en- 
countered vast  herds  of  buffaloes 
moving  from  southern  to  northern 
feeding  grounds.  The  plains,  at 
times,  on  either  side  of  the  river,  were 
literally  covered  with  them  as  far  as 
the  eye  could  reach.  They  came  to 
the  river-bank  and  plunged  into  the 
sweeping  floods  regardless  of  fear 
and  swam  to  the  opposite  shore  like 
veterans  in  their  native  element. 

Such  a  sight  will  never  again  be 
witnessed  by  mortal  eyes.  The  river 
was  full  of  them ;  so  full,  that  we 
were  obliged  on  different  days  to  stop 
the  steamer  to  avoid  being  swamped 
by  them.  On  one  occasion  a  stalwart 
fellow  became  entangled  in  the  wheel 
of  the  steamer,  and  in  his  efforts  for 
release,  ripped  out  some  of  the  buck- 
ets of  the  wheel,  necessitating  repairs. 
Some  fat  heifers  and  calves  were  las- 
soed from  the  river  and  killed  for 
fresh  meat  for  boat  supplies.  Ex- 
citement on  these  occasions  lifted  us 
into  pleasurable  emotions  regardless 
of  possible  events  for  the  morrow. 
Each  had  its  markings  different  from 
preceding  days. 

At  times  an  old  bullock  which  had 
often  piloted  the  herd  over  vast  prai- 
ries to  better  feeding  grounds,  being 
fought  and  gored  by  younger  blood  of 
the  same  gender,  would  lag  behind  on" 
the  plains  meditating  on  the  mutabili- 
ties of  time.  No  king  deposed  from 
thronely  power  seemingly  ever  felt 
the  force  of  adverse  circumstances 
more  keenly  than  these  deposed  mon- 
archs  from  prairie  ranges  forty  years 
ago. 

A  wolf  finding  them  alone,  would 
watch  their  movements,  and  sound 
his  call  for  help,  which  being  an- 
swered by  others  understanding  the 
signal,  would  hasten  to  respond ;  and 
when  a  sufficient  number  had  gath- 
ered, would  attack  and  drag  their  vic- 
tim down  for  a  feast.  These  exhibi- 
tions were  not  rare  in  episode,  but 
pathetic  in  exhibition.  \Yolves  in 


single  numbers  are  cowards  for 
attack,  but  when  fortified  by  numbers 
are  courageous  and  voracious  till 
their  hunger  is  appeased.  It  is  won- 
derful how  well  understood  is  the 
language  of  beast  and  bird-life  pecu- 
liar to  their  species,  and  how  quickly 
they  respond  to  the  meaning  of  sig- 
nals !  Montana  was  full  of  buffalo, 
moose,  elk,  deer,  antelope,  bear, 
wolves,  foxes,  and  other  game,  and 
rifles  echoed  results  in  trophies  that 
garnished  the  menu  of  our  table  on 
the  transit. 

Buffalo  hunting  .was  exciting  and 
perilous.  A  wounded  buffalo  would 
often  turn  upon  his  pursuers,  and 
in  his  fury,  horse  and  rider  would 
go  down  to  rise  no  more.  Buffalo 
are  powerfully  built,  with  fourteen 
pairs  of  ribs  to  the  ox  thirteen, 
and  courageous  to  the  extent  of  their 
vitality. 

In  the  timber  that  fringed  the  river 
bank,  otter,  beaver,  mink  and  musk- 
rat,  splashed  into  the  water  on  our 
approach.  Lagoons  and  lakelets 
were  alive  with  water-fowl  that 
sported  in  security,  apparently  tame 
in  their  wildness. 

Game  birds  and  animals  strutted  in 
tempting  attitudes  before  the  gunner 
armed  with  breech-loading  shot-guns, 
and  the  deadly  aim  of  Winchester 
rifles  often  varied  the  menu  at  our 
cabin  table  with  luxuries  that  would 
tempt  the  gods  of  epicurean  habit. 

Rivers  and  lakes  were  full  of  deli- 
cious trout,  as  pretty  speckled  beau- 
ties as  ever  tempted  the  eye,  or  tic- 
kled the  palate  of  good  old  Isaac 
Walton,  who  hung  up  his  fishing 
tackle  without  visiting  Montana,  and 
his  facetious  pen  was  lost  to  the  de- 
scription of  celebrities  in  its  waters; 
where  a  few  hours  of  careless  fishing 
would  satisfy  the  ambition  of  any 
one,  especially  if  he  had  to  carry  the 
catch  far  on  his  back.  There  is  a  tra- 
dition in  Montana  of  a  man  on  mule- 
back  fording  one  of  its  streams, 
where  the  trout  were  so  voracious 
that  they  bit  the  spurs  of  his  boots 
and  hung  on  till  he  reached  shore, 


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AN    OVERLAND    STA(!E-L1NE    TICKET    INTO    TPE    GOI  DEN    WEST    IN    1866 


THE     BIRTH     OF    A    METROPOLIS-HELENA,     MONTANA.     AHolT     1"    YKA! 

SOCIETY    OF    MONTANA 


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and  people  repeated  it  as  if  they  be- 
lieved it  true,  and  they  were  never 
hanged  for  speaking  the  truth. 

A  school  teacher  from  Massachu- 
setts, writing  to  the  Springfield  Re- 
publican, said  that  his  fishing  experi- 
ence culminated  when  he  reached 
Snake  river.  That  he  there  "caught 
a  brook  trout  that  had  a  chipmunk 
and  a  mole  in  his  stomach  and  still 
was  hungry."  "What  do  you  think," 
said  he,  "of  brook  trout  two  feet,  four 
inches  long,  with  a  nose  four  inches 
in  breadth,  a  mouth  like  a  good-sized 
shark,  and  weighing  six  and  one-half 
pounds  ?  You  will  not  believe  in  such 
fish,  but  I  assure  you  that  Snake  river 
is  full  of  them,  of  incredible  ferocity, 
and  voracious  to  the  last  degree." 

At  Wolf  Point,  so-called,  on  the 
banks  of  the  river,  some  woodchop- 
pers  had  built  a  stockade  to  divide 
their  time  in  cutting  wood  for  the 
steamers,  and  trapping  for  furs,  and 
it  proved  most  profitable.  They 
killed  a  buffalo — cut  out  what  meat 
they  wanted  to  use,  and  poisoned  the 
carcass  for  the  wolves.  The  first 
night  seventy-two  wolves  came  to 
grief.  This  was  the  largest  wolf- 
gathering  I  ever  saw.  They  had 
come  in  from  prairie  ravines  and  tim- 
ber nooks  for  a  feast,  and  they  lay 
around  the  stockade  on  our  arrival 
mid-day  following  their  adventure, 
harmless  of  snapping  teeth  that  glis- 
tened in  the  sun  waiting  the  knife  to 
separate  their  furry  backs  to  fleshy 
coverings,  which  suggested  comforta- 
ble robes  for  wintry  days.  An  Indian 
would  skin  a  wolf,  surrendering  its 
pelt  to  its  captor  for  its  carcass  for 
his  feast,  regardless  of  the  cause  of 
its  death  and  careless  of  his  own  mor- 
tuary record.  The  captain  of  our 
boat  made  arrangements  with  the 
stockade  adventurers  for  the  pur- 
chase of  their  pelts  on  his  return,  with 
as  many  more  as  they  might  capture 
in  the  interim. 

River  traffic  in  those  days  picked 
up  much  furry  materials  at  local 
points  on  the  river  that  did  not  enter 
into  commercial  reports,  but  their 


markings  in  value  on  return  trips 
were  as  great  as  on  an  tip-trip  adven- 
ture. 

About  one  hundred  miles  below 
Benton,  our  boat  grounded.  On 
board  as  passenger  was  Major  Up- 
son,  Indian  agent  at  Benton,  return- 
ing with  annuity  goods  for  distribu- 
tion among  the  Indians  connected 
with  the  agency.  Some  Indians  came 
to  the  river  bank  who  knew  the  ma- 
jor. He  told  them  what  he  had  on 
board  which  excited  their  vision  of 
supplies,  and  gave  one  a  letter  to 
deliver  with  utmost  speed  to  the 
agency  at  Benton.  After  a  square 
meal  for  the  start,  and  a  sandwich  for 
the  way,  the  Indian  started,  leaving 
his  three  companions  as  hostages  on 
the  boat  to  await  his  return.  Indians 
are  fleet  runners,  and  in  two  days 
from  starting  he  had  delivered  his 
errand  and  returned.  Three  days 
later,  teams  appeared ;  the  boat  light- 
ed of  freight  again  steamed  up  the 
river.  Strict  surveillance  was  kept 
over  the  Indians  on  the  boat  till  the 
Indian  returned — only  one  allowed  to 
leave  the  boat  at  a  time  for  fear  of 
treachery  if  they  met  other  Indians. 

Near  Benton  several  persons,  a  few 
days  before  our  arrival,  were  reported 
as  massacred  by  the  Indians.  This 
soon  after  was  retaliated  by  whites, 
when  eleven  Indians  at  one  time,  out 
of  deference  to  Winchester  rifle  bul- 
lets, passed  over  into  the  spirit  land, 
leaving  their  bodies  and  blankets  on 
the  ground,  and  their  scalps  flutter- 
ing on  poles  with  night  winds  chant- 
ing a  requiem  over  their  departure. 

After  some  delay  at  Benton  we 
started  with  mule  trains  and  prairie 
schooners  for  Helena,  one  hundred 
and  forty  miles  distant.  The  trail 
was  sufficiently  marked  to  follow  the 
way.  We  usually  encamped  for  the 
night  about  mid-afternoon  near  a 
spring  or  water  course.  Wagons 
were  drawn  up  in  a  circle,  horses 
tethered  out  for  grazing  and  a  dinner 
prepared,  sometimes  stimulated  by 
heat  energies  from  dried  buffalo 
chips,  which  was  received  with  less 


CHIEF  YELLOW  BOY  GIVING  PEACE  SIGN  TO 
THE  WHITE  INVADERS— FROM  THE  COLLECTIONS 
OF  THE  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  OP  MONTANA 


itf    a 


grumbling  by  the  guest  than  are  din- 
ners served  to  major-generals  from 
embalmed  beef  of  modern  notoriety. 

At  night,  horses  were  brought  into 
the  enclosed  circle  for  safety,  passen- 
gers spread  their  blankets  on  the 
ground  under  the  wagon  for  night's 
repose,  trusty  sentinels  kept  watch 
around  the  encampment,  while  the 
music  of  howling  wolves  in  the  near 
distance  contributed  to  wakeful  hours 
of  nervous  sleepers.  Time  wore 
away  distance,  and  on  Sunday,  July 
9,  1865,  we  arrived  at  Helena,  then 
called  Last  Chance  Gulch,  owing  to 
its  discovery  late  in  the  fall  before. 

This  was  a  lively  camp;  two  thou- 
sand people  were  there,  street  spaces 
were  blockaded  with  men  and  mer- 
chandise, ox  trains,  mule  trains  and 
pack  trains  surrounded  the  camp, 
waiting  a  chance  to  unload.  The 
saw  and  hammer  were  busy  in  put- 
ting up  cabins  and  store-houses,  and 
in  constructing  sluice  boxes  for  the 
washing  out  of  gold,  which  was  found 
in  nearly  every  rod  of  its  valley  soil. 
Men  who  had  shunned  domestic  duty 
over  the  cradle  for  years  were  rock- 
ing a  cradle  filled  with  dirty  water, 
watching  appearances  of  golden  sands 
to  open  their  purse  strings  to  the  real- 
ities of  their  adventure.  Auctioneers 
were  crying  their  wares,  trade  was 
lively,  saloons  crowded,  hurdy-gurdy 
dance-houses  in  full  blast;  wild  mus- 
tang horses,  never  before  saddled  or 
bridled,  with  Mexican  riders  on  their 
backs,  whereon  man  never  sat  before, 
were  running,  jumping,  kicking  and 
bucking  to  unhorse  their  riders,  much 
to  the  amusement  of  the  jeering 
crowd,  and  as  exciting  as  a  Spanish 
bull  fight.  "Buffalo  Bill's"  Wild 
West  show  illustrates  in  pantomime 
some  of  the  stirring  scenes  and  hair- 
rising  proclivities  of  my  first  Sunday 
in  Montana.  It  was  a  Sunday  differ- 
ent from  my  early  education  in  New 
England,  and  long  to  be  remembered 
as  a  dividing  line  between  Puritanical 
life  and  the  wild  scenes  of  Western 
activities. 


There  was  suspended  to  the  limb  of 
a  tree  a  man  hung  by  the  Vigilance 
Committee  the  night  before,  which 
was  the  eighth  specimen  of  similar 
fruit  encased  in  leather  boots  that 
tree  had  borne  in  as  many  months. 

Saturday  nights  and  Sunday  morn- 
ings miners  would  come  into  town 
with  their  week's  wages,  and  they 
would  drink,  gamble  and  dance  till 
their  money  was  gone,  and  then  go 
back  to  camp  after  the  excitement  of 
the  day  was  over,  completely  strapped, 
to  renew  the  folly  at  another  week's 
ending.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  such 
indulgence  should  blossom  into  crime  ? 

At  a  conference  with  the  other 
judges  I  spoke  of  this  mode  of  mid- 
night life-taking,  and  insisted  that 
such  cases  should  be  noticed  by  the 
courts.  One  of  the  judges,  under- 
standing the  necessity  of  sure,  speedy 
work  with  the  criminals,  said :  "I  am 
content  to  let  the  Vigilantes  go  on, 
for  the  present ;  they  can  attend  to 
this  branch  of  jurisprudence  cheaper, 
quicker  and  better  than  Lt  can  be  done 
by  the  courts ;  besides,  we  have  no 
secure  jails  in  which  to  confine  crim- 
inals." 

The  other  judges  coincided  with 
him  and  said:  "If  you  attempt  to  try 
one  of  those  road  agents  in  the  courts, 
his  comrades  will  get  him  clear,  or  if 
he  should  be  convicted,  the  lives  of 
the  witnesses  who  testify  against  him, 
and  of  the  judge  who  sentences  him, 
will  not  be  worth  the  shoes  they 
wear."  "Road  agent"  was  a  moun- 
tain phrase  to  designate  highway  rob- 
bers and  perpetrators  of  kindred 
crimes. 

A  grand  jury  in  one  of  the  districts 
presented  to  the  court  in  lieu  of  an 
indictment :  "That  it  is  better  to  leave 
the  punishment  of  criminal  offenders 
to  the  Vigilantes,  who  always  act  im- 
partially, and  who  would  not  permit 
the  escape  of  proved  criminals  on 
technical  and  absurd  grounds." 

My  court  opened  the  first  week  in 
August,  1865.  In  my  charge  to  the 
grand  jury,  I  took  occasion  to  say 
that  the  court  that  day  opened  for  the 

106 


NATIVE    AMERICANS    ON    THE    FRONTIER    FORTY    YEARS    AGO 


FIRST    GOVKKN-oRs    MANSION-FIRST    SCHOOL    TEACHBR-FIRST    SCHOOL    HOUSE    IX    MONTANA 
FROM    COLLECTIONS    OP    THE    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY    OP    MONTANA 


a 


first  time  in  that  district  for  the  trial 
of  civil  and  criminal  cases ;  and  that, 
however  satisfactory  an  excuse  might 
hitherto  have  been  for  secret  trials 
and  midnight  executions,  no  such  ne- 
cessity longer  existed,  and  that,  all 
such  proceedings  must  now  be  left  to 
the  courts. 

The  next  day,  three  gentlemen, 
neither  of  whom  I  knew  by  name  or 
sight,  called  upon  me,  and  said  that 
my  charge  to  the  grand  jury  was  ex- 
citing considerable  comment  in  the 
community,  and  asked  about  the  lan- 
guage used.  I  told  them  it  was  on 
file  in  the  clerk's  office  and  they  could 
see  it  there.  That  there  might  be  no 
misunderstanding  about  it,  I  caused 
the  whole  charge  to  be  published  in 
one  of  the  local  papers  and  it  was 
copied  in  other  papers  in  Montana. 

My  next  court  term  opened  in  De- 
cember, 1865.  A  murder  had  just 
been  committed.  Through  the  vigi- 
lance of  court  officers  the  man  was 
arrested  and  held  for  trial  in  the 
court.  A  rescue  and  summary  pun- 
ishment of  the  prisoner  was  threat- 
ened. The  officers  of  the  court,  the 
jail  not  being  secure,  guarded  the 
prisoner  to  prevent  escape  or  rescue. 
At  night  the  prisoner  was  taken  from 
the  jail  to  the  court-room,  where  it 
was  warm  and  comfortable  for  the 
officers  on  duty;  one  leg  of  the  pris- 
oner was  shackled  and  secured  to  a 
staple  in  the  floor.  The  officers,  well- 
armed,  remained  on  duty  through  the 
night  in  the  room,  while  trusty  senti- 
nels patrolled  outside  to  prevent  sur- 
prise. This  was  more  agreeable  to 
the  prisoner,  who  was  afraid  of  res- 
cue and  summary  punishment,  than 
pleasant  to  the  keepers. 

No  braver  officers  ever  lived  than 
U.  S.  Marshall  George  M.  Pinney 
and  his  deputies,  Neil  Howie,  John 
Featherston,  and  J.  X.  Beidler,  and  it 
gives  me  personal  pleasure  to  accord 
to  them  the  merit  of  having  contribu- 
ted largely  to  the  establishment  of 
order  and  good  government  over  dis- 
cordant elements  in  the  Territory. 

The  grand  jury,  in  attendance  upon 


the  court,  was  charged  upon  the  spe- 
cial work  before  them  and  upon  such 
matters  as  might  be  the  subject  of  in- 
quiry. They  found  a  true  bill  against 
the  prisoner  and  were  excused  from 
further  attendance  upon  the  court. 
The  prisoner  was  put  upon  trial  for 
the  offense  charged  in  the  indictment. 
Officers  guarded  him  day  and  night. 
The  verdict  of  the  jury  was  murder 
in  the  second  degree;  no  appeal 
taken,  sentence  passed,  and  in  less 
than  thirty  days  from  the  commission 
of  the  homicide  the  prisoner  was 
serving  out  the  penalty  in  the  terri- 
torial prison  at  Virginia  City. 

The  secretary,  acting  as  governor 
of  the  Territory  in  the  absence  of  the 
governor,  while,  under  the  influence 
of  an  unfortunate  habit,  pardoned 
and  .set  the  prisoner  at  liberty.  On 
being  released  from  prison  the  man 
went  back  to  Helena,  swearing  ven- 
geance upon  the  witnesses  who  had 
testified  against  him.  Arriving  at 
Helena  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  even- 
ing, he  was  immediately  surrounded 
by  the  Vigilantes  and  was  hanged  at 
ten  o'clock  with  the  pardon  in  his. 
pocket. 

This  was  the  ninth  specimen  of  kin- 
dred fruit  that  famous  hangman's 
tree  at  Helena  had  borne  in  so  many 
months.  They  all  went  up  with  their 
boots  on,  and  as  death  found  them,  so 
the  grave  covered  them.  This  trial  in 
the  courts  for  murder  was  the  first 
ever  held  in  the  Territory,  and  it 
marked  a  new  era  in  its  jurispru- 
dence. 

If  you  would  like  to  see  how  a  man- 
looked  after  graduating  with  the  high- 
est honors  from  a  Vigilance  institu- 
tion, I  will  give  you  a  verbal  picture 
of  this  man  as  he  appeared  the  next 
morning  before  removal  from  the 
sunlit  tree  to  final  rest  beneath  the 
clods  of  the  valley.  The  remains  were 
placed  in  a  stainless  board  coffin  on  a 
dray  cart  drawn  by  a  mule,  the  sher- 
iff and  coroner  leading  the  way  from> 
the  place  of  execution  to  the  ceme- 
tery; no  mourners  shed  tears  on  the 
way ;  no  glove-handed  pall-bearers 


ioS 


EARLY    DAYS    IN    A    MIXING    TOWN— HELENA,    MONTANA 
FROM    COLLECTIONS    OF    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY    OF    MONTANA 


to  do  escort  duty ;  no  flowers  on  the 
coffin  enclosing  the  remains ;  "  no  re- 
ligious ceremony  over  its  commit- 
ment, and  no  monument  marks  his 
resting-place. 

Vigilante  rule  worked  in  harmony 
with  its  precedents,  with  no  artificial 
distinction  of  persons  or  in  results. 
Speedy  trial  in  civil  and  criminal 
jurisdiction  metes  out  justice  better 
when  witnesses  are  fresh  from  the 
scene  of  controversy  than  to  await 
their  departure,  or  to  depend  upon 
India  rubber  memories  which  may  be 
side-tracked  into  forget  fulness  when 
the  trial  is  reached.  Eastern  states' 
courts  would  profit  largely  by  imitat- 
ing Western  promptness  in  court  pro- 
ceedings with  less  miscarriage  from 
the  pivotal  point  of  justice,  with  less 
frivolous  technicalities  for  delay. 

There  was  one  other  trial  for  mur- 
der before  me  in  August,  1866.  This 


man  was  arrested  by  the  United 
States  marshall  for  murder  in  the 
Indian  country  under  provisions  of 
United  States  laws ;  was  tried  on  the 
United  States  side  of  the  court  and 
convicted  of  murder  in  the  first  de- 
gree. Sentence  passed  that  he  be  re- 
manded to  prison  and  there  safely 
kept,  "till  Friday,  the  fifth  day  of  Oc- 
tober, 1866.  then  and  there  to  be 
hanged  by  the  neck  till  dead."  Offi- 
cers of  the  law  guarded  the  jail  and 
prisoner  day  and  night  to  prevent 
escape  or  summary  execution.  Rec- 
ord of  arrest,  proceedings,  trial,  con- 
viction and  sentence  were  forwarded 
to  the  president  and  attorney-general 
of  the  United  States. 

President  Johnson  commuted  the 
sentence  to  imprisonment  for  life,  and 
ordered  his  transfer  to  Detroit  prison, 
Michigan,  to  serve  out  the  sentence. 
On  his  way  thither,  he  escaped  from 


nf    a     ilotttana 


his  keepers  and  was  never  delivered 
there. 

I  recall  another  case.  The  head 
manager  of  a  large  quartz  mining 
company  for  the  reduction  of  gold 
ores  near  Helena  killed  a  man  for 
alleged  stealing  of  wood,  cut  for  mill- 
ing purposes.  This  wood  was  cut  on 
government  land,  the  title  to  which 
remained  in  the  government.  The 
man  was  arrested,  jailed,  indicted  by 
the  grand  jury,  and  held  for  trial. 
Pending  trial,  the  prisoner  took 
change  of  venue  to  a  sparsely  settled 
county  in  another  district  jurisdic- 
tion. On  the  trial  the  prisoner  was 
discharged  and  he  left  Montana  un- 
der cover  of  midnight  hours  and  was 
never  seen  there  afterwards. 

After  I  left  Montana,  I  learned 
that  four  other  persons  were  hanged 
by  the  Vigilantes  upon  that  famous 
Helena  tree,  thirteen  in  all,  when  a 
clergyman,  ostensibly  to  reform  the 
morals  of  the  community,  cut  the  tree 
down,  and  when  it  was  safely  housed, 
peddled  it  out  for  canes,  and  that  tree 
became  as  famous  for  the  number  of 
canes  it  produced  as  it  had  for  the 
number  of  persons  who  had  cast  their 
last  look  up  among  the  branches  be- 
fore testing  the  strength  of  its  fibers 
at  the  end  of  the  rope.  From  twelve 
to  twenty-four  hours  of  good  hanging 
was  generally  considered  long  enough 
to  warrant  a  certificate  that  life  was 
extinct  and  the  body  ready  for  burial. 

Soon  after  my  arrival  in  the  Ter- 
ritory, I  received  a  letter  from  a  med- 
ical graduate  of  Yale,  stating  that  he 
had  graduated  with  honor,  was  de- 
voted to  his  profession  and  anxious 
to  settle  in  a  new  thriving  city,  and 
inquired  if  Helena  was  such  a  place. 
Meeting  one  of  the  worthy  doctors  of 
the  city,  I  handed  him  the  letter  and 
asked  for  information. 

Said  he :  "Tell  that  young  man  not 
to  come  here,  for  men  are  seldom  sick 
and  never  die,"  and  with  a  quizzing 
look  into  the  face  of  the  gentlemen 
by  his  side  said :  "The  Vigilance  Com- 
mittee had  to  hang  a  man  in  order  to 
start  a  grave-yard."  Whereupon  the 


gentlemen  addressed  replied:  "The 
reason  of  the  delay  in  starting  one  is 
not  so  much  owing  to  the  want  of 
sickness  among  the  people  as  the  lack 
of  skill  among  the  doctors."  Honors 
being  easy  between  them,  the  conver- 
sation was  not  continued. 

Vigilantes,  as  a  rule,  filled  the  hiatus 
between  early  settlements,  the  estab- 
lishment of  courts  and  organization 
of  civil  government  over  the  Terri- 
tory. They  can  look  back  over  a 
generation  of  stirring  activities  in  her 
borders  with  a  consciousness  of  duty 
well  performed  in  its  early  history. 

Hopeful  and  active  for  its  welfare 
under  shadowy  clouds  in  its  morning 
life  they  were  efficient  and  watchful 
in  the  sunshine  of  its  prosperity,  in 
social,  political  and  commercial 
maturity.  History  overlooks  some 
faults  to  embellish  the  memory  of  the 
faithful.  Vigilante  rule  in  the  early 
life  of  Montana  may  have  had  cloudy 
spots  upon  its  disk,  but  its  general 
record  illumines  its  history  as  a  nec- 
essary force  in  the  cycles  of  time. 

The  first  Montana  legislature  in 
1865  failed,  under  its  organic  act,  to 
make  provision  for  its  successor  and 
its  legislative  functions  lapsed,  ne- 
cessitating affirmative  action  by  the 
government  at  Washington.  With- 
out waiting  that  action  the  acting 
governor  (the  governor  being  absent 
from  the  Territory),  in  February, 
1866,  under  some  fancied  pressure, 
issued  a  proclamation  ordering  an 
election  of  delegates  and  convening" 
the  legislature  in  March,  1866.  which 
proceeded  to  the  business  of  law- 
making  for  the  Territory.  Its  pre- 
tended laws  and  franchises  were  early 
before  my  court  for  consideration  and 
were  adjudged  void  and  of  no  valid- 
ity. 

Court  records,  with  legislative  pro- 
ceedings, were  transmitted  to  the 
president  and  by  him  referred  to  the 
attorney-general  of  the  United  States, 
who  sustained  the  ruling  and  decis- 
ions of  the  court,  adjudged  the  legis- 
lative proceedings  void,  payment  of 
expenses  of  the  legislature  refused, 


THE    FIRST  RAILROAD    TRAIN    INTO    THE    GOLDEN    WEST 

FROM    RARE    PRINT    IN    POSSESSION    OF    JUDGE    LYMAN    E.    MUNSON 


and  its  reputed  laws  expunged  from 
the  statutes  of  Montana.  Executive, 
judicial  and  legislative  jurisdictions 
settled  down  in  harmony,  and  peace 
and  prosperity  ruled  the  Territory. 

The  Montana  Bar  was  composed 
in  the  main  of  well-educated,  good 
lawyers  and  accomplished  gentlemen, 
some  of  whom  had  held  judicial  posi- 
tions in  the  states  before  going  there. 
They  were  loyal  to  their  profession,  to 
the  courts,  to  the  commonwealth,  and 
their  influence  did  much  to  bring  or- 
der out  of  chaos  and  establish  good 
government  for  the  people. 

Many  families  emigrated  there  for 
future  homes.  Fond  mothers  had 
said  in  the  language  of  Ruth : 

"  Whither  thou  goest,  I  will  go. 
Whither  thou  lodgest,  I  will  lodge. 
Thy  people  shall  be  my  people. 
And  thy  God  my  God." 

The  presence  of  virtuous  women 
inspired  rough  miners  with  respect, 
and  their  gentle  administrations  to 
the  wayward  were  like  merciful  visi- 
tations to  the  doomed. 

In  October,  1865,  in  company  with 
the  governor,  and  an  armed  escort, 


we  started  from  Helena  on  horseback 
for  Benton,  one  hundred  and  forty 
miles  distant,  to  help  the  Indian  agent 
make  a  treaty  with  the  Indians  and 
witness  the  distribution  of  annuities. 
At  this  time  three  log  cabins,  two 
occupied  by  French  half-breeds  and 
one  by  an  American,  were  the  only 
stationary  evidence  of  civilized  life  on 
the  way. 

The  first  day  we  reached  the  ranch 
of  Malcolm  Clark,  an  American  liv- 
ing with  his  two  squaw  wives  of  dif- 
ferent tribes  in  his  cabin  home. 
Horses  and  mules  carrying  our  camp 
outfit  were  relieved  of  their  burden 
and  picketed  around  haystacks  for 
forage.  Supper  ended,  we  retired 
for  the  night  under  a  shed,  nrovided 
our  horses  from  storms  which  came 
up  suddenly  and  raged  furiously 
while  the  storm-king  tarried,  rolled 
ourselves  up  in  our  blankets  with 
trusty  rifles  loaded  by  our  sides  for 
emergency  and  took  a  quiet  sleep 
while  midnight  sentinels  patrolled  the 
cam]).  Morning  sunlight  was  propi- 
tious for  a  pleasant  day's  journey. 


THE    FIRST    AMERICAN'S    PROTEST    AGAINST    CIVILIZATION 

FROM    RARE    PRINT    IN    POSSESSION    OF    JUDGE    LYMAN    E.    MUNSON 


tatter    SItf?    on    Amrrtran 


Clark  was  a  graduate  of  West 
Point  and  worked  on  the  fort  and 
storehouse  at  Benton  for  the  Ameri- 
can Fur  Company,  of  which  John 
Jacob  Astor  was  the  head.  He 
claimed  that  his  wife  and  children 
were  entitled  to  a  share  in  the  distri- 
bution of  the  annuities  and  in  the 
morning  he  joined  us  for  the  balance 
of  the  journey.  During  the  day  a 
snowstorm  struck  us  and  we  housed 
for  the  night  in  the  cabin  of  a  Cana- 
dian half-breed,  before  spoken  of. 
An  Indian  hunter  for  the  cabin  had 
brought  in  a  mountain  sheep  and  we 
feasted  on  delicious  morsels  from  its 
juicy  sides.  After  the  repast  we 
rolled  ourselves  up  in  blankets  and 
lay  round  on  the  ground  floor  with 
heads  and  points  at  promiscuous  an- 
gles. Still  snowing  in  the  morning, 
it  was  decided  to  detour  from  the  reg- 
ular route  and  visit  the  Catholic  mis- 
sion some  fifteen  miles  distant. 

Clark,  understanding  Indian,  en- 
gaged the  hunter  as  guide,  they  lead- 
ing the  way  over  the  trackless  snow 
and  we  following.  Reaching  the  mis- 
sion, we  were  cordially  received  and 
generously  entertained  over  two 
nights  and  a  day.  In 'the  morning, 
taking  a  guide  from  the  mission  to 
pilot  our  way  to  the  Great  Falls  of 
the  Missouri  river,  we  encamped  there 
for  the  night  amid  the  roar  of  mighty 
waves  pouring  over  a  rocky  precipice 
nearly  eighty  feet  in  perpendicular 
plunge.  A  dead  tree  with  naked 
branches  tempted  the  advent  of  an  ax 
from  the  outfit,  and  that  tree  with  its 
fiery  outlines  was  very  companionable 
and  midnight  hours  sparkled  with  wit 
and  repartee,  now  lost  to  memory. 

The  next  morning  we  started  for 
Benton,  arriving  there  in  a  snowy 
coverlet  mantling  the  earth  from  five 
to  six  inches  in  depth,  at  the  close  of 
a  six-day  journey  from  Helena.  On 
our  way  we  daily  saw  large  bands  of 
deer,  antelope  and  elk,  which,  at  the 
sight  of  our  cavalcade,  fled  into  safe 
distance,  wheeled  about  and  faced  us 
like  a  military  company  on  parade, 

»3 


watching  our  movements  in  retreat- 
ing distance. 

At  Benton  we  met  about  seven 
thousand,  five  hundred  Indians  com- 
posed of  different  tribes  gathered 
there  in  expectation  of  great  results. 
Indians  claimed  all  that  country  as 
theirs.  Indian  tepees  fringed  the 
hillsides  and  pioneer  cabins  dotted  the 
valleys.  The  bow  sped  the  arrow  for 
game  and  other  trophies  and  the 
crack  of  pioneer  rifles  echoed  from 
valley  to  hilltop.  Antagonistic  forces 
contended  for  mastery  over  the  situ- 
tion,  but  civilized  agencies  had  its 
innings  and  chaos  its  outings  in  a  bat- 
tle well  won  for  the  former  and  de- 
feat for  the  latter.  Human  life  was 
unsafe  and  cheap  on  both  sides.  A 
good  opportunity  for  skill  in  marks- 
manship with  either  rifle  or  bow  and 
arrow  was  frequently  rewarded  with 
bloody  trophies. 

We  made  a  treaty  by  which  the  In- 
dians were  to  give  up  their  coveted 
lands,  the  land  of  their  fathers,  the 
gamiest  country  in  the  world,  and  go 
onto  a  reservation  on  Canadian  bor- 
ders, and  we  distributed  to  them  about 
$7,500  in  annuities,  ostensibly  one 
dollar  for  each  Indian,  squaw  and 
papoose.  These  annuities  consisted 
of  dry-goods,  groceries,  hardware, 
etc.,  suitable  to  necessities,  wants  and 
desires  of  the  Indian.  It  required  on 
the  part  of  the  agent  care  and  judg- 
ment to  measure  and  cut,  weigh  and 
divide  for  distribution  so  as  not  to  ex- 
cite tribal  jealousy,  a  marked  char- 
acteristic in  Indian  character. 

During  the  distribution,  Indians 
were  seated  on  the  ground  in  Indian 
fashion,  each  tribe  separate  and  apart 
from  other  tribal  groups,  all  facing 
the  center  of  a  square,  where  the 
goods  were  placed  for  distribution. 
The  chiefs,  as  mark  of  special  favor 
by  the  agent,  were  presented  with  ex- 
tra gifts  and  provided  with  chairs  in 
recognition  of  tribal  distinction, 
which  flattered  their  vanity  as  pos- 
sessors of  thronely  power. 

It  was  a  panoramic  scene  of  tribal 
costume,  interlaced  with  painted  faces 


nf    a    Montana 


and  fantastic  paraphernalia  of  tribal 
ornaments,  requiring  the  graphic 
touch  of  a  painter's  brush  on  canvas 
to  convey  a  realistic  impression,  no- 
where to  be  reproduced  by  pen  and 
ink  descriptions.  It  was  the  enchant- 
ment of  a  divine  reality  moving  over 
the  canvas  of  passing  events  never  to 
be  effaced  from  memory's  tablet. 

Chieftain  costumes,  indescribable 
in  fantastic  exhibit,  down  to  the  bare- 
footed papoose  in  the  lap  of  its 
mother,  the  transition  stage  was  grad- 
ual with  no  apparent  jealousy  to  mark 
the  outfit  in  gradation  of  fashion-plate 
colorings.  These  scattered  tribes  of 
Israel  retain  characteristics  of  their 
nationality.  Tribal  jealousies  still 
mark  the  instincts  of  ancestral  life  on 
the  plains  of  Judea,  transferred  to 
American  soil,  before  the  ships  were 
built  that  brought  Columbus  to  our 
shores.  Robbed  of  peaceful  posses- 
sions and  life  pursuits,  they  are  in  the 
environments  of  the  Nation's  power, 
and  should  be  generously  provided 
for  by  beneficent,  impartial,  life-sus- 
taining agencies  before  being  forced 
into  the  horoscopic  circle  of  extinc- 
tion now  clouding  their  inheritance 
and  foreshadowing  their  destiny. 

The  distribution  of  annuities  ended 
apparently  satisfactorily  with  peaceful 
outlines  and  the  next  day  we  started 
for  Helena  on  our  return  trip  and 
camped  about  twenty-five  miles  out 
for  the  night,  with  several  merchan- 
dise trains  moving  to  trade  centers  in 
Montana.  About  midnight,  a  mes- 
senger with  horse  foaming  with 
sweat,  arrived,  bearing  a  dispatch 
from  the  Indian  agent  at  Benton  to 
the  governor.  The  message  was  that 
war  had  broken  out  between  two 
treaty  tribes  on  agency  grounds,  that 
the  lives  of  the  people,  government 
stores  and  agency  buildings  were  in 
jeopardy  and  to  return  at  once. 

Attached  to  one  of  the  trains  was  a 
brass  cannon  on  the  way  to  Virginia 
City.  Governor  Meagher,  quick  in 
perception,  and  efficient  in  emergency, 
pressed  the  cannon  into  service  and  at 
two  o'clock  at  night  we  were  on  our 


way  back  to  Benton,  arriving  there  at 
sunrise,  much  to  the  relief  of  the  peo- 
ple, after  a  sleepless  night  and  anx- 
ious forebodings  of  the  day,  and  news 
of  our  arrival  spread  over  the  sur- 
roundings from  camp  to  camp.  The 
cannon  was  drawn  up  before  the 
agency  building,  loaded  and  shotted 
to  its  muzzle  with  musket  balls  for  in- 
stant service,  with  no  secret  from  ob- 
servation or  of  intention. 

The  governor,  his  aids,  Indian 
agent  and  interpreters,  walked  out  to 
one  of  the  camps,  called  the  chief  and 
head  men  for  an  interview.  They 
appeared  in  war  paint  as  red  as  the 
blood  in  their  veins,  with  black  stripes 
as  hideous  as  dragons'  teeth  on  their 
faces. 

The  governor  said  to  them  that 
hearing  of  this  disturbance  he  had 
hastened  back  to  be  in  the  fight  and 
if  the  chief  and  his  men  did  not  leave 
the  agency  grounds  before  noon  that 
day,  he  would  open  fire  upon  them 
and  not  stop  till  every  Indian  was 
killed  and  annuity  goods  restored  to 
the  government.  That  they  might 
know  the  time  limited  he  stuck  his 
cane  in  the  ground  and  said  that  when 
the  sun's  shadows  fell  upon  the  other 
side  of  the  stick  the  time  was  up  and 
no  delays  would  be  granted. 

We  next  went  to  the  other  camp 
where  he  repeated  the  same  warning. 
Both  camps  were  in  belligerent  atti- 
tudes. Trenches  dug  and  breast- 
works thrown  up;  women,  children 
and  goods  removed  to  safety;  two 
hundred  Indian  warriors  in  each 
camp  in  war-paint ;  guns  and  arrows, 
spears  and  tomahawks,  scalping- 
knives  and  battle-axes  were  no  pleas- 
ing attributes  to  contemplate  when 
the  balance  of  numbers  were  largely 
against  us.  It  was  a  day  of  anxiety, 
measured  by  hourly  reports  from  the 
camps.  Hopeful  signs  of  evacuation 
during  the  day  appeared  and  at  night 
the  curtain  dropped  in  peaceful  lines 
over  the  landscape,  camps  deserted, 
and  the  angel  of  peace  celebrated  a 
bloodless  victory  over  what  had  ap- 
peared to  be  one  of  bloody  carnage. 


ffitf?     nn    Amrriran 


Each  Indian  has  its  head  and  lesser 
chiefs  who  rule  the  policy  of  the  tribe 
with  more  rigor  than  the  governor 
and  statutes  do  their  constituents  in 
the  states. 

During  my  three  or  four  weeks' 
stay  there  I  saw  Indian  character  in 
full  development  in  many  of  its 
phases.  Tribal  chiefs  in  gay  attire, 
in  war-paint  with  eagle  feathers  and 
wampum,  with  necklaces  of  polished 
bear  claws  and  wolf  teeth  that  glit- 
tered in  the  sun  and  rattled  with  their 
movements,  with  bows  and  arrows, 
tomahawks,  scalping-knives  and  tro- 
phies of  war,  saw  them  on  the  war- 
path, heard  the  war-whoop,  saw  them 
in  the  war-dance,  in  the  pow-wow 
around  their  dead  brave,  in  the 
burial  ceremony,  around  council  fires, 
in  the  wigwam,  on  the  field,  in  the 
chase,  in  their  ceremonial  rites  to  the 
Great  Spirit,  in  their  hunger  and  in 
their  feasts;  have  smoked  with  them 
the  pipe  of  peace,  have  tasted  the 
aroma  of  roast  dog  in  the  wigwam  of 
the  great  chief,  with  one  hundred 
yellow  bucks  with  hungry  mouths 
around  the  tent  watching  movements 
of  the  feast  within,  have  confronted 
them  with  weapons  of  "warfare  in  the 
hour  of  danger,  and  I  declare,  that  in 
their  nomadic  state,  measured  by 
standard  ideas  of  civilized  life,  the 
mind  cannot  escape  the  conviction 
that  they  are  a  degraded,  indolent, 
treacherous  race,  with  no  manly  attri- 
butes of  character  worthy  of  poetry, 
song  or  tradition. 

Over  and  against  this  estimate  of 
their  character  much  should  be  placed 
to  their  credit.  This  was  their  coun- 
try, the  land  of  their  fathers,  where 
sleep  their  brave  dead.  The  Great 
Spirit  had  presided  over  their  coun- 
cils and  had  given  them  an  abundance 
of  game  at  all  seasons  of  the  year. 
Success  attended  the  chase.  Horses, 
dogs  and  papooses  multiplied  to  the 
tribes ;  they  were  happy  and  con- 
tented in  their  seclusion  and  prosper- 
ous in  their  ways.  But  the  Chinese 
walls  of  isolation  were  being  broken 

"5 


down,  men  poured  into  their  country 
by  the  thousands  from  all  directions 

"  They  came  as  the  winds  come, 

When  forests  are  rended ; 
They  came  as  the  waves  come, 

When  vessels  are  stranded." 

and  they  felt  the  situation  keenly. 
The  handwriting  to  them  was  on  the 
wall.  Beyond  the  realms  where  light- 
ning flashes  and  thunder  rolls  the 
shining  stars  shot  the  shadows  of 
their  fate  athwart  the  heavens  and 
they  read  their  doom  in  the  evening 
sky  and  comprehended  the  reality 
amid  the  stirring  scenes  before  them. 
Whittier  has  said: 

"  I  hear  the  tread  of  pioneers, 

Of  Nations  yet  to  be ; 
The  first  low  wash  of  waves,  where  soon 

Shall  roll  a  human  sea." 

This  prophetic  vision  by  Whittier  was 
not  understood  in  its  full  relation  to 
Montana  till  the  prophecy  burst  into 
full  realistic  vision. 

Forty  steamers  that  season  un- 
loaded men  and  merchandise  at  Ben- 
ton.  Ponderous  trains  of  merchan- 
dise and  strange  devices  of  machinery 
were  moving  across  the  country,  cities 
were  springing  up  as  if  by  magic, 
the  government  was  there  with  its 
officers  collecting  its  revenues  and  en- 
forcing its  laws ;  game  was  unmerci- 
fully slaughtered  and  frightened  from 
its  ranges;  a  new  order  of  strange 
proceedings  to  the  Indians  was  being 
established  in  their  midst  and  they  felt 
that  their  occupation  was  gone  and  it 
was  gone  forever. 

A  letter  from  one  of  the  principal 
mercantile  firms  at  Benton  informed 
me  that  as  late  as  the  years  1874,  1875, 
1876  and  1877,  there  were  annually 
shipped  from  Benton  to  the  East 
eighty  thousand  to  one  hundred  thou- 
sand buffalo  robes;  thirty  to  forty 
thousand  mountain  wolf -skins;  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  to  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  tons  of  deer  and  ante- 
lope skins,  besides  beaver,  otter,  mink 
and  other  choice  furs,  aggregating 
some  years  in  value  to  more  than  a 
million  of  dollars. 

After  1878  the  numbers  dwindled 


nf    a    JHnntana 


rapidly  until  1884  when  hardly  one 
thousand  robes  were  brought  to  mar- 
ket; and  now  not  one  buffalo  left, 
and  to  extinguish  the  last  vestige  of 
them  the  white  man  is  gathering  from 
the  plains  the  dried  bones  and  ship- 
ping them  to  bone  mills  to  be  ground 
into  fertilizers. 

Under  this  tremendous  slaughter 
by  the  Indians,  game  seemed  to  mul- 
tiply, or  at  least  to  hold  its  own,  but 
when  the  white  man  appeared,  it  be- 
gan to  decrease,  and  now  not  a  buf- 
falo roams  anywhere  on  the  plains 
from  Mexico  to  Canada. 

A  few  are  protected  by  the  vigi- 
lant care  of  the  government  in  the 
National  Yellowstone  Park,  to  pre- 
serve their  species  from  extinction, 
but  they  do  not  thrive  under  domestic 
habit.  A  few  may  be  seen  on  exhi- 
bition in  menageries,  and  in  confined, 
fenced-in  preserves,  but  they  exhibit 
but  feebly  the  characteristics  of  the 
buffalo  as  he  roamed  over  the  conti- 
nent forty  years  ago. 

The  bow  and  arrow  was  not  the 
only  destructive  agency  in  game  sur- 
roundings. Civilization  marked  its 
bloody  tracks  in  many  ways  and  the 
Indian  read  his  doom  on  the  lines  of 
passing  events.  The  lesson  was  se- 
vere to  contemplate,  but  emphatic  in 
results.  With  the  loss  of  game  to  the 
Indians  came  also  the  loss  of  profits 
to  the  merchants.  The  old  trading 
post  of  the  American  Fur  Company 
at  Benton  with  its  thrilling  history 
has  been  abandoned,  its  walls  fallen 
to  decay,  bats  nest  in  security  upon 
shelves  where  rested  from  time  to 
time  millions  of  dollars  in  furs,  and 
the  hoot  of  the  owl  breaks  the  silence 
of  midnight  hours  where  once  echoed 
the  busy  hum  of  commerce. 

The  game  is  gone  and  the  Indian  is 
going.  His  proud  spirit  is  broken,  his 
erect,  stalwart  form  is  bending  to  the 
shadows  of  inevitable  fate,  his  step 
trembles  upon  the  threshold;  he  is 
passing  away  from  the  march  of  civil- 
ization like  dissolving  snows  from 
the  breath  of  morning.  The  waves 
of  civilization  have  crowded  him  back 


from  sea-girt  shores  to  the  rivers, 
from  the  rivers  to  the  plains,  from 
the  plains  to  the  mountains,  from  the 
mountains  to  the  shadow-land  beyond 
the  cycles  of  time. 

The  problem  of  dealing  with  these 
poor  people,  now  but  remnants  of 
once  powerful  tribes,  is  a  humane 
one,  and  the  government  cannot  too 
promptly  awake  to  its  importance, 
and,  with  a  liberal  hand,  lighten  the 
shadows  and  avert  the  sorrows  that 
environ  them.  They  are  fast  becom- 
ing but  a  memory  of  traditionary 
realities. 

"There's  a  spirit  on  the  river;  there's  a 

ghost  upon  the  shore ; 
They     are    chanting,     they    are    singing 

through  the  starlight  evermore, 
As  they  steal  amid  the  silence  and  the 

shadows  of  the  shore, 
You  can  hear  the  ringing  war-cry  of  the 

long  forgotten  brave 
Echo  thro'  the  midnight  forest,  echo  o'er 

the  midnight  wave, 
And  the  mystic  lanterns  tremble  at  the 

war-cry  of  the  brave." 

The  relation  of  husband  and  wife 
was  that  of  autocrat  and  servant.  An 
Indian  suing  for  the  hand  of  a  comely 
squaw  had  a  poor  chance  of  success, 
unless  bravery  attended  him  in  the 
chase,  or  in  prowess  of  warfare ;  and 
even  then,  he  often  had  to  gauge  his 
desires  by  the  number  of  horses  he 
could  give  the  father  in  exchange  for 
his  daughter,  the  horse  being  the 
standard  of  relative  values  the  same 
as  stocks  and  bonds  in  civilized  life. 

As  to  faithfulness  of  their  mar- 
riage vows  statistics  give  no  data. 
The  rules  and  laws  of  the  tribe  dis- 
criminate largely  in  favor  of  the  male. 
The  wife  and  daughter,  so  to  speak, 
is  owned  by  the  husband  and  father. 
If  the  wife,  overtaken  in  violation  of 
one  of  the  commandments  without 
consent  of  the  husband  (and  such 
consent  was  sometimes  given  by  the 
husband  as  a  mark  of  favor),  if  she 
escapes  punishment  by  death  her  face 
was  often  disfigured  for  life  and  then 
banished  from  her  husband's  tent 
with  no  mystic  seal  of  court  records 
paraphrasing  causes  of  matrimonial 

116 


totter    3Gtf?    nn    Ammran 


infelicities.  I  have  never  seen  such 
disfigurement  upon  faces  of  the  males, 
but  such  absence  should  not  be  con- 
strued as  freedom  from  similar  in- 
dulgence. 

Mormon  doctrines,  to  some  extent, 
found  favor  among  the  chiefs  and 
high-toned  bucks  of  the  tribe, 
although  I  never  heard  that  they 
claimed  special  revelation  from  the 
spirit-land  enforcing  it  as  a  religious 
observation.  Chastity  and  sexual 
commerce  in  Indian  character  is  at 
no  lower  ebb  than  in  civilized  life  in 
the  states;  indeed,  the  percentage  of 
concubinage  in  commercial  centers  of 
civilized  life  in  the  states  is  greater 
than  in  tribal  centers  of  Indian  life. 

Some  Indians  dispose  of  their  dead 
by  elevating  their  bodies  upon  a  scaf- 
folding of  poles  about  six  feet  from 
the  ground,  above  the  reach  of  wolves 
and  beasts  of  prey,  wrapped  in  blan- 
kets or  robes  with  tribal  ornaments 
about  the  person.  These  subjects  are 
never  disturbed  by  Indian  hands, 
though  the  glittering  ornaments  so 
much  coveted  in  tribal  life  should 
drop  upon  the  ground.  The  sight  of 
one  of  these  "burial  grounds"  would 
have  been  an  inspiration  for  a  sur- 
geon's dissecting  knife  in  other  parts 
of  the  country  without  screened  doors 
or  peep-hole  observation. 

I  have  mentioned  Fort  Benton 
earlier  in  my  article.  It  was  not  a 
military  fort,  but  a  trading  post,  es- 
tablished by  the  American  Fur  Com- 
pany and  was  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant on  the  river,  if  not  in  the 
whole  country.  From  this  point 
alone  more  than  half  a  million  dollars 
in  furs  and  robes  were  annually 
shipped  to  the  states. 

The  store-rooms  and  work-shops 
were  built  of  adobe  bricks  of  much 
strength,  with  port-hole  turrets  for 
lookout  and  defense.  These  build- 
ings again  were  surrounded  by  a 
stockade  of  high  poles  together,  one 
end  embedded  in  the  ground,  and  the 
other  riveted  in  their  fastenings  at 
the  top,  giving  ample  room  in  the  en- 
closure for  storage  and  made  capable 


of  resisting  attacks  by  the  Indians  in 
any  mode  of  warfare  then  known  to 
them.  A  large  gate  in  the  stockade 
opened  to  the  enclosure,  through 
which  Indians  passed  in  limited  num- 
bers at  a  time,  chiefs  and  head  men 
first,  to  exchange  robes  and  furs  for 
paint,  beads,  gaudy  calico  and  red 
blankets,  so  attractive  to  the  race. 
As  soon  as  one  squad  had  finished 
trading  they  were  turned  out  to  make 
room  for  others  to  enter,  who  had  re- 
mained outside  the  stockade  waiting 
opportunity,  it  not  being  prudent  to 
let  too  many  in  at  a  time,  besides  be- 
ing inconvenient  to  accommodate  a 
whole  tribe  at  once  for  want  of  room. 

The  exchange  price  for  a  good 
buffalo  robe,  formerly,  was  a  cup  of 
sugar,  a  yard  of  calico,  string  of 
beads,  or  a  little  red  paint,  with  a 
plug  of  tobacco  added,  for  an  extra 
nice  robe  or  a  choice  lot  of  furs.  If 
an  Indian  could  get  several  coveted 
articles  in  exchange  for  one,  the  traf- 
fic was  reckoned  by  them  to  be  largely 
in  their  favor;  numbers  often  offset 
values. 

These  robes  were  dressed  and 
tanned  by  the  squaws  and  by  them 
brought  to  market,  either  upon  their 
own  backs  or  upon  the  backs  of  po- 
nies, with  papooses  in  the  outfit 
astride  of  the  bundles  or  on  the  necks 
of  the  horses  as  conscious  of  life's 
realities  as  the  owner  of  an  automo- 
bile on  the  back  seat  of  his  "red  devil 
flyer"  is  conscious  of  unlawful  speed 
over  his  transit.  The  squaws  formed 
the  baggage  train  of  the  moving 
camp,  while  their  master  lords  rode  in 
stately  ease,  oblivious  of  all  care  or 
responsibility  for  the  drudgery  of  the 
camp.  All  the  labor  among  the  In- 
dians, except  the  chase,  was  per- 
formed by  the  squaws.  They  did 
everything,  took  care  of  the  babies, 
moved  the  camp,  pitched  the  tent,  cut 
the  wood,  brought  the  water,  dried 
the  meat,  dressed  the  pelts,  cooked  the 
meals,  and  when  the  repast  was  ready 
first  served  their  masters,  contenting 
themselves  with  the  scanty  refuse 
that  might  be  left. 


flf    a    ilnntatta 


The  White  and  Indian  races,  sepa- 
rate in  life's  pursuits  on  the  line  of 
human  destiny,  the  weaker  has  given 
way  to  the  stronger,  under  the  shad- 
ows of  inevitable  fate. 

I  have  spoken  generally  of  the  In- 
dians in  their  nomadic  state,  and  not 
in  their  enforced  colonization  upon 
reservations,  where  they  are  kept  in 
subjection  by  the  power  of  the  gov- 
ernment, contrary  to  the  impulse  of 
their  nature.  The  difference  be- 
tween the  two  conditions  is  much  like 
that  of  a  tiger  caged  for  exhibition  in 
the  menagerie  and  in  the  jungles. 

During  my  early  residence  in  Mon- 
tana gold  dust  was  the  circulating 
medium  in  which  contracts  were 
made  and  purchases  were  settled  for 
in  this  commodity.  Each  place  of 
business  had  its  little  scales  where 
balances  were  adjusted.  Gold  dust 
had  a  commercial  value  of  $18.00  to 
the  ounce  the  same  as  gold  coin,  and 
it  took  thirty  or  more  crispy  green- 
back dollars  to  equal  the  purchasing 
power  of  an  ounce  of  gold  dusf. 

In  the  saloons  and  hurdy-gurdy 
dance-houses,  where  whiskey  was 
sold  at  thirty  and  forty  cents  a  drink, 
the  beam  of  the  scales  went  down 
with  the  weight  of  gold  as  rapidly  as 
the  whiskey  went  down  the  throats  of 
the  drinkers.  It  was  easy  to  tell 
which  had  the  advantage  in  this  ex- 
change. Sometimes  a  looker-on, 
seeing  the  size  of  the  drinks,  would 
conclude  that  the  drinker  thought 
himself  a  long  way  ahead  in  the  ex- 
change and  the  oftener  he  drank,  the 
more  sure  he  became  that  such  was 
the  fact. 

Miner's  wages  at  that  time  aver- 
aged $8.00  to  $10.00  a  day,  payable 
in  gold  dust.  This  gold  was  carried 
by  them  in  a  leather  pouch  of  pliable 
deer-skin,  and  not  unfrequently  the 
bartender,  when  patrons  became  mel- 
low and  oblivious  to  care,  would  dip 
his  finger  and  thumb  into  the  sacks, 
take  out  a  pinch  of  the  yellow  stuff 
and  drop  it  into  his  till  without  weigh- 
ing. An  avaricious  pinch  would  bal- 


ance the  value  of  eight  or  ten  dollars 
in  greenback  currency. 

I  watched  the  transition  stage 
from  Indian  and  Vigilante  rule  to 
law-abiding  precepts  established  by 
the  courts  and  co-ordinate  branches 
of  the  government,  and  the  Territory 
passed  into  channels  of  state  sover- 
eignty among  the  sisterhood  of  states 
on  the  twenty-second  of  February, 
1889.  Montana  in  its  uplift  out  of 
"swaddling  clothes"  stands  full- 
dressed  in  the  sunshine  of  activities  in 
the  destiny  of  the  republic. 

The  power  and  dread  of  the  Indian 
is  gone.  Their  contact  with  civiliza- 
tion, with  its  arts  and  sciences,  weak- 
ened their  power  of  resistance  to 
aggressive  forces;  they  are  but  or- 
phans on  the  fly-wheel  of  time,  driven 
to  reservations  distasteful  to  their  na- 
ture, surrounded  by  government  bay- 
onets to  enforce  obedience  to  govern- 
ment demands. 

Cattle,  horses  and  sheep  roam  in 
fatness  and  contentment  on  the  hills 
and  in  the  valleys.  Christian  homes 
dot  the  landscape,  golden  harvests 
gladden  the  fields,  routes  of  travel  are 
improved  and  safe.  Railroads  with 
•their  branches  reach  up  into  Montana 
for  its  commerce,  with  palace-cars  for 
comfortable  travel  running  through 
Helena,  the  capitol  of  the  state,  and 
on  to  the  Pacific  ocean.  So  that  now 
we  can  take  the  cars  to  New  England, 
and  with  but  few  changes  ride  to  the 
fields  of  gold,  copper,  silver,  and  other 
mines  in  Montana  with  ease  and  com- 
fort, visiting  the  Yellowstone  Park, 
Nature's  wonderland,  unequalled  in 
marvelous  natural  wonders  on  the 
globe.  Churches  in  Montana  are 
well  filled  on  the  Sabbath,  schools  pro- 
vided with  accomplished  teachers,  so- 
ciety good,  and  life  as  secure  as  in 
other  states.  Trolley  cars  fly  on  elec- 
tric wings  over  mountain  and  valley, 
delivering  messages  from  point  to 
point  with  the  regularity  of  clock- 
work, while  the  wireless  telegraph 
annihilates  time  and  distance  in  its 
circuit  around  the  globe. 

The    Indian,   on   his    fleet-stepping 


ffitf*     an    Ameruan     Jrontter 


horse,  with  flashing  spear,  battle-ax 
and  implements  of  warfare,  has  given 
way  to  the  pale-faced  rider  on  a 
steam-chested  iron  horse  with  speed 
that  defies  the  whirlwind  and  fears 
no  obstacle  in  its  way.- 

Emigrant  trains,  the  post-rider,  the 
stage-coach,  are  vanquished  by  the 
power  of  steam  and  electric  forces, 
guided  by  intelligent  agencies  that 
rule  the  world  and  bridge  the  skies. 

Old  theories  and  moving  powers 
are  substituted  by  new  agencies  in 
life's  activities  and  the  springtide  of 
the  new  century  is  budding  to  flash 
sunlight  over  the  world  that  will 
emancipate  the  social,  political,  com- 
mercial and  religious  environments 
that  encrust  them.  In  the  uplift, 
man  comes  into  sublimer  relation's  to 
creative  power  than  prophets  foresaw, 
or  seers  foretold.  The  past  is  but  an 
epitaph  on  the  tombstone  of  time;  the 
future  will  be  living  history.  The 
star  of  Bethlehem  that  shone  for  only 
a  few  wise  men  to  gather  at  the  man- 
ger to-day  shines  with  increased  lus- 
ter for  all  men  to  worship  at  its  shrine 
and  we  are  on  the  threshold  of  greater 
events  in  the  problem  of  life  than 
ever  before. 

The  president  of  the  United  States 
on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1903,  by  tele- 
graphic and  cable  news  startled  the 
slumbers  of  kings  and  queens  in  their 
morning  naps  by  "good-morning  sal- 
utations" which  echoed  around  the 
world  in  twelve  minutes  and  ten  sec- 
onds, returning  with  responsive 
acknowledgments  over  a  circuit  of 
nine  thousand  miles  through  ocean 
waters  and  over  mountain  summits, 
annihilating  distance  and  sanctifying 
thought  that  reached  from  the  throne 
of  light  to  the  heart  of  man. 

The  rainbow  of  promise  bends  from 
the  Throne  of  Power  to  the  ear  of 
man,  revealing  secrets  and  new  agen- 
cies soon  to  burst  upon  us;  the  bow- 


els of  the  earth  give  up  their  envel- 
oped history,  the  ocean  becomes  a 
sounding-board  for  midnight  dreams 
among  the  nations,  and  morning  sun- 
light flashes  through  inky  type,  the 
maturing  of  plots  in  isles  of  the  seas, 
and  the  moving  of  armies  in  distant 
nations  of  the  earth  are  photographed 
over  our  menu  at  the  breakfast  table. 
Electric  words  from  land  shores  jump 
into  wireless  aerial  chariots  and  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye  dance  upon  decks 
of  ships  hundreds  of  miles  distant, 
revealing  to  the  selected  eye  secrets 
that  astonish  the  world. 

The  star  chamber  of  destiny  opens 
its  gates  and  gives  us  a  free  ticket  to 
gather  at  the  passover  of  coming 
events.  The  cradle  of  to-day  is  rock- 
ing elements  that  will  startle  the 
world  to-morrow.  Rip  Van  Winkle 
slumbers  are  at  an  end.  The  twenti- 
eth century  awakens  new-born  activ- 
ities ;  morning  sunlight  illumines  the 
night  of  slumbering  energies;  science 
lifts  its  torch  revealing  new  attributes 
from  starry  realms;  theology  breaks 
the  shell  of  long  encased  dogmas ; 
medical  skill  moves  away  from  blood- 
letting facilities  which  nourish  and 
sustain  the  tissues  of  human  life ;  the 
law  abolishes  its  shield  on  the  equity 
side  of  party  litigants ;  American  en- 
ergies sweep  the  decks  of  the  world's 
commerce;  the  nations  stand  aghast 
at  the  attributes  of  American  achieve- 
ments on  the  line  of  progressive 
events. 

Railroad  bands  of  steel  girdle  the 
earth's  surface  by  American  push ; 
our  sails  whiten  the  seas,  steamboats 
plow  ocean  waves,  gathering  to  their 
decks  the  commerce  of  the  world. 
There  are  no  shady  nooks  for  lethar- 
gic dreams  by  the  wayside  in  the 
whirl  of  passing  events. 

"Life  is  real,  life  is  earnest,"  and 
no  manna  from  heaven  need  be  ex- 
pected 4o  drop  into  the  basket  of  the 
slothful. 


We'll  tread  the  prairie,  aa  of  old 

Our  fathers  sailed  the  sea, 
And  make  the  West,  as  they  the  East, 

The  homestead  of  the  free  " 


119 


Jtrat    Ammran 


C&all  "  Oto  Arm*  " 

Srgan  nrttl|  ilj*  Arrttral 

of  Jirnt  liljil*  flrn  in  %  Nrro  Wnrlb  ^ 

3faatmrn  nritlj  fHushrt  an&  $tik*  ^  ^orsrmrn  mill)  JJtctnl 

and  (Earbtn*  j*  dHttitarg  3Forr*  Ulazrii  Jfailj  for  OUwttizatUm  J 

Ufa  Jirnt   "  3rain*&  IBanfo  "  and  %  Organization  of  tlf*  (Crnrtin*  ntal  Armg 

BT 

SPENCER  P.  MEAD,  LL.D. 

of  the  New  York  Bar 

AUTHOR   OF    THB   HlSTOKT  AND    GENEALOGY    OF  THB    MEAD  AND    REYNOLDS    FAMILIES    IN    AMERICA 


HE  earliest  colonial  settlers 
m  ^is  country  found  it 
necessary  to  form  and 
maintain  military  organi- 
zations  for  their  protec- 
tion  from  the  Indians  and 
other  marauders,  which 
were  designated  "trained  bands"  and 
were  called  into  active  service  at  dif- 
ferent times  during  the  colonial  period 
as  the  exigencies  which  confronted 
the  colonists  required. 

In  Virginia,  Captain  John  Smith 
commanded  the  military  force  for  a 
number  of  years,  and  under  his  effi- 
cient leadership  it  proved  indispensa- 
ble to  the  preservation  of  that  colony. 
The  military  forces  of  the  Plymouth 
Colony  were  commanded  by  Captain 
Miles  Standish,  who,  in  1621,  com- 
manded a  strong  party  of  fourteen 
men  against  the  Indians  and  on  the 
twenty-ninth  day  of  August,  1643,  was 
appointed  captain  by  the  General 
Court,  and  in  1649  he  was  command- 
ant of  the  several  military  companies 
within  the  Plymouth  Colony. 

The  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony  in 
1631  ordered  that  "every  man  with  a 
musket  shall  have  ready  one  pound  of 
powder,  twenty  bullets  and  two  fath- 
ome  of  match,  and  that  every  captain 
shall  traine  (drill)  his  company  on 
Saturday  in  every  week.  General 
training  days  once  a  month  at  one 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon."  In  1637, 
general  training  days  were  reduced  to 
eight  times  in  a  year.  In  1636,  the 


General  Court  held  at  Boston,  ordered 
that  the  military  companies  be  divided 
into  three  regiments ;  that  all  freeman 
be  allowed  to  vote  for  officers  of  a 
trained  band;  and  in  1645  ordered 
that  the  chief  commander  of  every 
company  is  authorized  to  appoint  out 
and  to  make  choice  of  thirty  soldiers 
of  their  companies  in  every  hundred, 
"who  shall  be  ready  at  halfe  an  hour's 
warning  upon  any  service  they  shall  be 
put  upon  by  their  chief  military  offi- 
cer." The  organization  of  these  emer- 
gency men  was  continued  for  gen- 
erations, and  later  they  became  the 
famous  minute-men  of  the  Revolution- 
ary War.  There  has  recently  been 
organized,  in  order  to  perpetuate  the 
memory  of  the  minute-men  and  also  to 
promote  patriotism,  an  association 
known  as  the  "Minute-men,"  with 
headquarters  at  Washington,  D.  C.,and 
divisional  commanders  located  in  dif- 
ferent sections  of  the  country.  In 
1642,  provisions  were  made  for  fines 
and  punishments  for  disorderly  sol- 
diers, and  in  1648  arrangements  were 
made  for  regimental  drills  and  a  troop 
of  horses  was  organized. 

The  Connecticut  and  New  Haven 
colonies  likewise  organized  military 
companies,  or  "trained  bands,"  as  they 
were  called,  and  in  1636  ordered  "that 
every  plantacon  shall  traine  once  in 
every  month  and  if  upon  complainte 
of  their  military  officer,  it  appears  that 
there  bee  divers  very  unskillfull,  the 
saide  plantacon  may  appoint  the  offi- 


nf  Ity    (EntttutFtttal   Armg 


cer  to  traine  oftener  the  saide  unskill- 
full.  And  that  the  saide  military  offi- 
cer take  view  of  their  several  arms 
whether  they  bee  serviceable  or  noe. 
And  for  default  of  every  souldiers  ab- 
sent the  absent  to  paye  five  shillings 
for  every  tyme  without  lawful  excuse 
within  two  days  after,  tender  to  the 
commissioner,  or  one  of  them  in  the 
saide  plantacon.  And  for  any  default 
in  arms  upon  warnings  to  them  by 
the  saide  officer  to  amend  by  the  tyme 
appointed  one  shilling  every  tyme. 
And  where  arms  are  wholly  wanting 
to  be  bounde  over  to  answer  it  at  the 
next  Corte." 

First  American   Homes  Were 
Arsenals  Under  Penalty  of  Law 

Captain  Mason,  in  1637,  was  ap- 
pointed a  public  military  officer  of  the 
plantations  of  Connecticut  to  train 
"the  military  men  thereof  in  each  plan- 
tacon according  to  the  dayes  appointed 
and  shall  have  £40  per  annum,  to  be 
paid  oute  of  the  Treasury  quarterly. 
The  pay  to  begine  from  the  day  of 
the  date  hereof,  to  traine  the  saide  mil- 
itary men  in  every  plantacon  tenn  days 
in  every  yeare,  soe  as  it  be  not  in  July 
or  August,  giving  a  weekes  warning 
beforehand."  All  persons  to  bear 
arms  that  are  above  the  age  of  six- 
teen years,  except  those  exempted. 
A  magazine  of  powder  and  shot  to  be 
kept  in  every  plantation  for  the  supply 
of  the  military  men,  and  every  military 
man  is  to  have  continually  in  his  house 
in  readiness  "halfe  a  pounde  of  good 
powder,  two  pounds  of  bullets  sutable 
to  his  peece,  one  pounde  of  match,  if 
his  peece  be  a  matchlocke,  and  whoso- 
ever failes  of  his  halfe  pounde  of  pow- 
der and  two  pounds  of  bullets  and 
match  to  pay  five  shillings  for  every 
tyme  that  is  wanting."  Later  train- 
ing days  in  the  plantations  of  Con- 
necticut were  reduced  to  six  times  in 
a  year,  and  the  General  Assembly  en- 
acted, that  "there  shall  be  in  each  Plan- 
tation within  this  Jurisdiction,  every 
year  at  least  six  Training  days,  or 
days  of  public  military  exercises  to 
teach  and  instruct  all  the  males  above 


sixteen  years  of  age  in  the  comely 
handling,  and  ready  use  of  their  arms, 
in  all  postures  of  war,  to  understand 
and  attend  all  words  of  command." 

An  extract  from  the  report  of  the 
governor  of  Connecticut  to  the  home 
government,  dated  the  fifteenth  day  of 
July,  1680,  reads  as  follows : 

"For  the  present  we  have  but  one 
troope  settled,  which  consist  of  about 
sixty  horse,  yet  we  are  upon  raysing 
three  troopes  more,  one  in  each  county 
of  about  forty  horse  in  each  troope. 
Our  other  forces  are  Trained  Bands. 
There  is  a  major  in  each  county,  who 
commands  the  militia  of  that  county 
under  the  governor  for  the  time  being, 
who  is  the  General  of  all  the  forces 
within  our  Colony.  The  whole  amount 
to  2507.  The  names  of  the  several 
counties  are : 

Hartford  County  where  are  about  835  trained  soldier* 
New  Haven  "  '•  "  623 

New  London  "       "        "       "      500       "          " 
Fairfield         "       "        "       "     540       " 

2,507 

Our  horsemen  are  armed  with  pis- 
tolls  and  carbines.  The  foot  soldiers 
with  musket  and  pike.  For  the  pres- 
ent in  our  late  warrs  with  the  Indians, 
we  found  dragoones  to  be  most  use- 
full  and  therefore  improved  about 
three  hundred  of  these  in  the  service 
to  good  successe.  In  1689  our  num- 
bers were  2507." 

Governor  Trumbull's  Report  to  His 
Majesty's  Secretary  of  State,  dated 
October,  1774,  shows  the  number  on 
the  militia  rolls  to  be  26,260,  "all  male 
persons  from  sixteen  years  of  age  *.o 
forty-five  bear  arms,  the  trained  bands 
in  each  town  attend  four  days  in  the 
year  for  instructions  in  military  disci- 
pline. There  are  eighteen  regiments 
with  a  troop  of  horse  to  each,  and  to 
some  two  troops;  each  regiment 
attends  regimental  exercise  once  in 
four  years."  In  March,  1775,  the 
number  of  regiments  of  foot  in  Con- 
necticut were  twenty-two,  not  includ- 
ing troop  of  horse,  light  dragoons, 
artillery,  or  independent  companies. 

In  Rhode  Island  practically  the 
same  military  organizations  existed 
and  in  1640,  training  days  were  eight 


3fftrat   Ammran 


Arma 


times  in  a  year,  and  at  the  second  beat 
of  the  drum  all  men  allowed  and 
assigned  to  bear  arms  were  to  make 
their  personal  appearance  completely 
armed  to  attend  their  colors  by  eight 
o'clock  in  the  forenoon;  also  two 
general  masters  in  each  year  were  pro- 
vided for  in  addition.  Training  days 
in  1745  were  reduced  to  twice  a  year, 
but  the  two  general  muster  days  in 
each  year  were  continued,  and  later 
a  review  was  had  of  each  regiment  or 
battalion  twice  a  year  and  a  general 
muster  and  review  of  each  brigade 
once  in  two  years. 

First  Confederation  of  American 
Fighting  Forces  was  in  1643 

The  first  confederation  of  the  New 
England  Colonies  took  place  as  early 
as  1643,  a°d  at  a  meeting  of  its  com- 
missioners in  1653,  who  were  at  that 
time  in  session  at  Boston,  after  having 
"considered  what  number  of  souldiers 
might  be  Requisite,  if  God  called  the 
Collonies  to  make  warr  against  the 
Dutch,  concluded  that  five  hundred 
men  for  the  first  expedition  should  bee 
the  number  out  of  the  four  jurisdic- 
tions," and  apportioned  that  number 
to  the  several  colonies,  as  follows : 


Massachusetts  Bay. 
Plymouth 
Connecticut 
New  Haven 


333 
60 

65 
42 


and  Captain  John  Leverett  of  Boston 
was  selected  as  commander-in-chief 
of  the  forces  to  be  so  raised. 

A  few  years  after  this,  in  1665,  the 
Connecticut  and  New  Haven  Colonies 
were  united  under  one  government, 
and  the  Massachusetts  Bay  and  the 
Plymouth  Colonies  united  in  1692. 

The  militia  in  the  city  of  New  York 
in  1678  were  formed  into  companies  of 
one  hundred  men  each,  and  although 
but  indifferently  provided  with  fire- 
arms, and  those  of  all  sizes  and  pat- 
terns, they  were  drilled  and  rendered 
excellent  marksmen  by  continual  prac- 
tice in  firing  at  a  mark.  In  December, 
1772,  the  governor  of  the  province  of 
New  York  held  a  general  review  in 
the  fields  of  seven  independent  compa- 
nies of  the  militia  formed  into  a  bat- 
talion in  the  following  order : 


The  grenadiers, 

Two  companies  of  the  Governor's  guard, 

The  rangers, 

The  Germans, 

One  of  the  companies  of  artillery,  and 

One  company  of  the  light  infantry. 

The  review  was  witnessed  by  "a 
splendid  assembly  of  the  principal 
ladies  and  gentlemen."  After  the  re- 
view the  officers  were  entertained  by 
the  governor,  who  wrote  to  Lord 
Dartmouth,  stating  that  "it  was  the 
most  brilliant  militia  review  that  ever 
was  had  within  His  Majesty's  Ameri- 
can dominions."  In  June,  1773,  the 
governor  of  the  province  of  New  York 
forwarded  to  the  home  government  an 
abstract  of  the  state  of  the  militia  in 
the  province  of  New  York,  by  which  it 
appears  that  there  were  twenty-six 
regiments  of  foot  and  eleven  troop  of 
light  horse,  of  which  one  regiment  and 
one  troop  were  in  New  York  county. 

The  Pennsylvania  militia  was  organ- 
ized and  trained  along  the  same  lines 
as  were  the  other  colonies  and  in  1775 
it  was  organized  into  battalions,  and 
on  the  nineteenth  day  of  August  of 
that  year  consisted  of  fifty-three  bat- 
talions, and  in  1776  some  of  these  bat- 
talions were  composed  of  eight  com- 
panies. 

George  Washington  received  his 
early  military  training  in  the  Virginia 
militia,  and  in  1751,  at  the  age  of  nine- 
teen years,  he  was  appointed  adjutant 
of  the  militia,  and  in  1753  he  was  made 
commander  of  the  Northern  Military 
District  of  Virginia,  and  in  1755  he 
was  commissioned  commander-in-chief 
of  all  the  Virginia  militia. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  that  the  training 
in  arms  and  the  preparation  against 
surprise  and  attack  have  been  hand2d 
down  from  the  days  of  Captain  John 
Smith  and  Captain  Miles  Standish, 
and  that  as  the  settlements  increased 
and  the  population  multiplied  the  mili- 
tary forces  increased  in  equal  ratio, 
which  were  under  the  immediate  su- 
pervision of  the  various  Colonial  Gen- 
eral Courts,  the  Legislature,  or  the 
governor  of  the  colony.  The  com- 
pany officers,  who  must  be  freemen, 
were  elected  by  the  freemen  of  the 


(Drganuatinn    af  ttyt   (Enniinimtal   Armg 


trained  band  to  which  they  belonged ; 
every  freeman  was  compelled  to  serve 
in  the  militia  and  their  names  pre- 
sented to  the  General  Court  or  Legis- 
lature, and  if  such  elections  were  con- 
firmed commissions  were  issued  by  the 
General  Court  or  Legislature,  signed 
by  the  governor  and  under  the  seal  of 
the  colony,  and  forwarded  to  the  re- 
spective officers. 

Company  drills  were  held  at  irreg- 
ular periods  and  at  such  times  and 
places  as  the  commanding  officer 
might  designate,  and  should  not  be 
confused  with  training  days  or  muster 
days,  which  were  held  in  the  fields  and 
at  the  times  prescribed  by  the  General 
Court  or  Legislature.  In  Massachu- 
setts, the  minute-men,  which  were 
picked  men  from  the  trained  bands, 
during  the  latter  part  of  1774  and  the 
early  part  of  1775,  were  "disciplined 
three  times  a  week  and  oftener  as 
opportunity  might  offer." 

The  First  Men  of  the  Nation 
Were  Drilled  in  Use  of  Arms 

Training  days,  of  which  there  were 
from  two  to  six  during  the  year,  were, 
in  a  military  sense,  the  graduating  ex- 
ercises of  a  finished  course  of  instruc- 
tion in  company  drills.  Assembly  was 
sounded  in  some  of  the  colonies  at 
eight  o'clock  in  the  forenoon,  and  on 
others  at  one  o'clock  in  the  afternoon, 
when  the  companies  were  formed,  roll 
called  and  the  militia  exercised  in  the 
manual  of  arms  and  marching  in  close 
order.  This  was  followed  by  a  review 
and  inspection  by  the  colonial  officers, 
then  target  practice  and  firing  by 
squads.  After  this  the  forces  were 
divided  and  manoeuvred  in  extended 
order  and  finally  ended  the  day  by  par- 
ticipating in  a  sham  battle.  The  vari- 
ous state  military  camps  now  take  the 
place  of  the  colonial  training  days. 

On  muster  days  every  freeman  in 
the  colony  between  the  ages  prescribed 
for  military  duty,  except  those  ex- 
empted, was  compelled  to  be  present 
and  be  inspected,  or  examined,  as  to 
his  fitness  for  military  duty  and  if  he 
passed  the  necessary  qualifications  he 


was  mustered  into  the  militia  in  his 
respective  district  and  required  to 
attend  company  drills  and  training 
days. 

From  these  different  trained  bands 
there  were  principally  recruited  the 
quota  of  soldiers  which  the  several 
colonies  were  called  upon  from  time  to 
time  to  furnish  in  the  various  wars  in 
which  the  home  government  was  en- 
gaged during  the  colonial  period.  The 
last  and  most  important  colonial  war, 
so  far  as  the  colonies  were  concerned, 
was  the  French  and  Indian  War,  1754 
to  1764,  during  which  the  Virginia 
militia  was  commanded  by  George 
Washington.  It  might  be  well  to  add 
here  that  out  of  twenty-three  Ameri- 
can major-generals  of  the  Revolution- 
ary War,  the  majority  of  them 
(twelve)  had  served  with  distinction 
as  commissioned  officers  in  the  French 
and  Indian  War,  and  several  of  the 
others  as  Indian  fighters. 

Washington's  letters  during  his  ser- 
vice in  the  first  Continental  Congress 
held  at  Philadelphia  in  September, 
1774,  show  that  he  was  under  no  delu- 
sion as  to  the  outcome  of  the  taxation 
struggle,  and  that  he  expected  war, 
and  after  its  adjournment  he  was  act- 
ively engaged  in  perfecting  the  militia 
of  Virginia. 

The  first  sion  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Provincial  Congress  was  held  at 
Salem  on  the  seventh  day  of  October, 
1774,  and  after  being  temporarily 
organized  adjourned  to  the  eleventh 
day  of  October,  1774,  to  meet  at  the 
courthouse  at  Concord,  and  as  the 
improvement  of  the  militia  was  an  ob- 
ject of  importance  arrangements  were 
made  for  increasing  the  quantity  of 
warlike  stores  and  the  organization  of 
an  army,  and  at  the  session  held  on  the 
tenth  day  of  December,  1774,  the  sev- 
eral towns  and  districts  in  the  prov- 
ince were  advised  to  "see  that  each  of 
the  minute-men  not  already  provided 
therewith  should  be  immediately 
equipped  with  an  effective  firearm, 
bayonet,  pouch,  knapsack  and  thirty 
rounds  of  cartridge  and  balls." 


123 


Jtrat   Ammnm   &0lltor0— (Ml  "Sto   Arms" 


On  the  eighth  day  of  April,  1775, 
the  Provincial  Congress  of  Massachu- 
setts resolved  that  an  army  should  be 
raised  and  established  and  that  other 
New  England  colonies  should  be  asked 
to  furnish  their  quota  of  men  for  the 
general  defense. 

The  records  of  the  committee  of 
safety  and  supplies  show  that  in 
accordance  with  the  resolution  of 
October,  1774,  authorizing  the  collec- 
tion of  military  stores,  that  various 
stores,  arms  and  ammunition  were  be- 
ing collected  and  stored  at  Concord. 
To  seize  those  stores  Lieutenant  Colo- 
nel Francis  Smith,  with  a  detail  of 
British  regulars,  consisting  of  about 
eight  hundred  men,  embarked  from 
the  Boston  Common  at  ten  o'clock 
Tuesday  night  on  the  eighteenth  day 
of  April,  1775,  crossed  the  Charles 
river  and  began  the  march,  which  was 
to  bring  on  the  Revolutionary  War. 
He  met  and  dispersed  the  forewarned 
minute-men  at  Lexington  at  five 
o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  nine- 
teenth of  April,  1775,  and  marched  on 
to  Concord,  destroyed  the  stores  and 
commenced  his  return. 

"  You  know  the  rest  in  books  you  hare  read, 
How  the  British  regulars  fired  and  fled,— 
How  the  farmers  gave  them  ball  for  ball, 
From  b«hind  each  fence  and  farmyard  wall ; 
Chasing  the  red  coats  down  the  lane, 
Then  crossing  the  fields  to  merge  again 
Under  the  trees  at  the  turn  of  the  road, 
And  only  pausing  to  fire  and  load." 

At  length,  about  sunset,  almost  on  a 
run  the  British  reached  Charlestown 
Common,  where  they  were  sheltered 
by  the  guns  from  the  ships.  The  pur- 
suit stopped  and  the  colonial  officers 
held  a  consultation.  A  guard  was 
formed,  sentinels  posted  and  detach- 
ments were  sent  out  to  watch  the 
enemy.  The  remaining  provincial 
forces  consisting  of  minute-men  and 
trained  bands  encamped  around  Bos- 
ton. 

Soon  after  this  the  men  encamped 
around  Boston  were  asked  by  the  com- 
mittee of  safety,  which  was  the  execu- 
tive committee  of  the  Provincial  Con- 
gress of  Massachusetts,  to  enlist  until 
the  end  of  the  year,  or  for  a  shorter 
period ;  also  a  vigorous  circular  letter, 


dated  the  twentieth  day  of  April,  1775, 
was  sent  to  the  neighboring  towns 
urging  the  organization  of  an  army 
and  on  the  twenty-third  day  of  April, 
1775,  the  Provincial  Congress  of  Mas- 
sachusetts decided  that  an  army  of 
30,000  men  be  immediately  raised  and 
that  13,600  be  raised  from  Massachu- 
setts. Committees  were  sent  to  the 
Congress  of  New  Hampshire  at  Exe- 
ter and  to  the  governments  of  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut  to  inform  them 
of  those  resolutions  and  urge  the  fur- 
nishing of  men  in  the  same  propor- 
tion. 

Minute  Men  and  Trained  Bands 
Were  America's  First  Protectors 

So  thorough  had  the  work  of  organ- 
ization been  accomplished  in  the  colo- 
nies during  the  years  1773,  1774  and 
the  early  part  of  1775  that  an  appeal 
for  men  when  the  Seige  of  Boston 
commenced  was  immediately  suc- 
cessful and  a  force  of  from  20,000  to 
40,000  men,  consisting  of  minute-men 
and  trained  bands,  was  soon  raised. 
"Throughout  the  colonies  a  network 
of  local  committees  controlling  militia 
companies  and  post-riders,  formed  in 
each  colony  at  the  suggestion  of  the 
Virginia  House  of  Burgess  in  March, 
1773,  watched  the  approaching  storm, 
tested  the  loyalty  of  those  who  pro- 
fessed to  welcome  it  and  guided  the 
popular  indignation  and  when  the  Bat- 
tle of  Lexington  came,  the  colonies 
were  as  well  prepared  for  war  as  the 
poor  dependencies  of  a  powerful  na- 
tion could  be." 

The  forces  beseiging  Boston  were 
temporarily  under  the  command  of 
General  Artemas  Ward,  who  received 
his  commission  from  the  Provincial 
Congress  of  Massachusetts  as  com- 
mander-in-chief  on  the  nineteenth  day 
of  May,  1775.  A  short  time  prior  to 
this,  however,  the  Provincial  Congress 
of  Massachusetts  sent  a  communica- 
tion to  the  Continental  Congress,  then 
in  session  at  Philadelphia,  offering  the 
direction  of  the  forces  to  that  body 
and  suggesting,  as  had  been  proposed 


nf 


(Enntuuntal   Armg 


by  General  Ward,  the  organization  of 
an  army  on  the  following  basis : 

i.  A  General-ln-Chlef. 

a.  Troop*  to  be  enlisted  for  the  war. 

3.  Provisions  to  be  made  for  the  support  of  the 
families  of  soldiers. 

4.  That  a  loan  should  be  negotiated  for  the  equip- 
ment and  support  of  the  body,  which   should  be 
called  "The  American  Continental  Army." 

5.  That  the  volunteers  then  In  the  held  before 
Boston  were,  as  far  as  practicable,  to  be  re-enlisted, 
and  a  special  light  infantry  corps,  consisting  of  six 
companies  of  "  expert  riflemen <f  from  Pennsylvania, 
Maryland,  and  Virginia,  were  also  to  be  enlisted. 

On  the  fourteenth  day  of  June, 
1775,  a  system  of  rules  and  articles  of 
war  were  prescribed  by  the  Continen- 
tal Congress,  which  also  resolved  that 
six  companies  of  expert  riflemen  be 
immediately  raised  in  Pennsylvania, 
two  in  Maryland  and  two  in  Virginia, 
to  re-enforce  the  army  near  Boston. 
On  the  following  day,  June  15,  1775, 
the  Continental  Congress  announced 
the  selection  of  George  Washington  as 
general  and  commander-in-chief  of  the 
united  colonies  and  of  all  the  forces 
now  raised  or  to  be  raised  by  them. 

First  Record  of  an  American 
Continental  Army  was  in  1775 

The  term,  "Continental  Army,"  first 
officially  appears  upon  the  printed 
records  of  the  Continental  Congress  in 
the  summary  of  the  proceedings  for 
the  fourteenth  day  of  June,  1775, 
where  the  form  of  enlistment  to  be 
subscribed  by  companies  of  riflemen  is 
given.  It  was  to  be  an  enlistment  into 
the  "American  Continental  Army." 
On  the  same  day  a  committee  of  five 
was  appointed  to  prepare  rules  and 
regulations  for  the  government  of  this 
prospective  army,  which  were  reported 
and  adopted  on  the  thirtieth  day  of 
June,  1775. 

For  the  year  1775  no  Continental 
Army  was  in  the  first  instance  organ- 
ized as  such  by  the  Continental  Con- 
gress, and  as  the  colonies  were  mus- 
tering their  trained  bands  and  minute- 
men  around  Boston  and  Ticonderoga 
after  the  Lexington  alarm,  and  as  they 
were  already  in  the  field  as  good  ma- 
terial for  the  nucleus  of  such  an  army, 
the  Continental  Congress  adopted 
them  as  the  Continental  Army,  but 
troops  joining  later  were  generally  re- 


cruited  on  the  Continental  basis. 
After  the  year  1775  and  for  the  suc- 
ceeding years  of  the  war,  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  took  the  initiative  and 
raised  troops  for  the  common  army 
under  its  own  regulations  respecting 
pay,  subsistence  and  term  of  enlist- 
ment. The  army,  however,  as  will 
appear,  was  organized  and  reorgan- 
ized several  times  during  the  Revolu- 
tionary War,  and  for  various  terms. 
These  Continentals  were  the  "regu- 
lars" of  the  Revolution.  They  formed 
the  main  army  in  the  field  and  were 
the  chief  dependence  of  the  revolu- 
tionary cause.  All  other  troops  raised 
during  the  war  were  either  state 
troops  or  militia,  and  were  to  act  as 
reinforcements  of  this  army,  or  to  re- 
lieve it  by  serving  in  alarms  at  differ- 
ent points. 

General  Washington  arrived  in 
camp  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  on 
the  third  day  of  July,  1775,  and  the 
provincial  forces  having  accepted  his 
leadership  and  the  regulation  of  the 
Continental  Congress,  the  entire  force 
consisting  of  about  14,500  men  were 
placed  upon  a  Continental  establish- 
ment. This  new  relation  was  officially 
announced  by  the  commander-in-chief 
in  general  orders,  dated  Headquarters, 
Cambridge,  July  4,  1775,  as  follows: 
"The  Continental  Congress  having 
now  taken  all  the  Troops  of  the  several 
Colonies,  which  have  been  raised,  or 
which  may  be  hereafter  raised,  for  the 
support  and  defence  of  the  Liberties  of 
America  into  their  Pay  and  Service, 
they  are  now  the  Troops  of  the  United 
Provinces  of  North  America;  and  '.t 
is  to  be  hoped  that  all  Distinctions  of 
Colonies  will  be  laid  aside  so  that  the 
one  and  the  same  spirit  may  animate 
the  whole,  and  the  only  contest  be, 
who  will  render  on  this  great  and  try- 
ing occasion  the  most  essential  Service 
to  the  great  and  common  cause  :n 
which  we  are  engaged." 

After  the  campaign  of  1776  the 
army  was  reorganized  for  1776.  It 
was  not,  however,  until  the  reorgani- 
zation of  the  Continental  Army  for 


— (Eall  " 


1777,  that  Congress  realized  that  the 
contest  could  not  be  successively  car- 
ried on  with  troops  enlisted  for  short 
terms.  The  need  of  a  permanent  dis- 
ciplined army  to  cope  with  the  British 
"regulars"  was  recognized  as  urgent. 
Congress  accordingly,  by  resolutions 
of  the  sixteenth  and  twentieth  days  of 
September,  and  the  eighth  day  of 
October,  1776,  provided  for  such  a 
body.  The  army  was  proportioned 
among  the  states  according  to  their 
population,  as  follows : 

Massachusetts 15  regiments 

Virginia iS 

Pennsylvania.. 12 

New  York 4 

Maryland 8 

Connecticut 8 

and  the  rest  in  like  ratio. 

As  a  body  they  formed  the  Conti- 
nental Army,  and  the  regiments  of 
each  state  formed  a  subdivision  by 
themselves.  Each  state  quota  thus 
became  a  "Line  Regiment"  in  itself, 
which  was  designated  by  its  state's 
name,  as  the  "New  York  Line,"  "Con- 
necticut Line,"  etc.,  each  being  a  dis- 
tinct body  commanded  by  officers  from 
its  own  state  and  cared  for  by  its  own 
state  as  well  as  by  Congress.  In- 
spired by  a  common  cause  and  welded 
into  a  homogeneous  body  under  the 
leadership  of  General  Washington,  it 
was  these  state  "Lines,"  facing  the 
enemy  as  a  single  "Continental  Army" 
that  were  to  bear  the  burden  of  the 
war  for  the  next  six  years  and  bring  it 
to  a  successful  close. 

Washington  Called  for  "  Clean 
and  Spruce"  Men  In  1776 

The  Washington  Continental  Guard, 
also  known  as  the  "Washington  Life 
Guard,"  "Captain  Gibbs'  Guard"  and 
the  "Commander-in-Chief's  Guard," 
was  organized  on  the  twelfth  day  of 
March,  1776,  a  few  days  before  the 
termination  of  the  Seige  of  Boston, 
pursuant  to  the  following  order : 

HEADQUARTERS,  CAMBRIDGE, 

MARCH  u,  1776. 

The  General  is  desirous  of  selecting  a 
particular  number  of  men  as  a  guard  for 
himself  and  baggage.  The  colonel,  or  com- 
manding officer,  of  each  of  the  established 
regiments,  the  artillery  and  riflemen  ex- 


cepted,  will  furnish  him  four,  that  the  num- 
ber wanted  may  be  chosen  out  of  them. 
His  Excellency  depends  upon  the  colonels 
for  good  men,  such  as  they  can  recommend 
for  their  sobriety,  honesty  and  good  behav- 
ior. He  wishes  them  to  be  from  five  feet 
eight  inches  to  five  feet  ten  inches,  hand- 
somely and  well  made,  and  as  there  is  noth- 
ing, in  his  eyes,  more  desirable  than  clean- 
liness in  a  soldier,  he  desires  that  particular 
attention  may  be  made  in  the  choice  of  such 
men  as  are  clean  and  spruce.  They  are  to 
be  at  headquarters  to-morrow  precisely  at 
twelve  o'clock  noon,  when  the  number 
wanted  will  be  fixed  upon.  The  General 
neither  wants  them  with  uniforms,  nor 
arms,  nor  does  he  desire  any  man  to  be  sent 
to  him  that  is  not  perfectly  willing,  or  de- 
sirous of  being  of  this  Guard.  They  should 
be  drilled  men." 

On  the  following  day,  March  12, 
1776,  Caleb  Gibbs  of  Massachusetts 
was  commissioned  captain  of  the 
Guard,  which  consisted  of  a  major's 
command  of  one  hundred  and  eighty 
men,  to  whom  was  entrusted  the  de- 
tails of  the  organization. 

The  Guard,  like  the  Continental 
Army,  was  organized  and  reorganized 
several  times  during  the  Revolutionary 
War,  and  on  the  twenty-second  day  of 
April,  1777,  the  commander-in-chief 
sent  the  following  letter  to  Captain 
Gibbs : 

MORRISTOWN,  APRIL  22,  1777. 
CAPTAIN  GIBBS  : 
DEAR  SIR: 

I  forgot  before  you  left  this  place  to  de- 
sire you  to  provide  clothing  for  the  men 
that  are  to  compose  my  Guard.  .  .  . 
Provide  for  four  sergeants,  four  corporals, 
a  drum  and  fife  and  fifty  rank  and  file.  If 
blue  and  buff  can  be  had,  I  should  prefer 
that  uniform,  as  it  is  the  one  I  wear  myself. 
I  shall  get  men  from  five  feet  nine  inches 
to  five  feet  ten  inches  for  the  Guard;  for 
such  sized  men,  therefore,  make  your  cloth- 
ing. You  may  get  a  small  round  hat,  or  a 
cocked  hat,  as  you  please.  .  .  . 

I  am,  dear  sir,  your  most  obedient 
GEORGE  WASHINGTON. 

In  accordance  with  the  foregoing, 
and  on  the  thirtieth  day  of  April,  1777, 
the  general  issued  the  following  circu- 
lar to  the  colonels,  or  commanding 
officers,  of  the  various  regiments  sta- 
tioned at  Morristown : 
SIRS: 

I  want  to  form  a  company  for  my  Guard. 
In  doing  this  I  wish  to  be  extremely  cau- 

126 


Qi)rgatti2ati0tt    nf  ttyt    (Ennthtrntal   Armg 


tious,  because  it  is  more  than  probable  thnt 
in  the  course  of  the  campaign  my  baggage, 
papers  and  other  matters  of  great  public 
import  may  be  committed  to  the  sole  care 
of  these  men.  This  being  premised  m 
order  to  impress  you  with  proper  attention 
in  the  choice.  I  have  to  request  that  you 
will  immediately  furnish  me  with  four  men 
of  your  regiment ;  and,  as  it  is  my  further 
wish  that  the  company  should  look  well, 
and  be  nearly  of  a  size,  I  desire  that  none 
of  the  men  may  exceed  in  stature  five  feet 
ten  inches  nor  fall  short  of  five  feet  nine 
inches ;  sober,  young,  active  and  well  made. 
When  I  recommend  care  in  your  choice,  I 
would  be  understood  to  mean  of  good  char- 
acter in  the  regiment,  that  possesses  the 
pride  of  appearing  clean  and  soldierlike.  I 
am  satisfied  that  there  can  be  no  absolute 
security  for  the  fidelity  of  this  class  of  peo- 
ple; but  yet  I  think  it  most  likely  to  be 
found  in  those  who  have  family  connections 
in  the  country.  You  will,  therefore,  send 
me  none  but  natives,  as  I  do  not  want  to 
create  any  individual  distinction  between 
them  and  the  foreigners." 

The  Guard  varied  in  numbers  at  dif- 
ferent periods  during  the  Revolution- 
ary War.  At  first  it  consisted  of  one 
hundred  and  eighty  men.  During  the 
winter  of  1779-1780  it  was  increased 
to  two  hundred  and  fifty  men  and  in 
the  spring  of  1780  it  was  reduced  to 
its  original  number  and  in  1783,  the 
last  year  of  the  war,  it  consisted  of 
sixty-four  non-commissioned  officers 
and  privates.  It  was  the  duty  of  the 
infantry  portion  of  the  Guard  to  guard 
the  headquarters  and  insure  the  safe- 
keeping of  the  papers  and  effects  of 
the  commander-in-chief,  as  well  as  the 
safety  of  his  person.  The  mounted 
portion  accompanied  the  commander- 
in-chief  on  his  marches  and  in  recon- 
noitering,  and  were  also  employed  as 
patrols,  videttes  and  bearers  of  the 
commander-in-chief's  orders  to  vari- 
ous military  posts. 

Uniforms  of  Soldiers  of 
Continental  Army  in  1776 

The  Continental  Congress  on  the 
eighth  day  of  October,  1776,  resolved 
"that  for  the  further  encouragement  of 
the  non-commissioned  officers  and  sol- 
diers, who  shall  engage  in  the  service 
during  the  war,  a  suit  of  clothes  be 
annually  given  to  each  of  said  officers 
and  soldiers,  to  consist  for  the  present 

1*7 


year  of  two  linen  hunting  shirts,  two 
pair  of  overalls,  a  leathern  or  woolen 
waistcoat  with  sleeves,  one  pair  of 
breeches,  a  hat  or  leather  cap,  two 
shirts,  two  pair  of  hose  and  two  pair 
of  shoes."  On  the  twenty-fifth  day  of 
November,  1779,  Congress  further  re- 
solved, that  the  following  articles  be 
delivered  as  a  suit  of  clothes  for  the 
current  and  every  succeeding  year  of 
their  service  to  the  officers  of  the  line 
and  staff,  entitled  by  any  resolution  of 
Congress  to  receive  the  same,  viz. : 
"one  hat,  one  watch  coat,  one  body  coat, 
four  vests,  one  for  winter  and  three 
for  summer;  four  pair  of  breeches, 
two  for  winter  and  two  for  summer; 
four  shirts,  six  pair  of  stockings,  three 
pair  thereof  worsted  and  three  of 
thread  and  fo  pair  of  shoes." 

On  the  twenty-third  day  of  March, 
1779,  Congress  by  resolution  "author- 
ized and  directed  the  commander-in- 
chief,  according  to  the  circumstances 
of  supplies  of  clothing,  to  fix  and  pre- 
scribe the  uniform,  as  well  as  with  re- 
gard to  color  and  facing,  as  also  as  to 
cut  and  fashion  of  the  clothes  to  be 
worn  by  the  troops  of  the  respective 
states  and  regiments — woolen  overalls 
for  winter  and  linen  for  summer." 

In  accordance  with  the  above  reso- 
lution, the  following  general  order, 
dated  Headquarters,  Moore  House, 
October  2,  1779,  was  issued  by  Gen- 
eral Washington.  "The  following  are 
the  uniforms  that  have  been  deter- 
mined for  the  troops  of  these  states  re- 
spectively, so  soon  as  the  state  of  the 
public  supplies  will  permit  of  their  be- 
ing furnished  accordingly ;  and,  in  the 
meantime,  it  is  recommended  to  the 
officers  to  endeavor  to  accommodate 
their  uniforms  to  the  standard,  that 
when  the  men  come  to  be  supplied, 
there  may  be  a  proper  uniformity." 
New  Hampshire,  Massachusetts,  Rhode 
Island  and  Connecticut: 

Blue  faced  with  white. 

Burtons  and  linings  white. 
New  York  and  New  Jersey : 

Blue  faced  with  buff, 

Buttons  and  linings  white. 
Pennsylvania,  Delaware  and  Virginia: 

Blue  faced  with  red, 

Burtons  and  linings  white. 


Ammran 


(Hall 


Arms 


North     Carolina,     South     Carolina     and 
Georgia : 

Blue  faced  with  blue, 

Button  holes  edged  with  narrow  white 
lace  or  tape, 

Buttons  and  linings  white. 
Artillery  and  Artillery  Artificers : 

Blue  faced  with  scarlet, 

Scarlet  linings, 

Yellow  buttons, 

Yellow  bound  hats, 

Coats  edged  with  narrow  lace  or  tape 

and  button  holes  bound  with  same. 
Light  Dragoons : 

The  whole  blue, 

Faced  with  white, 

White  buttons  and  linings. 

HEADQUARTERS,  SHORT  HILLS, 
JUNE  18,  1780. 

The  colonels,  lieutenant-colonels  and 
majors,  the  uniforms  of  their  regiments  and 
two  epaulettes. 

The  captains,  the  uniform  of  their  regi- 
ment and  an  epaulette  on  the  left  shoulder. 

All  officers  as  will  warrant,  as  commis- 


sioned,     to  weai  a  cockade  "and  side  arms, 
a  sword  or  a  genteel  bayonet." 

HEADQUARTERS,  NEWBURGH, 

MAY  14,  1782. 

"The  clothier  is,  if  practicable,  to  obtain 
worsted  shoulder  knots  for  the  non-commis- 
sioned, to  wear  a  cockade  and  side  arms, 
distinguished  by  one  on  each  shoulder  and 
the  corporals  by  one  on  the  right  shoulder, 
and  in  the  meantime  it  is  proposed  that  a 
piece  of  white  cloth  should  be  substituted  by 
way  of  distinction." 


The  military  record  of  the  New 
World,  while  not  as  spectacular  as 
that  of  the  Old  World,  is  a  story  of 
strong  men  with  strong  hearts  who 
have  conquered  strong  forces  until 
today  this  first  struggling  republic 
is  one  of  the  strongest  nations  of  the 
earth  and  stands  at  this  moment  a 
world  power — learned  in  the  arts  of 
peace  and  the  forerunner  of  an  age 
of  Universal  Brotherhood. 


WHEN     SORROW     BECKONS    AT     THY     DOOR 


BY 


HOWARD  ARNOLD  WALTER 


Shall  I  rejoice  that  thou  hast  never 

known 

Life's  thorny,  bitter  way ; 
That  woodland  glades  with  roses  over- 
blown 

Are  where  thy  glad  feet  stray? 
Aye, — tho'  I  toil  alone 
Beneath  my  cross  this  day. 


Shall   I   recall  thee   from  thy  roses, 

sweet, 

To  feel  the  thorns  with  me ; 
When  deathless  sorrow  hath  not  lured 

thy  feet 

Nor  taught  thine  eyes  to  see  ? 
Nay, — 'twere  not  meet 

My  grief  should  sadden  thee. 


But  O,  when  sorrow  beckons  at  thy  door, 
And  thou  dost  rise  and  follow  far, 

As  I  rejoin  thee  on  the  distant  shore 
Where  all  earth's  grieved  ones  are, 

If  thou  implore 

I'll  show  my  livid  scar. 


128 


(Enuutrg  ICif?  in  A  m  ?  r  t  r  a 


PATH    THRO'    THE    WOOD 

DRAWING    BY    DANIEL    F.    WENTWORTH 


MOONLIGHT 

DRAWING 

BY 
DANIEL    F.    WENTWORTII 


THE   ROAD    IIOMK 


srx 


HY 


GEORGE    C.    AT  U  KM. 


THE   OLD   MILL, 

SUN    GRAVURE. 

BT 
GEORGE    C.    ATWELL, 


THE   MEADOWS 

DRAWING 

BY 
DANIEL    F.    WENTWORTH 


THE    BROOK 

SUN    GRA.VURE 

BY    GEORGE    C.    ATWEL.L, 


itf  Ammrmt  JmmitrtalH 


MERICANS  are  united  in 
a    resolute    purpose — 
the  erection  of  a  Great 
Edifice     of     Human 
Eqjuality  on  the  West- 
ern   Continent.     It   is 
the  structure,  not  the 
architects  no?  the   builders,    that  is 
uppermost'  in  the  American  mind. 

With  this  monumental  labor  slow- 
ly but  steadily  moulding  itself  into 
the  greatest  tabernacle  of  "Life, 
Liberty  and  the  Pursuit  of  Happi- 
ness" that  human  mind  and  heart 
and  hand  have  ever  conceived,  the 
artisans  are  begin- 
ning to  recognize 
that  there  is  he 
among  them  who 
has  contributed 
largely. 

It  matters  little 
whether  it  be  under 
the  Empire  or  the 
Republic,  in  the 
short  Day's  Work 
of  Man  there  will 
always  be  One 
whose  craftsman- 
ship and  ingenuity 
will  lift  him  up  from 
the  ranks. 

American     spirit 
knows    nothing    of 
idolatry.     It  is  not 
hero  -  worshipping. 
It     loves      Honest 
Work,    well    done, 
and,  when  it  beholds 
it,  grasps  the  hand  of  the  Worker — 
and  the  pulse  throbs  in  manly  recog- 
nition and  brotherly  affection. 

The  Heart  of  Man  is  great.  It  is 
greater  even  than  his  marvelous  in- 
tellect and  his  determinate  brawn. 
This  recognition  of  the  fellow- 
worker's  skill  is  one  of  the  noblest 
attributes  of  Man.  No  community 
of  people — no  nation — can  become 
permanently  strong  that  does  not 
recognize  the  individual  achieve- 
ments of  its  workers. 

Westminster  Abbey  is  an  incentive 
for  every  toiler  under  the  British 


THK  H.U.I.  OK  FAMK 


FOR  GRKAT  AMERICANS 


BY  WEALTH  OK  THOUGHT 


OR  ELSE  HY  MH;HTY  DKKI 


THEY  SKKYED  MANKIND 


:LK  CHARACTER 


IN  WORLD-WIDE  GOOD 


THEY  LIVE  FoREVBRMORE 


Flag  to  do  his  Day's  Work  to  the 
best  of  his  ability — its  portals  are 
thrown  wide  and  willingly  open  to 
him  whose  completed  work  is  done  a 
little  better  than  that  of  the  other 
laborers.  France  has  its  Academy 
of  Immortals — its  Pantheon  in  Paris, 
and  Germany  its  "  Ruhmes 
Halle." 

It  is  the  American  people  who 
have  dedicated  "  The  Hall  of  Fame  " 
for  their  great  kinsmen  whose  ser- 
vices have  contributed  liberally  to 
the  Great  Whole. 

This  magnificent  tribute  to  Amer- 
ican Achievement 
stands  on  the  bank 
of  the  Hudson,  com- 
manding a  sweeping 
view  of  the  Palisades, 
the  historic  heights 
of  Fort  Washington 
where  one  of  the 
hardest  struggles  for 
American  independ- 
ence was  fought,  and 
at  the  gate-way  of 
the  New  World. 

A  senate  of  one 
hundred  eminent 
Americans  confers 
the  honor  on  the 
Americans  whose 
labors  entitle  them 
to  the  immortal 
memory  of  the  Amer- 
ican people. 

The  first  American 
chosen  to  the  "  Hall 
of  Fame  "  was  George  Washington, 
who  received  the  full  recognition  of 
the  electorate  in  which  ninety-seven 
members  conferred,  three  being  ab- 
sent 

The  second  American  elected  was 
Abraham  Lincoln,  with  ninety-six; 
Daniel  Webster,  third,  with  ninety- 
six;  and  Benjamin  Franklin,  fourth, 
with  ninety-four. 

Forty  Great  Americans  are  now 
immortalized  in  the  "Hall  of  Fame." 
A  series  of  bronzes  to  their  memory 
is  appropriately  inaugurated  in  these 
pages. 


«3S 


I    IHST    IMIKSIOENT     OF  AMERICAN    KKITBI.M 

GEORGE    WASHINGTON 

JOH.V      AT       IlHIIHii:-       i    Kl    I:K,       Vll«;iN-IA.       FR  1IH  r  A  M  V       22,      O.       S.       H.       173S 
DIKI)       AT       Mof.VT       VKR.VON-,       VIRGINIA,       DKfKMHKH       14,       17OO 


KIHST    «.IM:AT    AMKHKA.N   i.i  HKUAK  •» 
A  UK  A  II  AM      LINCOLN 

IN        IIAKIMN        <       )l     S    I    V.  >.        KEIIKfAHV        IS.        1«O» 

)1KD       AT      WASIII  V"»r«iV.       DISTRICT      OK      COUDMHIA.       AI'KII.       13.       I  • 


KIItST     O  It  K  AT     AMERICAN      STATESMAN 

DANIEL    WEBSTER 

Ili'HN       AT       SAI.INBURV,      NKW       II A  M  PI1  I  ft  K.      JANUARY       18,      17B3 
I>IKD      AT      MAR8HFIK1.D,      MA  8  S  ACHUS  KTTS,      OOTOBKH      2«,       ISSZ 


MUST    C,KI:AT    AMKKK  AN     i»i  IM.OM  A  i 
UK  N.I  AM  IN    FHANK1.IN 

HORN       AT      BOSTON,      JIA88  ACHUS  KTTH,      JANt'AKY       17,       1TO« 
DIKD      AT      PHII-AIJKLI'IIIA,      PKICW  BTL  V  A  -V I  A.       APRIL       17.       17«O 


"MONARCH    SUPREME    IN    NATURE'S    GLORIOUS    REALM" 

But  few  American  poets  have  sung  the  praises  of  Niagara.  For  nearly  half  a  century  this 
marvelous  pageant  has  been  neglected  in  literature.  About  1825,  John  J.  C.  Brainard,  while 
residing  in  Hartford,  wrote  a  poem,  "Niagara,"  which  according  to  the  critics  of  those  days 
"  produced  a  sensation  of  delight  over  the  whole  country."  That  American  Poetry  is  not  dead 
is  proved  by  the  stirring  lines  to  Niagara  here  written  by  a  venerable  American  lawyer,  who 
is  about  to  pass  through  the  gateway  of  the  octogenarian,  with  the  vigor  and  patriotic  spirit 
of  the  generation  which  he  still  represents.  Henry  Taylor  Blake,  the  author  of  this  new  ode. 
was  born  in  1828  at  New  Haven,  Connecticut.  He  was  graduated  from  Yale  in  1848;  studied 
law  and  was  admitted  to  the  bar  of  Hartford  county  in  1851,  retiring  from  active  practice  in  1888 


(Emttmporary  Amrnrmt 

An  ®ur  to  Niagara  Jffalhs 


HONORABLE  HENRY  TAYLOR  BLAKE 

Now  is  HIS  SEVEXTY-XIXTII  YEAII 


IKE  him  of  Patmos  who  in  vision  rapt 

Beheld  in  Heaven  Jehovah's  great  white 
throne 

And  speechless  worshipped,   thus    with 
reverent  awe 

Before  thy  royal  state  I  bow,  Niagara! 

Monarch  supreme  in   Nature's   glorious 

realms 

Of  Beauty,  Grandeur,  Majesty  and  Power ! 
Monarch  and  psalmist  both!  whose  mighty  harp 
Like  that  of  Israel's  King,  with  vibrant  strings 
Repeats  in  chant  sublime  thy  Maker's  name. 
Fit  music  for  this  wondrous  amphitheater 
Whose  pageants  God's  own  hand  has  framed  and  moves 
Incessant  through  the  years  in  pomp  divine! 
Draped  from  the  wide  arena's  farther  wall, 
Yon  streaming  curtain  shows  in  living  scene 
A  sliding,  shimmering  precipice  of  foam 
Half  veiled  in  rolling  clouds  of  bursting  spray, 
Whose  gullied  front  with  changing  hues  aglow 
And  glimpsed  in  gleams  of  fitful  splendor,  seems 
An  endless  avalanche  of  emerald  and  snow; 
Or  like  a  marble  mountain's  beetling  cliff, 
Its  tumbling  crags  in  dusty  ruin  hurled  ; 
While  like  a  dirge  in  varying  cadence  floats 
Across  the  misty  gulf,  their  deep  despairing  roar. 
Turning  I  downward  peer  with  shuddering  gaze 
Over  the  plunging  cataract's  dizzy  verge, 
Stunned  by  the  throbbing  thunder-roll  below, 
Where  Hell's  infuriate  cauldron  boils  and  spouts 
And  quivers  with  the  throes  of  bellowing  floods 
In  that  fierce  torture-dungeon  pent  and  torn! 
Their  writhing  ghosts,  out  from  the  vortex  flung 
Bewildered  whirl;  then  some  in  somber  train 
Like  spirits  lost,   flit  weeping:  some  with  joyous  flight 
Swift  through  the  golden  archway  overspread 
Like  radiant  portal  of  immortal  hope 
Upsoaring,  vanish  at  the  gate  of  heaven. 


j^to^J&f  AR  up  the  stream  in  restless  flashing  line 
Ml  Thy  heaving  waters  meet  the  horizon's 

edge. 

r  Lo !   leaping  from  the  sky  in  pauseless 

^^^^  flow 

Unnumbered  billowy  legions,  rank  on 

rank 

In  plumed  array  sweep  down  the  tossing  slope! 
Onward  they  drive  in  eager,  mad  career! 
They  hear  thy  battle  thundering  at  the  front! 
They  see  thy  banner  glittering  o'er  the  fray, 
And  shout  exulting !  but  the  foremost  lines 
When  thy  deep  dread  abyss  yawns  wide  below 
Shrink  back  appalled,  recoiling  from  their  fate! 
Vain  thought!  borne  onward  in  impetuous  course 
Their  loose  battalions  massed  for  final  charge 
Are  headlong  hurled  to  join  the  dreadful  war 
Where  crashing  its  volleys  on  the  mail  clad  rocks 
Thy  fierce  artillery  smokes  in  ceaseless  peal! 
Stupendous  strife  of  Nature's  mightiest  powers! 
Resistless  Force  with  Strength  immovable! 
But  thine  all  shattering  blows  break  piecemeal  down 
Those  armored  hosts  and  beat  them  into  dust 
And  bear  them  backward  in  a  murky  tide; 
First,  slow  and  sullen,  then  in  frantic  rout 
And  desperate  race,  pursuers  and  pursued 
In  wild  commingling  piled,  with  deafening  roar 
Down  through  that  gloomy   gorge   where  thou   hast 

fought 

Thy  tireless  battle  of  ten  thousand  years 
Moving  thy  standard  onward,  inch  by  inch! 
Slowly  the  turmoil  dies;  the  struggle  ends; 
O'erwhelmed  the  vanquished  sink,  and  the  victorious 

hosts 

With  trampling  rush  above  their  fallen  foes 
Press  on  to  reach  the  goal  by  glory  won. 
Death's  and  Oblivion's  dank  and  turbid  pool ! 


FAR    UP    THE    STREAM    IN    RESTLESS    FLASHING    LINE  "—NIAGARA    RIVER 


^^^  ND  now  the  setting  sun's  departing  beams 
Jv^k  Light  up  thy  face  with  warm  responsive 

glow 

^   ^^       As  if  thou  answeredst  back  his  kind 
.fa,      ^Lr  "Good  Night!" 

And  thus  with  fond  attention  hour  by 

hour 

Thy  brow  reflects  his  every  changing  mood; 
Bright  when  he  smiles,  and  shadowed  when  he  frowns, 
But  all  things  else  thou  heedest  not,  withdrawn 
In  solemn  mystery  apart,  inscrutable ; 
Speaking  thy  thunders  to  no  earthly  ear, 
And  tossing  man  or  beast  or  floating  log 
Indifferent  which,  and  all  with  equal  scorn! 
For  he,  thy  sire,  who  warmed  thee  into  life 
Smiled  the  first  welcome  to  thine  infant  form 
When  the  great  glacier  mother  gave  thee  birth 
And  scooped  thy  cradle  in  the  solid  rock, 
Then  dying,  left  thee  to  his  fostering  care. 
And  he  and  thou  in  lone  companionship 


Through  aeons  vast  together  have  beheld 

The  myriad  changes  of  Creation's  growth ; 

Seas,  lakes  and  rivers,  mountains,  hills  and  plains, 

Deserts  and  forests,  reptiles  and  monsters  strange, 

Fierce  beasts  and  fiercer  men,  race  slaughtering  race. 

In  long  succession  come  and  pass  away  ; 

Thyself  and  he,  the  only  deathless  things! 

And  still  his  radiant  orb  undimmed  shall  light 

Unnumbered  generations  to  adore 

At  thine  all-glorious  shrine,  all  glorious  still 

Though  marred  by  fripperies,  and  despoiled  by  greed, 

While  empires  wax  and  wane  and  disappear. 

Till  Time's  tired  footsteps  drag  but  feebly  on 

And  Earth  decrepit  staggers  to  her  end! 

Then  shall  his  face  grow  wan  with  age  and  cold 

And  thy  swift  rushing  torrents  freeze  to  stone ; 

And  slowly  mantling  in  the  gloomy  pall 

Of  Nature's  icy  death-bed,  thou  and  he 

Shall  sleep  together  in  eternal  night. 


"OVER    THE    PLUNGING    CATARACT'S    DIZZY    VERGE  "—NIAGARA    FALLS 


'NATURE'S    ICY    DEATH-BED  "-NIAGARA    FALLS    IN    WINTER 


THE    FIRST    AMERICAN'S    GREETING    TO    THE    WHITE    MAN 
By  Herman  Atkins  MacNeil,  Sculptor 


HEKE    LET    ME    DWELL, 


BT 


REVEREND  FREDERICK  E.  SNOW 

LOOKED  across  the  valley  from  my  home 
When  Winter's  frosty  hand  held  in  its  grip 
The  wide  and  barren  landscape ;  here  and  there 
Patches  of  evergreen  stood  forth  distinct 
And  vivid  mid  the  all-pervading  gray 
Of  sky  o'er-head  and  circling  atmosphere. 
A  storm  had  raged  through  all  the  day  and  night, 
And  every  tree  trunk  had  its  snowy  coat ; 
The  woods  looked  like  a  group  of  spectres  wan 
And  with  uplifted  arms  in  mute  appeal 
To  Heaven  to  pity  them,  bereft  and  stripped 
Of  all  of  Summer's  beauty.     A  leaden  sky 
Still  hung  above  the  white  and  snow-bound  earth ; 
Pale  shadows  lay  along  the  lines  of  fence ; 
The  houses  rose  from  out  their  muffled  yards 
Like  ships  from  out  the  foam  of  troubled  seas ; 
Deep  in  the  valley,  outlined  by  the  trees 
Which  sparsely  stood  along  its  frozen  brim. 
The  brook  was  babbling  'neath  its  mail  of  ice ; 
The  village  looked  so  like  a  little  world 
Half  buried,  yet  rising  from  its  fleecy  tomb. 

'Bove  every  roof  the  smoke  curled  hesitant, 
Reluctant  thus  to  leave  the  sheltering  warmth 
Of  wide  and  generous  chimneys.     Signs  of  life 
Were  here  and  there  visible  ;  and  forms  dark 
Against  the  universal  white  moved,  now 
From  house  to  barn,  from  barn  to  well, 
Tracing  the  curious  labyrinth  of  paths, 
Through  which,  as  through  a  loom  the  shuttle  moves, 
The  children  chased  each  other  back  and  forth. 
Halfway  up  the  hill,  facing  the  long  street 
Stretching  southward,  stood  like  a  sentinel 
The  village  church,  guarding  with  jealous  eye 
Her  trusting  children  as  they  worked  or  slept, 
us 


HERE     LET    ME     D  W  E  L,  L, 

A  little  world  shut  in  and  by  itself; 
A  world  behind  its  snowy  ramparts  hid, 
Having  its  own  sorrows,  its  own  tears ; 
And  yet  a  world  "  far  from  the  madding  crowd," 
Unvexed  by  mad  ambition,  eager  strife, 
Competition  in  which  one  must  go  down 
To  cruel  disappointment's  black  abyss ; 
A  world  where  love  delights  in  ministry 
In  common  things,  nor  vaunts  itself  before 
The  eyes  of  men,  as  tho'  it  sought  applause  ; 
A  world  where  each  his  neighbor  gladly  serves 
And  counts  it  scorn  to  think  of  recompense ; 
A  little  world  lying  beneath  God's  eye 
Content  within  the  circle  of  His  love ! 

Let  those  who  will  dwell  midst  the  noisy  din, 
The  harsh  clamor,  of  the  world's  contention, — 
Ceaseless  debate  of  questions  without  end, 
And  strife  for  earthly  dignity  and  rank, — 
The  heedless  scramble  after  tinseled  toys, 
The  heated  chase  for  riches'  gilded  prize ; 
Give  me  a  book  before  the  fireside 
Where  the  soft  nestle  of  the  murmuring  flame 
Stirs  tender  tho't,  and  soothes  the  tangled  brain ; 
Where,  from  the  circle  of  the  village  life 
Some  friend  congenial  and  with  like  taste 
Shall  come,  tho'  all  unbidden,  yet  to  find 
His  chair  set  forth,  and  welcome  waiting  him; 
Where  quiet  talk  shall  glide  from  lip  to  lip, 
Or  if  perchance  the  flow  of  words  shall  cease, 
Unspoken  tho't  shall  tell  of  sympathy, 
And  silence  shall  be  full  of  golden  speech ! 
Here  let  me  dwell  in  calm  serenity, 
-Secure  from  hard,  insistent  claim, 
From  every  brazen,  insolent  demand 
To  render  homage  where  desert  is  not, 
To  worship  at  a  shrine  whence  worth  has  fled — 
I'll  be  content  and  thank  a  gracious  God 
Who  lets  the  lines  of  life  fall  happily! 


of  a  £*rg?attt  in  Mar  of  1B12 

Unmanrr   of   3oh.n  Surt.  Jtral    Vattulton   Artillrrif.  ano 
Jlrrata  f8rarb.am — Bttb.  QfranBrripts  from  (ftorrrsponornrr 


BT 

WILLIAM  BURT  HARLOW.  PH.D. 

GRANDSON  or  SXBUKANT  BUKT 


MONO  the  ancient  papers 
left  by  my  grandmother 
I  find  a  bundle  of  old 
letters  and  from  them  I 
gather  glimpses  of  a 
real  old-time  courtship 
— a  romance  such  as 
our  grandmothers  and  grandfathers 
experienced  when  the  American  Re- 
public was  in  the  making.  There 
is  a  gentility  and  a  gallantry  to 
these  worn  documents  that  flavors  of 
the  Old  World.  In  the  changes  of 
time  these  courtly  manners  have  gone 
with  those  whom  they  graced  and  it  is 
indeed  pleasurable  to  look  upon  the 
lines  of  those  who  Jived  "when  knight- 
hood was  in  flower." 

It  was  one  hundred  and  twenty 
years  ago  that  my  good  grandmother 
was  born  on  Enfield  street  in  northern 
Connecticut.  Her  name  bears  the  im- 
print of  days  long  gone — "Persis" — 
quaint  Persis  Meacham. 

Her  father's  little  farm  was  one  of 
several  estates  that  were  united  to 
form  the  property  of  that  successful 
founder  of  the  mills  from  whom 
Thompsonville,  Connecticut,  is  named. 
My  grandmother  remembered  "that 
little  Thompson  boy"  as  a  ragged 
barefoot  urchin  running  about  the  lots 
in  old  Enfield.  Only  the  wells  of  the 
former  farms  were  allowed  to  remain 
to  tell  the  tale  of  the  old  days  and 
the  great  mansion  standing  in  its  com- 
manding position  in  the  midst  of  a 
fine  grove  is  still  seen  next  the  quaint 
old  church  with  its  slender  spire. 
Here  Persis  Meacham  attended  ser- 
vice until  she  was  thirty  years  old 
and  the  old  building  remains  much 
as  it  appeared  then  ninety  years  ago. 
The  wooden  bridge  from  Enfield 
across  the  Connecticut  river  to  Suf- 

147 


field  was  a  few  years  ago  carried  away 
in  a  spring  flood.  It  was  shaky  and 
called  unsafe  when  I  rode  over  it  ten 
years  ago.  My  grandmother  used  to 
walk  over  it  daily  on  her  way  to  the 
Suffield  school  of  which  she  was  mis- 
tress. 

John  Burt  of  Longmeadow  was 
courting  her  in  those  days  and  as  he 
was  the  son  of  a  Revolutionary  officer, 
Colonel  Gideon  Burt,  he  naturally  felt 
called  upon  to  follow  in  the  footsteps 
of  his  sire  who  procured  him  a  com- 
mission as  sergeant  to  serve  in  the  War 
of  1812  at  Sackett's  Harbor  and  Fort 
Michilimackinac.  His  term  was  for 
five  years  and  the  youthful  lover,  who 
was  six  years  the  junior  of  his  lady- 
love, must  cease  his  visits  at  the  En- 
field  farm  and  shouldering  a  musket 
depart  with  his  regiment  into  the  wil- 
derness. 

Letters  were  slow  in  coming  in 
those  days  and  the  postage  amounted 
to  eighteen  cents.  I  fear  my  grand- 
papa was  rather  neglectful  of  his  poor 
little  Persis.  She  may  perhaps  be  ex- 
cused for  lecturing  him  a  little,  for  he 
was  twenty-two  and  she  was  twenty- 
eight.  She  was  old  enough  to  know 
what  was  what  and  I  am  glad  she 
gave  him  a  piece  of  her  mind.  I  will 
copy  one  of  her  letters  which  is  in- 
teresting when  compared  with  what 
might  be  written  by  a  girl  to  her 
sweetheart  at  the  present  day. 


ENFIELD,  FEBRUARY  3,  1816. 
MY  DEAR  FRIEND  : 

I  received  your  letter  yesterday  with 
much  pleasure  as  well  as  surprise,  for  I  had 
long  since  supposed  myself  forgotten  by 
you.  I  am  happy  to  hear  that  I  am  still 
remembered  by  you  &  that  I  still  retain 
the  same  friendship  and  affection  for  you 
as  ever.  I  think  you  have  been  rather  too 
neglectful  in  writing  to  me;  you  have 


Urttera   of   a 


in 


of   1B12 


wrote  to  your  other  friends  much  oftener 
than  to  me.  Allmost  three  years  have 
elapsed  since  you  left  Enfield  and  I  have 
received  only  four  letters  from  you  and  this 
is  the  eighth  I  have  addressed  to  you  in 
your  absence.  However,  I  am  willing  lo 
make  every  allowance  for  your  omission  in 
writing  if  you  will  be  more  punctual  for  the 
future,  alltho'  I  am  unacquainted  with  a 
military  life  I  know  there  must  be  many 
inconveniences.  I  rejoice  to  hear  of  your 
good  health  &  agreeable  situation,  may  it 
still  continue,  ma"  you  receive  every  bless- 
ing that  is  necessary  to  make  life  agreeable. 
Your  father  received  your  letter  on 
Thanksgiving  day;  it  gave  your  friends 
much  joy,  I  was  then  at  Long  meadow  and 
had  an  opportunity  of  perusing  it  through 
the  kindness  of  Gideon  which  gave  me 
much  pleasure  as  you  expressed  your  love 
for  those  that  loved  you  only,  and  I  thought 
I  might  be  one  of  that  number.  Oh,  John! 
have  you  got  to  stay  more  than  two  years 
longer?  Three  years  are  allmost  past 
which  seems  like  a  little  eternity.  Alas ! 
must  you  stay  your  five  years?  Write  I 
entreat  you  and  let  me  know  if  there  is  a 
probability  of  your  return  before  that 
period  which  I  live  in  constant  hope  there 
is.  Thanksgiving  eve  I  attended  Wm. 
Stebbins  and  Eliza  B's.  wedding.  Happy, 
happy  union !  two  fond  hearts  are  joined  in 
one.  Your  brother  has  once  more  received 
a  wound  from  little  Cupid  but  I  think  there 
is  a  remedy  before  winter  is  out  I  think  he 
will  be  firmly  bound  in  Hymeneal  bonds 
with  Miss  Sally  Kibbe;  he  seems  to  think 
of  nothing  else  at  present  but  his  approach- 
ing nuptials.  Write  me  as  often  as  possible 
and  be  assured  I  shall  not  omit  the  same. 
Adieu  my  friend,  I  still  remain  your 

PERSIS. 


The  reply  of  the  soldier  lover  writ- 
ten in  good  round  hand  is  dated  more 
than  seven  months  later,  but  then  it 
took  more  than  four  months  for  his 
lady-love's  letter  to  reach  him.  One 
had  need  of  much  patience  in  those 
days  of  uncertain  mail  transportation. 


MlCHILIMACKINAC 

I4th  Septr.  1816. 
MY  DEAR  PERSIS  : 

Your  kindly  letter  I  received  on  the  i6th 
of  June  last  which  I  would  have  Answered 
long  since  but  no  opportunity  offering  from 
the  inconvenience  of  vessels  from  Detroit 
not  arriving  as  I  should  wish  to  convey  it. 
I  am  happy  to  inform  you  that  I  am  well  at 
present,  although  afflicted  with  the  fever 
and  ague  for  some  time  past  which  I  hope 
these  few  lines  will  find  you  in  good  health 
also.  My  feelings  are  rather  hurt  at  find- 


ing that  you  should  imagine  or  even  think 
that  you  were  forgotten  by  me  on  account 
of  not  punctually  writing  to  you.  No,  my 
Dear  Persis,  it  is  the  fate  of  a  soldier's  life 
to  be  thus  disappointed  in  the  sanguine  ex- 
pectation of  doing  an  act  of  the  most  im- 
portant concern  to  be  turned  from  it  in  a 
moment,  but  those  in  private  life  have  no 
Idea  of  such  inconvenience, — I  know  my 
Dear,  the  time  is  long  since  my  departure 
from  Enfield,  but  what  can  I  do  ?  here  I  am 
bound  and  cannot  stir  without  bringing  dis- 
grace upon  myself  and  family  until  regu- 
larly and  legally  released  from  such  embar- 
assment;  if  then  this  should  be  removed  I 
must  say  you  would  have  enough  of  room 
to  impeach  me  with  neglect  but  I  shall  be 
as  punctual  in  Writing  for  the  future  as  the 
nature  of  this  place  will  admit — I  am 
obliged  to  you  my  Dear  for  your  good 
Wishes  for  my  being  in  good  health  which 
is  more  precious  than  all  other  riches,  and 
equally  so  for  you  being  in  the  same  state ; 
but  as  to  my  Situation  although  as  agreea- 
ble as  the  nature  of  it  will  admit  is  not  to 
me  so,  particularly  being  so  long  apart  from 
you  and  my  other  relations  and  friends  but 
I  hope  my  Father  will  shortly  effect  some- 
thing for  my  Relief. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  of  the  happy  Union  cf 
Mr.  Wm.  Stebbins  and  his  Consart  and 
wish  them  all  happiness,  not  but  I  regret 
the  distant  period  of  ours  which  I  hope  will 
some  time  or  other  take  place.  I  shall 
write  you  every  opportunity  and  hope  you 
won't  neglect  answering  as  it  will  be  the 
only  consolation  I  shall  have  in  my  present 
situation.  The  Indians  here  are  quite 
peaceable  at  present  Remember  my  love 
to  all  friends  and  remains  your  ever  affec- 
tionate and  unalterable 

JOHN  BURT 
Sergeant  Artillery 
Capt.  Pierce's  Company,  ist  Battallion. 


John  Burt,  it  appears,  did  not  get  a 
commutation  of  his  term  of  service, 
but  at  the  end  of  the  five  years  pa- 
tience had  its  reward  and  the  lovers 
were  united  in  marriage  or  I  should 
not  be  telling  their  story. 

Then  came  the  long  journey  by 
stage  from  Enfield  out  into  the  great 
wilderness  of  Ohio.  They  settled  in 
Euclid,  now  known  as  a  beautiful  sub- 
urb of  Cleveland. 

I  have  before  me  the  list  of  the 
household  outfit  purchased  on  their 
arrival  in  1818,  amounting  to  $72.82^ 
and  paid  for  by  Colonel  Gideon  Burt. 
their  father.  Among  the  forty-two 
articles  are  the  following : 


30ljn    lurt,    Jftrjst   Sattaltnn   Artilbrg 


pair  linen  sheats,  tos 

pair  pillow  cases,     . 

old  table  spreads,  its      . 

flannel  sheats,  15  yds.  6s 

old  towels,  6s    .        . 

earring  knife  and  fork, 

snuffer  tray,     . 

patchwork  bedquilt, 

small  flannel  gowns, 

pairs  mils, 

pairs  socks, 

pair  stocking  legs, 

pieces  cotton  factory,    . 

small  red  slip, 

pair  drawers, 

chest, 

tea  canister, 

pair  buckskin  gloves, 
8    phials,        .... 
15  nutmegs,   .... 


$  »-S° 


.«5 

•75 


.50 


•50 

•SO 


•50 
.50 
•50 


Nutmegs  were  costly  in  those  days, 
at  eight  cents  apiece,  and  were  prob- 
ably much  more  indispensable  than 
now  as  they  were  largely  used,  not 
only  for  flavoring  foods,  but  drinks. 

My  mother  was  the  first  of  three 
children  and  born  in  the  town  of 
Euclid.  The  father,  who  was  a  joiner, 
found  plenty  of  work  in  the  new  coun- 
try. When  he  was  not  building 
houses  and  barns  he  was  making  cra- 
dles and  coffins.  He  was  easy-going 
and  kind,  never  demanding  what  was 
owed  to  him,  and  debts  were  not 
always  voluntarily  paid.  After  spend- 
ing about  ten  years  in  the  new  home 
the  father  heard  of  the  need  of  men  to 
build  the  ship  canal  in  the  southern 
part  of  the  state,  and, -tempted  by  the 
high  wages  paid,  he  moved  his  family 
to  Chillicothe,  Ohio.  It  was  a  sadly 
unfortunate  venture.  The  country 
was  swampy  and  malarial.  John  Burt, 
who  was  at  the  head  of  a  gang  of  men, 
must  be  a  leader,  and  as  the  others 
were  often  afraid  to  venture  into  the 
water  to  work  he  would  precede  them 
to  show  that  there  was  no  danger. 
He  must  thus  stand  in  water  for  many 
hours  and  return  home  at  night  with 
wet  clothes.  My  mother,  who  was 
about  nine  years  old,  was  attacked  by 
the  malarial  fever  and  her  devoted 
father,  after  his  exhausting  work,  sat 
up  with  her  during  the  night.  What 
wonder  that  the  soldier's  constitution, 
though  strong,  gave  away  under  the 
strain!  The  child  recovered,  but  the 
brave  and  faithful  father  fell  a  prey 
to  the  fever  that  carried  off  so  many 
of  the  early  settlers  and  died  at  the 

149 


age  of  thirty-nine,  leaving  a  frail 
widow  and  three  small  children. 

Poor  Persis  was  in  a  land  of  stran- 
gers and  her  first  thoughts  were  to  re- 
turn to  Euclid  where  there  were  warm 
hearts  to  welcome  her.  There  were 
weary  miles  of  stage  travel  and  her 
oldest  child,  hardly  recovered,  was  so 
thin  that  her  little  frail  hands  held  up 
to  the  light  showed  all  the  bones ;  her 
hair  had  fallen  out  and  she  wore  a  lit- 
tle cap  to  cover  her  bald  head.  She 
was  so  sick  from  the  jolting  of  the 
stage  that  she  was  lifted  out  helpless 
at  the  way  stations. 

At  Euclid  the  mother  thought  it 
best  to  return  to  the  east  against  the 
advice  of  several  good  friends.  She 
wrote  to  her  husband's  brother  for 
assistance.  He  was  a  well-to-do  man 
and  childless.  He  owned  a  control- 
ling interest  in  the  stage  route  between 
Albany  and  Boston,  in  those  days 
bringing  in  large  revenue. 

The  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Persis 
I  must  transcribe  to  show  a  phase  of 
human  character.  It  has  always 
seemed  heartless  in  its  tone,  but  he 
proved  a  good  friend  at  last  and 
adopted  the  younger  daughter;  also 
aided  the  rest  of  the  little  family. 

WORCESTER,  DEC.  29,  1830. 
DEAR  SISTER  AND  STRANGER: 

Your  letter  is  reed,  giving  me  the  de- 
sired situation  that  you  are  in  and  your 
children  and  imploring  some  relief.  The 
widow  and  fatherless  are  objects  of  charity 
from  all  and  in  particular  from  those  that 
are  connected  by  blood  or  by  marriage. 
You  are  a  stranger  to  me  otherwise  than  by 
your  connection  with  a  Brother  who  I  have 
not  seen  but  once  in  twenty  years.  His 
misfortunes  and  troubles  I  have  been  unac- 
quainted with.  With  regard  to  assisting 
you  I  have  concluded  to  send  you  fifty  dol- 
lars that  may  be  present  help  if  you  con- 
clude to  stay  in  Euclid  or  if  you  should 
conclude  to  leave  and  come  to  N.  England 
it  will  be  sufficient  amount  to  bring  you 
here.  Whatever  should  be  your  determi- 
nation I  would  say  that  one  of  your  chil- 
dren, the  youngest,  if  you  can  make  up  your 
mind  to  give  it  away  to  us  as  we  have  none 
of  our  own,  we  have  concluded  to  take  it 
The  other  two  I  shall,  if  they  come  here 
use  my  influence  to  procure  them  a  home. 
Brother  Nathaniel  will  perhaps  take  one 
of  them,  but  a  home  shall  be  provided  for 


of  a  S^rg^ant  tn 


nf  1B12 


QUAINT    SILHOUETTES    OF    A    BRIDAL    COUPLE 
Persia  Meacham,  born  in  1785 

all  until  such  times  as  you  may  be  able  to 
provide  for  yourself. 

Poverty  you  claim  and  if  you  should  un- 
dertake the  journey  you  will  remember  that 
at  this  season  of  the  year  it  is  cold  and 
more  expensive  traveling.  I  should  recom- 
mend to  you  to  dispose  of  all  but  what  is 
necessary  for  your  comfort  and  to  make 
your  children  and  yourself  warm,  and  that 
you  should  make  some  exertions  to  travel 
as  cheap  as  possible.  •  There  is  no  other 
way  but  to  come  all  the  way  in  the  stage. 
If  by  misfortune  you  should  fall  short  of 
cash  when  you  arrive  at  Albany  call  at  the 
stage  office  of  Rice  and  Baker  and  inform 
them  who  you  are  and  tell  them  I  will  see 
that  they  are  paid  and  show  them  the  post- 
script Yo.  SIMEON  BURT. 

And  so  the  forlorn  little  family,  un- 
able to  collect  the  many  sums  due  to 
the  poor  father,  accepted  the  cold  invi- 
tation and  took  the  weary  journey 
which  in  those  days  must  have  been  in 
undertaking  equal  to  that  of  crossing 
the  continent  at  the  present  time. 

The  Connecticut  home  of  Persis  had 
been  broken  up.  Her  father  and 
mother  had  long  since  died  and  the 
brothers  and  sisters  had  married  and 
scattered.  The  two  little  daughters 
of  Persis  were  for  a  time  sent  to  the 
Enfield  High  School  by  the  benevolent 
uncle.  The  younger,  who  had  been 


IN    EARLY    YEARS    OP    LAST    CENTURY 
Sergeant  John  Burt,  born  in  1791 

adopted  by  him,  continued  her  educa- 
tion, but  the  elder,  who  had  a  longing 
for  education,  was  given  but  one  year 
of  this,  to  her,  happy  school  life  when 
she  was  required,  at  the  age  of  six- 
teen, to  learn  a  trade  and  take  care  of 
herself  and  her  mother.  The  one  boy, 
Simeon,  was  of  a  roving  disposition 
and  gave  his  mother  much  anxiety. 
He  could  not  be  kept  steadily  at  any 
occupation.  He  finally  ran  away 
while  yet  in  his  teens  and  enlisted  on 
board  a  man-of-war.  It  was  a  mis- 
taken kindness  on  the  part  of  the  little 
mother  to  go  down  to  New  York  and 
beg  him  off,  for  he  was  afterwards  of 
little  comfort  to  her  and  finally  joined 
a  tribe  of  wandering  Indians,  return- 
ing with  them  to  Maine  where  he  mar- 
ried among  them  and  died  without 
issue  and  with  no  communication  with 
his  sisters  who  had  married  well  and 
lived  in  New  York  and  elsewhere  in 
the  growing  nation. 

The  little  mother,  Persis,  spent  her 
last  days  in  Worcester,  Massachusetts, 
with  her  elder  daughter  who  had  also 
become  a  widow,  and  died  among 
kind  friends  at  the  age  of  sixty-one 
years. 

ISO 


fllijamjmm  of  Intw0r0al 


Aurrfcutra  of  EUIjn  Surritt,  an 

Amrrirau  J^armrr-lad  mljii  roar  from  a  VlarkBtnttt|'a 

unfi  thruuulj  &rlf-tmitrurtum  Arquirrit  Ihr  Sunijurc  of 
Natinna    «*    l?r   Appralrft   tn    QJhriatrnimm  10  (Craar  Warfare 

and  Brramr  ^nnnrrb  bg  ttje  fHaatrr  fflinfra  uf  tfjp  (Dlfc  Harlb  *4  Srminiarrnrra 

BT 

HONORABLE  DAVID  NELSON  CAMP,  M.A. 

STATIHTICIAN   IN   DEPARTMENT   or  EDUCATION   AT  WASHINGTON   IN  1807—  MEMBER  OF  FAOCLTT  AT  ST.  JOHN'S 

COLLEGE  IN  MARYLAND  IN  IBM-SECRETARY  or  NATIONAL  TEACHERS'  ASSOCIATIO*  in  1864—  MAYOR 

or  NEW  BRITAIN,  CONNECTICUT,  THE  HOME  or  ELIIIU  BURRITT,  IN  1877—  Now 

AN  ACTIVE  EDUCATOR  IN  HIS  EIOHTV-HIXTT  YEAR 


It  has  been  estimated  that  since  the  beginning  of  authentic  history  war  has 
destroyed  fifteen  billions  of  human  lives.     I  have  seen  the  estimate  put  at  twice  that 
number.     The  estimated  loss  of  life  by  war  in  the  past  century  is  fourteen  millions. 
Napoleon's  campaigns  of  twenty  years  cost  Europe  six  millions  of  lives. 
The  Crimean  War  ........................  1854  .............................    750,000 

The  Italian  War  .........................  1859  ..............................      63,000 

Our  Civil  War,  North  and  South  .....  ........  (killed  and  died  in  other  ways)  1,000,000 

The  Prussian-Austrian  War  ..............  1866  ..............................      45,000 

The  expeditions  to  Mexico,  China,  Morocco,  etc  ...............................      65,000 

The  Franco-German  War  ................  1870  ..............................    250,000 

The  Russo-Turkish  War  ..................  1877  .............................    225,000 

The  Zulu  and  Afghan  Wars  ..............  1879  ..............................      40,000 

The  Chinese-Japanese  War  .  ..............  1894  ..............................      10,000 

The  Spanish-American  War  ........................................  .  ......        5,000 

The  Philipoine  War  ......................  1899..  .  .  -I  £.™e?icans       5'°°° 

<  Filipinos..  i,  000,000 

The  Boer  War  .......  ,  ...................  (killed  and  wounded) 


The  Russo-Japanese  War  ...................................................    450,500 

These  are  probably  all  under  the  actual  facts. 

BENJAMIN  F.  TRUEBLOOD, 
Secretary  American  Peace  Society. 


conflicts  within  the  life- 
time  of  men  who  are  now 
living,  more  than  three 
billions  sterling  have  been 
thrown  into  the  cannon's 
mouth  and  nearly  a  mil- 
lion fellowmen  have  fallen 
martyrs  to  the  battlefield. 

In  the  United  States  of  America,  a 
government  founded  on  the  brother- 
hood of  man,  the  greatest  expenditure 
since  the  beginning  of  the  Republic 
in  1789  has  been  for  bloodshed — over 
six  billions  for  war,  nearly  two  bil- 
lions for  navy,  and  about  three  and 
one-half  billions  for  pensions — more 
than  eleven  billions  out  of  a  total  of 
something  over  nineteen  billions  of 
dollars. 

Since   1850  the  population  of  the 


world  has  doubled:  its  indebtedness, 
chiefly  for  war  purposes,  has  quadru- 
pled. It  was  eight  billions  fifty  years 
ago,  it  is  thirty-two  billions  to-day. 

This  is  the  dawn  of  the  Age  of 
Humanism  when  the  peoples  of  the 
civilized  earth  will  lay  down  the  weap- 
ons of  brutality  and  arbitrate  their 
differences  through  the  Power  of 
Moral  Intelligence.  The  eighteenth 
of  May  of  this  year  has  been  appoint- 
ed as  Peace  Day  in  many  of  the  States 
of  the  American  Union  and  countries 
of  Europe.  The  second  Hague  Trib- 
unal also  convenes  this  year  and  it  is 
indeed  a  propitious  time  to  turn  atten- 
tion to  the  First  Champion  of  Uni- 
versal Peace — Elihu  Burritt,  an 
American  whose  memory  has  too 
long  remained  unhonored. 


nf     iEUtfu     Bttrrttt 


recall  my  memories  of 
Elihu  Burritt — that  strong 
man  in  American  history 
I  I  who  began  at  the  black- 
smith's  forge  and  became 
a  world-renowned  linguist 
and  advocate  of  universal 
peace — is  indeed  a  pleasure,  and 
especially  so  if  I  can  throw  any  new 
historical  light  on  this  distinguished 
figure. 

Elihu  Burritt  was  the  world's  first 
champion  of  universal  peace.  It  was 
this  distinguished  American  who  ap- 
pealed to  the  nations  to  lay  down  arms 
and  to  apply  reason  rather  than  physi- 
cal force  to  their  misunderstandings. 
He  was  as  well-known  in  Europe  as  in 
America,  for  a  good  part  of  his  life- 
time was  spent  in  philanthropic  enter- 
prise which  had  England  and  the 
United  States  for  its  field,  and  his 
books  have  been  as  popular  on  the 
eastern  hemisphere  as  on  the  western 
continent. 

Burritt's  career  has  been  unique 
in  America.  He  is  not  the  only  phil- 
anthropist or  self-made  man  that  we 
have  produced,  but  he  is  the  only  one 
who  has  achieved  for  himself  and  by 
himself  such  a  wide  acquaintance  with 
foreign  literature,  and  at  the  same 
time,  given  his  active  life  to  the  ameli- 
oration of  the  condition  of  his  fellow- 
men  throughout  the  earth. 

The  service  requested  of  me  is  to 
give  my  reminiscences  of  the  great 
Burritt,  who  for  some  years  was  my 
fellow-townsman  and  friend.  All 
that  I  record,  however,  cannot  be  per- 
sonal recollections.  For  periods  of 
his  life  during  which  I  saw  nothing 
of  him  I  depend  upon  other  records 
to  which  I  here  acknowledge  my  in- 
debtedness. 

There  is  a  maxim :  "the  boy  is  father 
to  the  man."  If  I  had  known  the  boy 
Burritt  I  might  have  been  able  to  have 
shown  the  embryo  characteristics  that 
developed  into  the  man  Burritt,  but 
unfortunately  for  me,  and  possibly 
fortunately  for  him,  he  was  ten  years 
old  before  I  was  born,  and  while  our 
birthplaces  were  not  many  miles  apart 


it  was  in  the  era  before  transportation 
facilities,  when  a  neighboring  town 
was  almost  as  foreign  as  a  neighbor- 
ing country. 

Elihu  Burritt  was  born  in  New 
Britain,  Connecticut,  December  8, 
1810;  and  ten  years  later,  or  in  Octo- 
ber, 1820,  I  was  born  in  Durham,  and 
it  was  not  until  manhood  that  I  made 
Burritt's  acquaintance.  I  presume  the 
boyhoods  were  very  much  alike  in  the 
two  Connecticut  villages.  It  was  an 
age  of  barefooted  summers  and  tip- 
peted  winters.  There  was  the  old 
"swimmin'-hole,"  the  little  red  school- 
house  and  the  sanctified  "meetin'- 
house."  It  was  a  time  when  the  com- 
munity lived  faithfully  by  the  maxim : 
"Early  to  bed,  early  to  rise,  makes  a 
man  healthy,  wealthy  and  wise." 

Burritt,  then,  was  much  the  same 
boy  as  the  rest  of  us.  He  was  the 
product  of  a  long  line  of  rugged  an- 
cestry— a  descendant  of  William  Bur- 
ritt who  came  to  this  country  from  the 
south  of  Wales  and  settled  in  Strat- 
ford, Connecticut.  His  father  and 
grandfather  were  both  named  Elihu 
and  were  respected  in  the  community 
in  which  they  resided.  His  father  had 
his  home  in  New  Britain,  working  on 
a  farm  in  summer  and  at  the  shoe- 
maker's trade  in  winter.  According 
to  the  custom  of  the  day  he  had  a 
large  family  and  he  sometimes  found 
it  difficult  to  supply  the  needs  of  the 
family  by  his  scanty  earnings. 

Elihu  Burritt  was  the  youngest  son 
of  ten  children  and  in  his  childhood 
was  deprived  of  many  things  which 
were  esteemed  the  necessaries  of  life. 
He  told  it  of  himself  that  when  he 
went  to  the  district  school  he  was  not 
furnished  with  a  single  book  and  he 
learned  his  lessons  from  books  bor- 
rowed and  from  listening  to  the  recita- 
tions of  other  children.  As  he  could 
have  a  book  only  when  not  needed  by 
its  owner  he  had  to  apply  himself  with 
diligence  while  he  had  the  book.  In 
later  life  he  said  that  he  attributed  his 
habits  of  intense  application  and  clo:>e 
observation  partially  to  the  circum- 
stances of  his  earlier  experience  and 


JFtrat    QUjamjJtnn    nf    Intnpraal 


the  necessity  of  making  the  best  use  of 
the  few  helps  he  had. 

Soon  after  he  was  sixteen  years  of 
age  and  on  the  death  of  his  father  he 
felt  the  need  of  earning  something  for 
the  family  as  well  as  for  his  own  per- 
sonal needs.  He  was  apprenticed  to  a 
blacksmith  and  at  once  applied  himself 
diligently  to  learning  the  trade.  The 
days  in  the  shop  were  long  and  he 
worked  early  and  late,  but  he  made 
frequent  calls  on  his  mother  who  was  a 
woman  of  strong  powers  of  mind. 
She  encouraged  Elihu  in  his  efforts  to 
fit  himself  for  usefulness.  He  was  a 
great  reader  and  he  read  all  the  histor- 
ical and  biographical  books  in  the  vil- 
lage library,  which  was  well  provid2d 
with  volumes  of  this  class.  When 
partly  through  his  apprenticeship  he 
commenced  the  study  of  Latin. 

At  this  time  his  chief  aim  and  desire 
was  to  become  an  accurate  surveyor. 
As  evidence  that  he  possessed  more 
than  ordinary  talent  in  this  direction  it 
may  be  stated  that  he  mentally  solved 
two  following  problems — and  unaided 
by  pencil,  chalk  or  anything  of  the 
kind,  actually  working  them  in  his 
mind  while  working  at  the  anvil : 

1.  How  many  barley-corns,  three  to 
an  inch,  will  it  take  to  extend  around 
the  earth  at  the  equator  ? 

2.  How  many  yards  of  cloth,  a  yard 
wide,  allowing  half  an  inch  at  each  end 
for  lapping,  would  it  require  to  reach 
from  the  center  of  the  sun  to  the  cen- 
ter of  the  earth,  and  what  would  it  all 
cost  at  one  shilling  per  yard? 

It  will  readily  be  admitted  that  any 
one  who  could  mentally  obtain  the  cor- 
rect answers  of  these  questions  as 
Burritt  did  must  be  possessed  of  more 
than  ordinary  mathematical  ability. 

I  here  give  the  contents  of  a  per- 
sonal letter  which  he  wrote  to 
William  Lincoln  of  Worcester,  Mas- 
sachusetts, in  1838.  In  this  letter  he 
says: 

"  At  the  expiration  of  a  little  more  than  half 
of  my  apprenticeship.  I  suddenly  conceived  the 
Idea  of  studying  Latin.  Through  the  assistance 
of  an  elder  brother,  I  completed  my  Virgil  dur- 
ing the  evening:*  of  one  winter.  After  some 
time  devoted  to  Cicero  and  a  few  other  Latin 
authors,  I  commenced  the  Greek.  At  this  time. 


It  was  necessary  that  I  should  devote  every 
hour  of  daylight,  and  a  part  of  the  evening,  to 
the  duties  of  my  apprenticeship.  I  carried  my 
Greek  grammar  in  my  hat,  and  often  found  a 
moment,  when  I  was  heating  some  large  iron, 
when  I  could  place  my  book  open  before  me,  and 
go  through  with  '  tufto,  tuftm,  tufttr,'  unper- 
ceived  by  my  fellow  apprentices,  and.  to  my 
confusion  of  face,  sometimes  with  a  detrimental 
effect  to  the  charge  in  my  fire.  At  evening,  I 
sat  down  unassisted  and  alone,  to  the  Iliad  of 
Homer,  twenty  books  of  which  measured  my 
progress  in  that  language  during  the  evenings 
of  another  winter. 

I  next  turned  to  the  modern  languages,  and 
was  much  gratified  to  learn  that  my  knowledge 
of  Latin  furnished  me  with  a  key  to  the  litera- 
ture of  most  of  the  languages  of  Europe.  This 
circumstance  gave  a  new  impulse  to  the  desire 
of  acquainting  myself  with  the  philosophy,  de- 
rivation, aad  affinity  of  the  different  European 

tongues I  therefore  laid  down  my 

hammer,  and  went  to  New  Haven,  where  I  re- 
cited to  native  teachers  In  French,  Spanish, 
German  and  Italian. 

At  the  expitatlon  of  two  yearr,  I  returned  to 
the  forge,  bringing  with  me  such  books  in  those 
languages  as  I  could  procure.  When  I  had  read 
these  books  through,  I  commenced  the  Hebrew, 
with  an  awakened  desire  for  examining  another 
field;  and  by  assiduous  application.  I  was  en- 
abled, in  a  few  weeks,  to  read  this  language 
with  such  facility,  that  I  allotted  it  to  myself,  as 
a  task,  to  read  two  chapters  in  the  Hebrew 
Bible  before  breakfast,  this,  and  an  hour  at 
noon,  being  all  the  time  that  I  could  devote  to 
myself  during  the  day. 

After  becoming  somewhat  familiar  with  the 
Hebrew,  I  looked  around  me  for  the  means  of 
initiating  myself  into  the  fields  of  Oriental  liter- 
ature, and  to  my  deep  regret  and  concern, I  found 
m"  progress  in  this  direction  hedged  up  by  the 
want  ofrequislte  books." 

In  my  prolonged  years  as  an  educa- 
tor it  has  been  my  good  fortune  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  many  bright 
men  and  women,  but  there  has  been 
but  one  Elihu  Burritt.  For  studious 
concentration,  I  doubt  if  his  equal  has 
ever  been  known  in  an  American  uni- 
versity. With  the  exception  of  the  two 
years  in  New  Haven,  where  he  had 
the  aid  of  instructors  in  acquiring  a 
few  of  the  modern  languages,  he  had 
no  opportunity  of  aid  at  school,  or 
from  teachers,  except  three  months  at 
his  brother's  private  school  when  he 
was  twenty-one.  He  attended  the  dis- 
trict school  somewhat  irregularly  until 
he  was  fifteen,  but  his  acquisition  of 
foreign  languages  was  made  after  he 
left  school. 

At  the  end  of  his  school  term  he  re- 
sumed his  work  at  the  anvil  where  he 
resolved  to  do  double  work  to  make  jp 
for  the  time  spent  in  school.  He 
found  that  it  would  be  far  more  con- 
venient for  him  to  pursue  the  study  of 
languages  as  he  could  easily  carry  in 
his  head  or  pocket  a  small  Greek  or 


0f     Slttfu     lurrttt 


Latin  book  at  which  he  could  glance 
from  time  to  time  without  interfering 
with  his  work  at  the  anvil.  His  even- 
ings were  devoted  to  the  study  of 
French  and  Latin. 

Burritt  told  his  friends  that  he  went 
to  New  Haven  that  he  might  at  least 
enjoy  the  atmosphere  of  that  classic 
city,  hoping  to  be  stimulated  thereby. 
He  was  twenty-two  years  old,  and  be- 
ing naturally  diffident,  he  felt  ashamed 
to  ask  any  one  to  enlighten  or  assist 
him  in  the  rudiments  of  Greek  and 
Hebrew.  He  therefore  resolved  to  de- 
pend upon  his  own  resources  and  to 
seek  aid  of  no  one.  On  his  first  day  in 
New  Haven  he  took  a  copy  of  Ho- 
mer's "Iliad,"  which  he  studied,  his 
sole  aid  being  a  Greek  Lexicon  with 
Latin  definitions.  He  had  never  yet 
read  a  single  line  in  the  book,  but  re- 
solved that  if  by  hard  study  and  close 
application  he  could  succeed  in  trans- 
lating two  lines  during  the  day,  he 
would  never  thereafter  ask  aid  of  any 
person  in  pursuing  the  study  of  Greek. 
Before  nightfall  he  had  succeeded  in 
mastering  the  first  fifteen  lines  of  the 
book.  This  success  gave  him  greit 
courage  and  confidence  which  proved 
a  great  advantage  to  him  in  all  his  sub- 
sequent studies.  He  now  so  widened 
his  range  of  studies  as  to  devote  his 
time  each  day  to  French,  Greek,  Latin, 
Italian,  German,  Hebrew  and  Spanish, 
giving  about  half  his  time  to  the  study 
of  the  "Iliad." 

In  this  way  the  studious  youth  spent 
a  winter  and  on  returning  to  New 
Britain  he  was  induced  to  accept  the 
preceptorship  of  an  academy  in  a 
neighboring  town.  Here  for  a  yeir 
he  both  taught  and  studied.  But  the 
change  from  an  active  life  of  manual 
labor  to  one  of  sedentary  pursuits 
proved  too  much  for  him  and  his 
health  became  greatly  impaired.  At 
the  expiration  of  the  year  he  resigned 
the  position  and  engaged  in  the  more 
active  business  of  commercial  traveler 
for  a  New  Britain  manufacturer,  a 
position  he  filled  for  many  months,  un- 
til, in  compliance  with  the  earnest 
wishes  of  his  friends,  he  decided  to 


establish  himself  in  the  grocery  and 
provision  business  in  his  native  town. 
Here  he  was  soon  overtaken  by  the 
great  commercial  crash  of  1837  and 
all  his  accumulated  earnings  disap- 
peared. 

On  finding  his  little  property  swept 
away  he  resolved  to  start  a  life  anew 
from  the  new  standpoint.  He  left 
his  native  town  and  walked  to  Boston, 
a  distance  of  more  than  a  hundred 
miles,  hoping  either  to  find  the  books 
he  sought  or  some  vessel  bound  to 
Europe  upon  which  he  could  go  as  a 
sailor  and  collect  at  different  ports 
works  in  the  modern  and  Oriental  lan- 
guages. He  was  disappointed  in  not 
finding  either,  but  accidentally  heard 
of  the  American  Antiquarian  Society 
at  Worcester  and  immediately  re- 
turned to  that  place.  He  there  found 
what  he  wanted  and  writes  of  it  as  fol- 
lows: 

"Availing  myself  of  the  kindness  of  the 
directors,  I  spent  about  three  hours  daily  at  the 
hall  which,  with  an  hour  at  noon,  and  about 
three  hours  in  the  evening,  made  up  the  portion 
of  the  day  appropriated  to  study,  the  rest  being 
occupied  in  arduous  manual  labor.  Through  the 
facilities  afforded  by  this  institution  I  have  been 
able  to  add  so  much  to  my  previous  acquaintance 
with  the  ancient,  modern  and  Oriental  lan- 
guages, as  to  be  able  to  read  upwards  of  fifty  of 
them  with  more  or  less  facility." 

In  August,  1838,  he  wrote  a  letter 
in  the  Celto-Breton  language  to  the 
Royal  Antiquarian  Society  of  France. 
The  accurate  use  of  the  language  and 
the  knowledge  of  its  structure,  evi- 
denced by  this  letter,  attracted  the 
attention  of  scholars  and  brought  Mr. 
Burritt  into  notice  as  a  linguist. 

At  the  age  of  thirty  years  he  had  be- 
come more  or  less  familiar  with  all  the 
languages  of  Europe  and  several  of 
Asia,  including  Hebrew,  Syriac,  Chal- 
daic,  Sumaritan  and  Ethiopian.  At 
this  time  he  was  invited  to  dine  with 
the  late  Governor  Everett,  who,  in  be- 
half of  several  wealthy  citizens, 
offered  him  all  the  advantages  of  Har- 
vard University.  This  kind  offer  Mr. 
Burritt  felt  called  upon  to  decline,  feel- 
ing that  it  would  be  better  for  him  to 
combine  manual  labor  with  study. 

In  1839  he  commenced  the  publica- 
tion of  the  Literary  Geminae,  made 


(Efyamptnn    nf 


up  of  selections  in  English  and  French 
and  designed  to  be  an  aid  to  students 
in  French.  This  periodical  was  sus- 
pended at  the  close  of  the  year  for  lack 
of  financial  support. 

In  1841  Mr.  Burritt  first  entered  the 
field  as  a  public  lecturer  and  was 
familiarly  known  as  the  "Learned 
Blacksmith."  His  first  lecture  was  an 
attempt  to  prove  that  there  was  no 
such  thing  as  native  agency,  but  that 
all  attainments  were  the  result  of  con- 
tinued effort  and  application.  In  illus- 
trating his  position  he  used  the  well- 
known  story  of  the  boy's  climbing  the 
Nature  bridge  of  Virginia.  In  one 
season  this  lecture  was  given  sixty 
times.  Among  other  places  in  which 
it  was  given  may  be  named  New 
York,  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Rich- 
mond. 

At  the  close  of  the  successful  lec- 
ture season,  he  returned  to  his  anvil  in 
Worcester,  working  and  studying  as 
before,  and  managing  to  write  a  new 
lecture  for  the  next  winter.  At  this 
time,  cause  of  anti-slavery  was  agitat- 
ing the  public  mind  and  it  readily  en- 
listed the  sympathy  of  Mr.  Burritt 
who  felt  that  it  was  worthy  of  his  pen 
and  voice,  but  certain  circumstances 
led  him  to  devote  his  time  and  energies 
to  the  cause  of  peace.  He  prepared  a 
radical  lecture  on  this  subject  which 
he  was  invited  to  deliver  in  the  old 
Tremont  Theater,  Boston,  which  had 
recently  been  purchased  by  the  Bap- 
tist Church.  He  had  a  good  audience 
and  among  them  were  prominent  Bap- 
tist advocates,  such  as  Dr.  Worcester 
Ladd  and  others  who  cordially  en- 
dorsed the  views  of  the  lecture. 

On  returning  to  Worcester  he  de- 
cided to  suspend  his  studies  for  a  sea- 
son and  to  establish  a  paper  in  the  in- 
terest of  peace,  anti-slavery,  temper- 
ance, etc.  It  was  called  the  Christian 
Citizen  and  was  the  first  paper  in 
America  that  made  any  considerable 
step  to  the  cause  of  peace.  It  had  not 
a  large  circulation  and  yet  many  copies 
were  circulated  through  the  Northern 
cities  and  awakened  the  interest  of 
many  strong  minds  and  did  much 


good.  He  edited  and  published  several 
other  periodicals  devoted  to  the  cause 
of  peace,  anti-slavery  and  temperance. 
He  also  prepared  leaflets,  entitled 
"Olive  Leaves,"  which  were  sent  to 
the  weekly  and  daily  papers  and  were 
very  generally  published.  He  had 
been  in  frequent  communication  by 
letter  with  the  advocates  of  universal 
peace  in  Europe;  and  in  May,  1846, 
he  sailed  for  England  to  meet  the 
friends  of  the  Peace  movement,  in 
Manchester,  Birmingham,  and  else- 
where in  Europe.  He  planned  to  be 
absent  from  this  country  four  months, 
but  was  induced  to  prolong  his  stay  «x> 
four  years.  He  met  with  the  friends 
of  peace  and  co-operated  with  them 
in  devising  methods  and  plans  for 
promoting  the  cause  of  universal 
brotherhood;  addressed  large  audi- 
ences in  London  and  other  places  m 
England  and  was  active  in  forming 
the  League  of  Universal  Brother- 
hood. In  connection  with  this  asso- 
ciaton  he  commenced  the  publication 
of  "The  Bond  of  Brotherhood,"  which 
explained  the  principles  and  objects  of 
the  association  and  was  circulated 
both  in  this  country  and  Europe. 

In  September,  1847,  Burritt  began 
his  campaign  for  "Ocean  Penny  Post- 
age" and  made  more  than  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  public  addresses  on  the 
subject  in  Great  Britain.  He  was 
much  interested  in  efforts  to  secure 
relief  for  Ireland  on  the  failure  of  the 
potato  crop  and  made  strong  appeals 
to  this  country  to  furnish  aid.  His 
appeals  were  answered  by  sending  a 
cargo  of  clothing  and  provisions  from 
Boston  to  Ireland. 

In  1848  he  went  to  Paris  in  the  in- 
terest of  the  Peace  movement  to 
arrange  the  preliminaries  for  holding 
a  conference  in  that  city.  The  inter- 
nal disturbance  and  the  civil  struggle 
of  that  year  made  it  impracticable  to 
hold  the  convention  in  Paris,  but  it 
was  determined  to  hold  a  meeting  in 
Brussels  in  the  autumn.  Mr.  Burritt 
was  active  in  making  arrangements 
for  this  meeting,  and  when  the  Con- 
gress was  organized  he  was  chosen 


nf     lEitlju     Hurrttt 


the  vice-president  from  America.  He 
was  active  in  the  proceedings  and  was 
much  gratified  with  the  results. 
After  the  adjournment  of  the  Con- 
gress Mr.  Burritt,  as  representative  of 
the  "League  of  Universal  Brother- 
hood," visited  many  places  in  England 
and  delivered  addresses  in  favor  of 
arbitration  and  universal  peace. 

In  April,  1849,  he  was  again  in 
Paris,  arranging  the  details  of  the 
great  Peace  Congress  which  was  held 
in  that  city  in  October.  This  was  one 
of  the  most  important  gatherings  of 
the  friends  of  peace  held  in  any  coun- 
try and  Mr.  Burritt  was  one  of  the 
secretaries.  Soon  after  the  adjourn- 
ment of  this  Congress  he  came  to 
America  and  to  his  home  in  New 
Britain,  where  a  public  reception  was 
tendered  him.  In  reply  to  an  address 
of  welcome,  by  Professor  E.  A.  An- 
drews, Mr.  Burritt  recounted  events 
connected  with  his  visit  to  Europe. 
In  the  course  of  his  address  he  said : 

"I  have  received  many  flattering  testimonials 
of  consideration  and  esteem  in  Great  Britain, 
but  the  little  village  of  New  Britain  is  the 
world  of  my  childhood,  the  birthplace  of  my 
first  hopes  and  aspirations,  of  my  first  affec- 
tions ;  and  all  the  tendrils  and  fibres  of  my 
young  and  earnest  love  are  thrown  around  it; 
and  all  its  interests,  and  all  its  inhabitants, 
with  all  the  glow  and  warmth  of  its  first 
strength." 

To  become  reminiscent,  I  might 
state  that  it  was  at  this  time,  1850, 
that  I  became  a  member  of  the  faculty 
of  the  Connecticut  State  Normal 
School.  Since  1840  I  had  been  teach- 
ing in  public  schools  and  academies 
and  was  naturally  much  interested  in 
the  tremendous  undertaking  of  Mr. 
Burritt  and  the  world-wide  impression 
he  was  creating.  His  home  town, 
New  Britain,  was  beginning  to  feel 
much  pride  in  him.  He  did  not  re- 
main much  in  New  Britain  during 
1850  and  the  winter  and  spring  of  the 
year  was  devoted  to  lecturing  in  New 
England  and  the  Middle  West.  He 
was  also  in  Washington,  D.  C.,  where 
he  met  Henry  Clay,  Joshua  Giddings 
and  other  men  of  national  reputation, 
who  promised  cooperation  in  the 
Peace  movement.  In  May,  1850,  he 
again  sailed  for  Europe  and  visited 


the  principal  towns  and  cities  of  Eng- 
land and  Germany  in  making  arrange- 
ments for  the  Peace  Congress  which 
was  held  at  Frankfort  in  August.  He 
was  accompanied  by  President  Hitch- 
cock of  Amherst  College  and  John 
Prentice  and  John  Tappan,  delegates 
to  the  Frankfort  Congress.  It  re- 
quired two  steamers  to  convey  the 
English  delegates  up  the  Rhine.  All 
the  German  states  and  Italy  were  rep- 
resented. America  was  largely  and 
ably  represented.  Congress  contained 
among  its  members  many  of  the  most 
eminent  men  of  the  times.  The  meet- 
ing continued  three  days  and  was 
characterized  by  its  statesmanship.  He 
also  gave  considerable  time  to  the  advo- 
cacy of  "Ocean  Penny  Postage,"  both 
by  lectures  and  conferences  with 
friends  of  the  measure  and  the  offi- 
cers of  government.  He  was  active 
in  preparations  for  the  fourth  Peace 
Congress  held  at  Exeter  Hall,  Lon- 
don, in  1857,  and  was  secretary  of  this 
Congress  and  one  of  the  speakers  at 
its  meetings.  Mr.  Burritt  was  pres- 
ent at  the  Peace  Congress  at  Man- 
chester in  1852  and  at  Edinburg  in 
1853.  Soon  after  the  adjournment  of 
the  latter  he  returned  to  the  United 
States  and  devoted  several  months  to 
the  agitation  of  the  subject  of  "Ocean 
Penny  Postage."  In  1854  he  went  to 
England  again  to  advocate  the  same 
measure. 

In  1855  Mr.  Burritt  returned  to  the 
United  States,  speaking  upon  the  sub- 
ject of  "Compensated  Emancipation" 
as  a  proper  measure  for  securing  the 
abolition  of  slavery  in  this  country. 
He  had  met  with  some  encouragement 
from  such  men  as  Sumner,  Seward 
and  others  when  the  raid  of  John 
Brown  put  a  stop  to  any  hopeful  con- 
sideration on  the  subject.  He  then 
retired  to  his  home  in  New  Britain 
and  devoted  much  of  his  time  to  the 
improvement  of  his  land  and  to  efforts 
to  secure  improved  methods  of  agri- 
culture in  the  vicinity  of  his  home. 

In  1863,  however,  Mr.  Burritt  was 
again  in  Europe  to  carry  out  a  long- 
cherished  plan  to  pass  through  Eng- 

156 


3FtrBt    (Eljamptntt    nf    Hntn^raal 


land  on  foot  that  he  might  observe  the 
methods  of  agriculture  and  the  sys- 
tem of  stock  raising.  He  went  from 
London  to  John  O'Groat's  during  the 
summer  and  early  autumn  of  this  year 
and  the  next  year  from  London  to 
Land's  End,  making  both  journeys  on 
foot. 

Under  the  administration  of  Abra- 
ham Lincoln  as  president  of  the 
United  States,  in  1865,  Elihu  Burritt 
was  appointed  consular  agent  for  the 
United  States  at  Birmingham,  Eng- 
land. In  the  following  year  I  went 
abroad  in  a  desire  to  visit  the  principal 
educational  institutions  of  Europe  and 
at  this  time,  1866,  I  visited  my  fellow- 
townsman,  Mr.  Burritt.  I  found  the 
business  of  the  office  carefully  and 
systematically  conducted  with  the  aid 
of  a  clerk.  Consul  Burritt  was  living 
in  the  parish  of  Harborne,  two  miles 
or  more  from  Birmingham.  His  resi- 
dence had  all  the  charm  of  an  English 
home.  On  the  rustic  gate,  at  the  en- 
trance of  the  grounds,  was  a  plate 
bearing  the  name,  "New  Britain 
Villa."  His  niece,  Miss  Strickland, 
of  New  Britain,  was  abroad  with  him 
and  presided  over  this  charming 
home.  Mr.  Burritt  was.  enjoying  life 
surrounded  by  his  English  friends. 
It  was  interesting  to  note  the  respect 
paid  to  him  at  all  public  meetings  and 
the  esteem  felt  for  him  by  his  Engish 
friends  and  acquaintances.  At  the 
Peace  meetings  and  other  public 
assemblies  he  was  invited  to  the  plat- 
form and  given  a  seat  of  honor.  His 
modesty  often  led  him  to  seek  an  ob- 
scure place  when  he  might  have  had 
a  conspicuous  one. 

Elihu  Burritt's  regard  for  others 
and  his  tender  sympathy  were  illus- 
trated by  an  incident  which  occurred 
while  I  was  enjoying  his  hospitality  at 
Harborne.  A  neighbor's  bird  was 
found  dead  and  the  owner  attributed 
its  death  to  Mr.  Burritt's  pet  dog. 
Though  there  was  no  evidence  that 
the  dog  caused  the  death  of  the  bird, 
Mr.  Burritt  spent  hours  in  looking 
through  the  bird  markets  of  Birming- 
ham to  find,  if  possible,  a  bird  more 


valuable  than  the  one  killed  that  he 
might  present  it  to  the  woman  who 
had  lost  her  pet. 

While  discharging  his  duties  as  con- 
sul at  Birmingham,  he  visited  officially 
the  principal  manufacturing  towns  in 
his  consular  district.  These  visits  led 
him  through  the  large  coal  and  iron 
regions  and  on  the  conclusion  of  his 
visits  he  published  an  interesting  vol- 
ume entitled  "Walks  in  the  Black 
Country  and  its  Green  Border  Lands." 
He  had  passed  four  pleasant  years  at 
Harborne,  when,  on  the  accession  of 
Grant  to  the  presidency,  a  change  was 
made  in  the  consular  offices  and  Con- 
sul Burritt  retired  from  the  office  at 
Birmingham.  He  received  several 
testimonials  from  inhabitants  and 
manufacturers  of  the  district ;  among 
them  was  the  following  from  the  peo- 
ple of  Harborne,  presented  by  the 
vicar  of  the  parish  at  a  large  public 
meeting : 

"  HARBORNE,  May  a6,  1869. 

T»  Elihu  Bmrrift,  Etg.,  Consul  and  Ktfrtttnta- 
tivt  of  thi  United  Statrt  of  Amir  tea,  Bir- 
mingham. 

Respected  and  dear  Sir 

We  have  heard,  with  the  most  unfeigned  re- 
gret, that  your  residence  amongst  us  Is  about 
to  terminate.  During  your  four  years  of  sojourn 
in  the  parish  of  Harborne,  we  have  ever  found 
in  you  a  kind  and  sincere  friend,  and  a  warm 
and  generous  supporter  of  every  rood  and 
philanthropic  work.  We  are  only  expressing 
our  heart's  true  feeling  in  saying  that  we  deeply 
deplore  your  anticipated  departure,  and  shall 
ever  remember,  with  the  liveliest  emotions, 
your  oft-repeated  acts  of  courteous  kindness. 
Your  aim  has  always  been  to  forward  the  inter- 
ests of  the  parish  from  which  you  are  now,  on 
the  termination  of  your  mission,  about  to  sepa- 
rate. We  are  sure  that  the  affectionate  regard 
of  the  parishioners,  generally,  will  follow  you 
to  your  new  sphere  of  labor  and  usefulness ;  and 
it  is  our  prayer  and  heartiest  wish  that  your 
life  may  long  be  spared  to  pursue  your  honora- 
ble career,  so  that  by  your  writings,  not  leas 
than  by  your  example,  many  may  receive  last- 
ing good.  We  take  leave  of  you,  dear  sir,  as- 
sured that  you  will  not  forget  Harborne  and  its 
people,  on  whose  hearts  your  name  will  long  re- 
main engraved.  We  ask  you  to  accept  the 
accompanying  volumes,  with  this  numerously 
signed  address,  which  we  think  will,  in  your 
estimation  be  the  most  assuring  token  of  our 
deep  regard  and  affectionate  remembrance  of 
yourself,  and  respectful  appreciation  of  your 
character." 

With  this  address  was  presented  a 
splendid  set  of  Knight's  "Illustrated 
Shakespeare"  in  eight  volumes.  Sim- 
ilar addresses  and  testimonials  came 
from  others  who  had  known  Mr.  Bur- 
ritt in  Europe. 


?r01Urttnn0     nf     lEUlju     lurrttt 


After  retiring  from  his  official  posi- 
tion he  passed  several  weeks  in  Ox- 
ford and  visited  other  places  of  inter- 
est, calling  on  friends  and  acquaint- 
ances in  England,  and  returned  to 
America  in  1870. 

When  Burritt  returned  to  us  in 
New  Britain  it  was  as  the  personal 
friend  of  the  greatest  men  in  Europe, 
— Victor  Hugo,  M.  de  Tocqueville, 
Joseph  Gamier,  John  Bright,  Sir 
David  Brewster,  Sir  Charles  Napier, 
Professor  Liebig,  and  that  whole 
brilliant  assembly  of  minds  that  had 
distinguished  the  Old  World.  While 
he  had  been  the  hero  of  the  masses 
and  entertained  by  nobility,  he  was 
still  the  same  benevolent,  unassuming 
Burritt — a  statesman  and  still  a  black- 
smith. One-third  of  his  life  on  the 
eastern  continent  had  cultivated  his 
mind,  but  not  at  the  expense  of  his 
heart,  for  it  still  throbbed  to  the  time 
of  the  hammer  on  the  anvil  and  his 
love  for  the  people  was  as  warm  as  the 
old  forge  fire. 

During  the  more  than  twenty  years 
in  which  Elihu  Burritt  had  been  ab- 
sent from  this  country  he  had  been 
almost  constantly  before  the  public, 
advocating  means  for  the  benefitting 
of  mankind.  He  had  also,  when  in 
the  United  States,  devoted  much  of 
his  time  to  giving  public  addresses  on 
similar  subjects.  He  had  seen  great 
changes  in  public  sentiment  in  regard 
to  the  measures  he  had  advocated  and 
he  now  returned  to  the  place  of  his 
birth  and  the  home  of  his  childhood 
and  youth  to  pass  the  remainder  of 
his  days  in  comparative  quiet.  But 
he  was  not  idle.  His  active  efforts 
and  his  influence  set  in  operation  plans 
and  forces,  which,  in  their  execution 
and  results,  were  beneficial  to  New 
Britain  and  the  world.  His  interest 
in  agriculture  led  him  to  take  an  act- 
ive part  in  the  management  of  the 
Agricultural  Club  of  which  he  was 
secretary.  When  its  members,  with 
others,  organized  a  grange  it  was  fitly 
named  "The  Burritt  Grange."  Mr. 
Burritt  in  a  quiet  way  identified  him- 
self with  the  moral  and  religious  inter- 


ests of  the  community.  His  desire' 
for  mutual  effort  led  him  to  advocate 
fellowship  meetings  of  the  churches 
and  these  were  held  by  the  churches 
of  the  Conference  to  which  he  be- 
longed for  many  years  with  interest 
and  profit.  He  had  a  building  on  his 
farm,  which  he  fitted  up  for  a  mission 
school.  He  erected  in  another  part 
of  the  town  a  building  for  Sunday 
school  and  religious  services,  doing 
much  of  the  work  with  his  own  hands. 
In  this  building  services  have  been 
held  every  Sunday  until  the  present 
time  and  it  is  properly  named  "The 
Burritt  mission." 

While  Elihu  Burritt  was  a  strong 
advocate  of  municipal  improvement 
and  good  government  he  would  have 
nothing  to  do  with  a  party  measure. 
I  recall  an  occasion  during  my  active 
political  years  when  I  was  in  the  pub- 
lic service.  A  meeting  was  to  be  held 
at  which  a  question  was  to  be  decided 
which  was  deemed  of  importance  by 
the  political  leaders  and  they  were 
very  desirous  that  Mr.  Burritt  should 
be  present  and  vote.  I  was  requested 
to  see  him,  and  if  possible,  secure  his 
attendance.  I  called  on  him  at  his 
home  and  presented  the  request.  He 
listened  to  it  with  attention  and  then 
said  that  he  had  considered  the  ques- 
tion and  while  he  thought  it  impor- 
tant he  did  not  think  the  decision  was 
of  sufficient  importance  to  justify  him 
in  voting  with  either  party  as  by  so 
doing  he  would  be  voting  in  opposi- 
tion to  friends  of  the  opposite  party 
who  might  have  studied  the  subject 
more  than  he  had  and  whose  judg- 
ment might  be  superior  to  his  own. 

In  his  years  when  I  knew  Elihu 
Burritt  in  New  Britain  he  was  a 
friend  of  children  and  took  a  deep  inr 
terest  in  their  studies  and  plays.  When 
he  visited  the  schools  and  spoke  to  the 
students  he  always  received  close 
attention  and  many  children  and 
youth  were  influenced  for  life  by  his 
words.  One  of  the  last  times  that  he 
left  his  home,  and  when  too  feeble  to 
walk  even  a  short  distance,  he  rode  in 
a  carriage  to  a  school  in  which  he  had 


nf 


special  interest,  where  he  said  a  few 
words  which  deeply  impressed  those 
who  heard  them. 

During  the  latter  years  of  his  life, 
when  at  his  home  in  New  Britain,  Mr. 
Burritt's  knowledge  of  foreign  lan- 
guages was  made  practically  useful, 
not  only  by  his  translation  of  letters 
and  legal  documents  for  his  friends 
and  the  courts,  but  by  teaching  classes 
in  Hebrew,  Sanskrit  and  other  foreign 
languages. 

I  shall  state  here  that  this  self-edu- 
cated man  is  credited  with  knowledge 
of  some  fifty  languages.  While  no 
one  but  he  ever  knew  just  what  were 
the  limits  of  his  learning  as  a  linguist, 
I  can  state  that  he  was  familiar  with, 
and  in  many  instances  a  master  of, 
Amharic,  Arabic,  Basque,  Bohemian, 
Breton-Celto,  Chaldaic,  Cornish,  Dan- 
ish, Dutch,  Ethiopic,  Flemish,  French, 
Gaelic,  German,  Greek,  Hebrew,  Hin- 
dustani, Hungarian,  Icelandic,  Irish, 
Latin,  Manx,  Persian,  Polish,  Portu- 
guese, Russian,  Samaritan,  Sanskrit, 
Spanish,  Swedish,  Syraic,  Turkish, 
Welsh.  He  published  the  first  book 
in  Sanskrit  ever  printed  in  America. 

So  remarkable  was  his  proficiency 
in  these  languages  that  Yale  College 
conferred  upon  him  the. honorary  de- 
gree of  Master  of  Arts  in  1872,  and 
he  was  similarly  honored  by  other  in- 
stitutions. 

He  had  been  accustomed  to  make 
full  notes  in  his  travels  and  his 
books  and  journals  give  abundant 
evidence  of  his  fidelity  to  facts  and  cir- 
cumstances. Besides  the  periodicals 
which  he  edited  both  in  Europe  and  in 
the  United  States,  he  was  the  author 
of  several  books,  among  which  were: 
"Sparks  from  the  Anvil,"  "Thoughts 
and  Things  at  Home  and  Abroad," 
"Walk  from  London  to  John 
O'Groat's,"  "Walk  from  London  to 
Land's  End  and  Back,"  "Walks  in  the 
Black  Country,"  "The  Mission  of 
Great  Sufferings,"  "Chips  from  Many 
Blocks,"  "Lectures  and  Speeches," 
"Ten  Minute  Talks,"  and  several 
smaller  books  and  pamphlets,  more 
than  thirty  in  all.  In  the  study  of 


foreign  languages  he  had,  to  some  ex- 
tent, the  aid  and  use  of  the  treasures 
of  antiquarian  societies  and  univer- 
sity libraries,  but  the  dictionaries  and 
text-books  which  he  owned  and  used 
form  a  very  interesting  collection  of 
more  than  a  hundred  volumes  which 
have  been  placed  in  the  historical 
room  of  the  New  Britain  Institute. 
One  of  the  large  grammar  schools  of 
New  Britain,  near  his  home,  has  been 
named  "The  Burritt  School." 

Elihu  Burritt  never  married  and  on 
returning  to  his  native  town  he  found 
a  delightful  home  with  a  widowed  sis- 
ter and  two  nieces  who  did  all  that 
could  be  done  to  promote  happiness  of 
one  so  true  to  them,  so  honored  by  the 
great  and  good.  His  last  days  were 
passed  peacefully  and  though  for 
weeks  before  his  death  he  was  fully 
conscious  of  the  near  approach  of  the 
great  messenger  he  knew  in  whom  he 
believed  and  was  sustained  by  an  un- 
faltering trust.  To  his  friends,  he 
spoke  calmly  of  the  approaching 
death  and  made  known  his  wishes  ;is 
to  the  place  of  burial  and  matters  con- 
nected therewith,  earnestly  desiring 
that  everything  might  be  done  in  sim- 
plicity. 

Those  of  us  who  knew  Elihu  Bur- 
ritt in  his  last  days  loved  him  most  of 
all  for  his  strong  manhood — a  man- 
hood shaped  at  the  blacksmith's  forge. 
When  he  lay  awaiting  the  passing  of 
life  into  the  realm  "from  which  no 
traveler  returns,"  he  remarked  to  a 
friend:  "I  have  had  a  busy  and  a 
happy  life,  but  I  have  finished  my 
day's  work.  I  am  now  only  waiting 
for  that  sleep  that  comes  sooner  or 
later  to  us  all." 

It  was  to  this  same  friend  that  he 
exclaimed:  "I  charge  you,  so  far  as 
possible,  to  see  that  my  funeral  ser- 
vices are  free  from  unnecessary  ex- 
pense and  all  ostentation.  Let  my 
coffin  be  as  plain  and  inexpensive  as 
is  consistent  with  propriety." 

It  was  a  few  days  later  on  the  even- 
ing of  March  6,  1879.  The  day  had 
seemed  brighter  to  him  than  usual. 
As  the  shades  of  night  were  falling  he 


tcalltttiana     of    SUhu     SurrUt 


called  his  faithful  attendant  and  walk- 
ing to  his  bed  in  an  adjoining  room, 
he  retired 

"  Like  one  who  wraps  the  drapery  of  his 

couch 
About    him,   and   lies  down    to    pleasant 

dreams." 

As  his  good  friend,  Charles  North- 
end,  said:  "His  life  at  last  went  out 
so  peacefully  that  his  friends  thought 
him  'sleeping  when  he  died.'  Like 
the  flickering  flame  of  a  consumed 
candle,  which  sometimes  brightens 


just  before  it  darkens,  so  the  life 
lamp  of  our  friend,  and  the  friend  of 
all  the  living  creatures  of  the  earth, 
seemed  to  give  a  brighter  and  softer 
light  just  before  it  went  out  in  dark- 
ness to  us.  ...  It  had  come  forth 
bearing  the  precious  seeds  of  peace 
and  good-will  to  all  mankind,  and  the 
harvest  has  been  ripening  ever  since, 
and  in  all  coming  time  will  the  world 
reap  the  precious  fruits  of  his  sow- 
ing." 


Extract  from  €l!bn  Burritt's  Private  Journal,  recording  the  eloquent  prophesy  of 
Uictor  tiMgo  at  the  Peace  Conarm  at  Paris  in  1*49,  the  most  remark- 
able assembly  that  bad  ever  convened  on  the  Continent  of  Europe 

A  DAY  will  come  when  a  cannon  will  be  exhibited  in 
public  museums,  just  as  an  instrument  of  torture  is 
now,  and  people  will  be  amazed  that  such  a  thing  could 
ever  have  been.  A  day  will  come  when  those  two  immense 
groups,  the  United  States  of  America,  and  the  United  States 
of  Europe,  will  be  seen  placed  in  the  presence  of  each  other, 
extending  the  hand  of  fellowship  across  the  ocean, — exchang- 
ing their  produce,  their  commerce,  their  industries,  their  arts, 
their  genius, — clearing  the  earth,  peopling  the  desert,  improv- 
ing creation  under  the  eye  of  the  Creator,  and  uniting,  for  the 
good  of  all,  these  two  irresistible  and  infinite  powers, — the 
fraternity  of  men  and  the  power  of  God. 


"  Victor  Hugo  arose— It  was  to  me  a  moment  of  most  intense  interest— the  opening  of 
the  great  drama.  When  silence  was  restored  he  poured  out  his  mighty  thoughts  with  all 
the  fervid  glow  of  his  poetic  genius— As  the  lofty  and  burning'periods  fell  upon  the  assembly 
they  responded  to  their  power  by  repeated  bursts  of  applause— Some  of  his  passages  were 
worthy  of  being  chased  in  gold"— From  Elihu  Burritt's  Journal 


160 


His  Favorite  Portrait  Taken  While  United]  States  Consular  Agent  at  Birmingham    England 
Original  in  Possession  of  Oscar  J.   Murray,  New   Britain,  '.Connecticut 


ANCIENT     AMERICAN     LANDMARKS 


AT      MILFORD,       OOXVKCTICI7T 


AT     TOHHINQTOW,     COXNT5CTICUT 


ftt 
III 


anb  tljrir 
tn  thr  New  Hurlb 


BY     BIC'KKOKD    COOI'KK 


power — a 
Puritans 


CULPTURE  was  held  by 
the  first  Americans  as 
an  invention  of  the 
devil.  The  American 
Indian's  conception  of 
it,  in  its  crudest  form, 
was  that  of  a  revengeful 
god  of  vengeance.  The 
of  New  England  were 
brothers  to  the  men  who  decapitated 
the  cathedral  statuary,  asserting  it  to 
be  shameful  and  immoral.  The  Quak- 
ers of  Pennsylvania  looked  askance 
upon  sculpture  and  found  little  in  it 
but  suggestiveness.  The  early  Dutch 
settlers  of  New  Amsterdam  were 
born  in  a  land  that  was  producing 
masters  in  painting,  but  they  came  to 
the  New  World  not  to  potter  in  clay, 
but  to  lay  the  foundations  for  large 
commercial  institutions  and  result- 
ant fortunes.  The  French  and  Span- 
iards were  lovers  of  the  sculptural  art 
at  home,  but  America  was  to  them  a 
land  of  romance  and  daring  where  the 
flesh  and  the  sword  were  nobler  com- 
panions than  bloodless  clay.  The  cav- 
aliers of  Virginia  were  more  in  sym- 
pathy with  the  beautiful,  and  were  the 
first  to  import  works  of  art  into  the 
New  World. 

The  way  of  the  wilderness  is  stern 
and  relentless.  The  call  from  the 
wilds  brings  back  in  its  echo  the  re- 
sponse of  man.  The  rough  forest  life 
of  the  path-finders  found  sympathy 
only  in  throbbing  life.  One  genera- 
tion passed — and  then  another — the 
forest  rang  with  the  sound  of  the  axe 
and  the  fields  blossomed  into  the 
fruits  of  husbandry — still  the  same 
stoic  disposition  which  held  in  disre- 
pute the  purely  aesthetic  bound  the 
characters  of  the  early  Americans. 

I  find  that  it  was  a  woman  who  first 
gave  sculptural  expression  to  the 
American  people — Patience  Lovell, 
born  at  Bordentown,  New  Jersey,  in 
1725.  Although  there  was  not  a 
statue  in  that  part  of  the  country,  she 
began  molding  miniature  heads  in 
wax.  At  twenty-three  years  of  age, 
in  1748,  she  married  Joseph  Wrighr. 
In  1769,  she  was  left  a  widow  with 

163 


TWO  STATUES  BY  THE  FIRST  NATIVE 
BORN  AMERICAN  SCULPTOR — HORATIO 
GREENOUGII,  A  SACRIFICE  TO  ART 


Ameriran 


three  children,  and  removed  to  Lon- 
don where  she  believed  there  were 
wider  opportunities  for  her  talent. 
Tradition  claims  that  she  became  a 
friend  of  the  king,  but  on  the  out- 
break of  the  American  Revolution  she 
severely  upbraided  him  and  became 
a^  enemy.  For  a  time  she  was  cred- 
ited with  acting  as  a  spy  for  the 
American  Revolutionists,  and  it  *s 
said  that  she  kept  them  informed  re- 
garding the  shipments  of  British 
troops  and  their  destinations.  Mrs. 
Wright  corresponded  with  Benjamin 
Franklin  who  was  then  residing  in 
Paris,  and  kept  in  intimate  relations 
with  her  countrymen.  In  1785,  she 
died  in  London ;  her  son,  Joseph 
Wright,  studied  with  Benjamin  West, 
and  returned  to  the  United  States  as 
an  American  painter;  her  younger 
daughter  married  John  Hoppner,  an 
English  portrait  painter. 

American  blood  had  been  inocu- 
lated with  art.  Interest  had  now 
been  stimulated  in  sculpture.  Aristo- 
cratic homes  were  beginning  to  give 
it  recognition,  and  Mount  Vernon 
possessed  marble  busts  brought  from 
Italy. 

Virginia  was  the  earliest  patron  of 
sculpture  in  America,  granting  to 
Houdon,  a  French  sculptor,  in  1781 
and  1785,  the  commissions  to  execute 
a  marble  statue  af  George  Washing- 
ton and  of  Lafayette.  Houdon  sailed 
with  Franklin  from  Havre  on  July  2, 
1785,  and  made  the  first  contribution 
to  the  sculpture  of  the  New  World. 

The  second  sculptor  who  visited 
America  was  Guiseppe  Cerracchi,  an 
Italian,  who  had  worked  with  Canova 
upon  sculptures  for  the  Pantheon. 
He  came  to  America  in  1791  with  the 
plan  to  present  to  Congress  a  monu- 
ment to  American  Liberty — a  colossal 
group,  one  hundred  feet  high,  in 
which  the  Goddess  of  Libertv  is  rep- 
resented descending  in  a  car  drawn  by 
four  horses,  darting;  through  a  vol- 
ume of  clouds  which  conceals  the 
summit  of  a  rainbow.  In  her  right 
hand  she  brandishes  a  flaming  dart, 
which,  by  dispelling  the  mists  of 


error,  illuminates  the  universe ;  her 
left  hand  is  extended  in  the  attitude 
of  calling  the  people  of  America  to 
listen  to  her  voice.  The  proposed 
group  included  figures  of  Saturn, 
Clio,  Apollo,  Policy,  Philosophy,  Na- 
tional Valor,  Neptune  and  Mercury. 
Cerracchi  failed  to  secure  the  thirty 
thousand  dollars  for  his  proposed 
work,  and  tried  to  accumulate  the 
funds  by  private  subscription.  George 
Washington  headed  the  list  of  con- 
tributors, but  the  sculptor  returned  to 
France  disheartened,  just  in  time, 
according  to  tradition,  to  have  his 
head  taken  off  for  conspiracy  against 
Napoleon. 

It  was  but  a  few  years  later,  in 
1789,  that  John  Dixey,  born  in  Dub- 
lin, came  to  America  with  the  com- 
mendable ambition  of  founding  a 
school  of  American  sculpture.  Many 
Europeans  were  deceived  with  the  be- 
lief that  the  land  of  liberty  meant 
necessarily  the  emancipation  of  arts, 
and  they  came  and  went  without  ful- 
filling their  dreams. 

The  foreign  elements  were,  never- 
theless, making  an  impression  on 
American  craftsmanship.  In  Phila- 
delphia was  one  William  Rush,  born 
July  4,  1756,  and  apprenticed  as  a 
boy  to  learn  the  trade  of  wood  carv- 
ing, who  gained  eminence  by  design- 
ing the  figure-heads  of  ships.  He 
served  his  youth  in  the  American 
Revolution,  and  his  service  to  Ameri- 
can art  is  enduring,  especially  as  a 
founder  of  the  Pennsylvania  Acad- 
emy of  Fine  Arts  in  which  he  united 
the  fugitive  elements  of  American 
culture.  He  died  January  17,  1833, 
leaving  his  impress  on  the  political 
and  intellectual  life  of  his  birth-place. 

The  seed  of  art  seemed  to  have 
been  planted,  and  in  New  Haven,  Con- 
necticut, there  appeared  Hezekiah 
Augur,  born  in  February,  1791,  the 
son  of  a  carpenter.  At  nine  years  of 
age  he  was  apprenticed  to  learn  the 
trade  of  cobbler,  but  finally  became  a 
wood-carver  and  later  the  first  Con- 
necticut sculptor.  He  is  also  cred- 
ited with  producing  the  first  bracket 


nf 


Amrrtrau 


saw  and  inventing  the  carving  ma- 
chine. In  1833,  he  was  made  an  hon- 
orary member  of  the  Alumni  of  Yale 
College,  and  died  in  January,  1858. 

Contemporary  with  Rush,  was 
John  Frazee,  born  July  18,  1790,  in 
Rahway,  New  Jersey.  He  was  ap- 
prenticed to  a  bricklayer,  became  a 
tavern-keeper,  and  later  a  stone-cut- 
ter. He  married  in  1813,  and  on  the 
death  of  an  infant  son,  carved  a  rep- 
resentation of  "Grief"  on  the  tomb- 
stone— his  first  attempt  at  the  human 
figure.  About  1824,  he  made  the 
marble  bust  of  John  Wells,  a  promi- 
nent lawyer  of  New  York,  which  is 
probably  the  first  marble  bust  chis- 
eled in  this  country,  and  undoubtedly 
the  first  carved  by  a  native  American. 

In  1792,  John  Henri  Isaac  Browere 
was  born  in  New  York,  and  in  his 
early  life  went  to  the  Old  World  to 
prepare  himself  as  a  sculptor.  After 
experiencing  two  years  of  adventure, 
tramping  over  the  continent,  he  re- 
turned to  the  United  States  and  in- 
troduced a  new  process  which  gave 
him  position  as  a  contributor  to  Amer- 
ican art. 

The  first  American  deliberately 
choosing  sculpture  as  a  profession 
and  going  abroad  for  serious  study, 
was  Horatio  Greenough.  born  in  Bos- 
ton, Massachusetts,  September  6, 
1805.  As  a  child  he  carved  swords 
and  pistols,  tiny  horses  and  carriages. 
At  twelve  years  of  age  he  copied  the 
busts  of  William  Penn  and  John 
Adams  in  chalk.  At  sixteen  years  of 
age  he  entered  Harvard.  During  the 
close  of  his  senior  year,  he  boarded  a 
vessel  about  to  sail  for  Marseilles, 
after  obtaining  permission  from  the 
government  of  the  college  to  leave  be- 
fore graduation,  and  his  diploma  was 
forwarded  to  him  abroad.  He  arrived 
at  Marseilles  in  the  first  of  the  au- 
tumn and  proceeded  directly  by  land 
to  Rome,  where  he  entered  into  the 
art  life  of  the  Old  World  metropolis. 

A  year  later  he  returned  to  Amer- 
ica, because  of  ill  health,  and  mod- 
eled the  bust  of  John  Quincy  Adams 
and  of  Chief  Justice  Marshall.  In 


1827,  he  returned  to  Italy,  where  he 
began  serious  work  for  greater 
achievements.  It  was  soon  after  that 
he  made  the  first  marble  group  by  an 
American  sculptor.  It  was  entitled 
"Chanting  Cherubs." 

J.  Fenimore  Cooper,  the  novelist, 
saw  with  great  regret  the  neglect 
Greenough  experienced,  and  was  con- 
vinced that  he  lacked  only  an  oppor- 
tunity. Raphael's  painting  of  the 
"Chanting  Cherubs"  impressed  him 
as  a  group  of  great  beauty  and  suited 
to  Greenough's  taste.  lie  gave  the 
young  sculptor  the  order,  and  from 
the  print  before  him  he  produced  the 
group.  To  convince  Americans  that 
thev  had  a  countryman  superior  in 
talent  and  skill  to  the  Italians  they 
were  employing.  Cooper  placed  the 
group  on  exhibition.  This  is  the  first 
group  from  the  chisel  of  an  American 
artist.  Puritan  decency  was  shocked 
by  their  nude  baby  forms,  and  omi- 
nous mutterings  were  heard  on  every 
side.  Although  we  have  no  record 
of  Cooper's  instituting  a  law  suit,  as 
was  his  general  custom,  the  bitterness 
of  the  controversy  is  proved  by 
Greenough's  truculent  reply  to  his 
critics  in  a  letter  dated  December  i, 

1833- 

Cooper  martialed  his  influence  to 
force  the  American  people  to  recog- 
nize Greenough  as  their  "first  great 
native  sculptor."  Through  the  efforts 
of  the  novelist,  Congress  commis- 
sioned Greenough  to  immortalize 
Washington  as  "The  Father  of  His 
Country."  The  story  of  Greenough's 
"Washington"  is  a  tragedy.  He  con- 
ceived him  as  a  colossal,  godlike  fig- 
ure, with  lower  limbs  covered  with  a 
loose  drapery,  and  seated  in  a  majes- 
tic chair.  The  statue  which  was  in- 
tended for  the  national  capitol  met 
with  impudence,  ridicule  and  taunts. 
After  being  subjected  to  mu  h  igno- 
miny the  figure  was  placed  outside 
the  capitol  where  it  still  stands.  One 
satirist,  when  interpreting  the  mean- 
ing of  the  extended  arms,  said  that 
one  pointed  to  Mount  Vernon  and 
other  to  the  Patent  Office,  bv  which 


0f     Jfftrat     Ammran 


he  supposed  that  Washington  was 
saying,  "My  body  is  at  Mount  Ver- 
non ;  my  clothes  are  in  the  Patent 
Office." 

I  have  the  deepest  sympathy  for 
poor  Greenough.  For  eight  years  he 
had  labored  on  an  ideal  that  an  un- 
poetic  people  could  not  conceive. 
With  -the  true  soul  of  the  poet  he 
wrote :  "It  is  the  birth  of  my  thought. 
I  have  sacrificed  to  it  the  flower  of 
my  days  and  the  freshness  of  my 
strength ;  its  every  lineament  has 
been  moistened  by  the  sweat  of  my 
toil  and  the  tears  of  my  exile.  I 
would  not  barter  away  its  association 
with  my  name  for  the  proudest  for- 
tune that  avarice  ever  dreamed." 

With  the  storm  of  ridicule  came  the 
unwavering  friendship  of  a  few  who 
understood  the  soul  of  the  young 
sculptor.  Edward  Everett  wrote 
from  Italy  in  1841 :  "I  regard  Green- 
ough's  'Washington'  as  one  of  the 
greatest  works  of  sculpture  of  mod- 
ern times.  I  do  not  know  the  work 
which  can  justly  be  preferred  to  it, 
whether  we  consider  the  purity  of  the 
taste,  the  loftiness  of  the  conception, 


the  truth  of  the  character,  or,  what 
we  must  own  we  feel  less  able  to 
judge  of,  the  accuracy  of  anatomical 
study  and  mechanical  skill." 

I  recently  read  a  letter  which 
Greenough  wrote  to  a  friend.  In  it 
he  said:  "In  future  time  when  the 
true  sculptors  of  America  have  filled 
the  metropolis  with  beauty  and  gran- 
deur, will  it  not  be  worth  $30,000  to- 
be  able  to  point  to  the  figure  and  say : 
'There  was  the  first  struggle  of  our 
infant  art?'" 

The  tragedy  of  this  first  American 
sculptor  closed  on  December  18,  1852. 
The  depth  of  this  man's  soul  is  shown 
by  some  of  the  last  words  which  he 
wrote  in  the  closing  days  of  his  forty- 
seven  years  of  life,  which  had  been 
filled  with  rebuffs  and  blasted  hopes: 
"I  would  not  pass  away  and  not  leave 
a  sign  that  I,  for  one,  born  by  the 
grace  of  God  in  this  land,  found  life 
a  cheerful  thing,  and  not  that  sad  and 
dreadful  task  with  whose  prospect 
they  scared  my  youth." 

It  is  but  the  first  of  the  hundreds  of 
tragedies  that  have  been  suffered  in 
the  building  of  a  national  art  on  the 
Western  Continent. 


A  SONNET  BY  HORACE  HOLLEY 

I       WHO  have  drunk  the  water  bitter-sweet, 
In  whose  wan  eager  lips  there  gnaws  the  white 
Sad  brine  from  sin's  deep  goblet  bright, — 
Sit  by  the  barren  well  I  thought  replete, 
Its  treachery  now  usen  to  my  sight. 
Before  me  are  the  ways  that  part  the  feet 
Of  common  manhood,  sloping  from  my  seat, 
And  here  begins  the  brooding  rim  of  night. 
Many,  athirst,  dip  in  the  spring  for  drink 
Whom  tearfully  I  bid  to  cease  their  lust, 
Striking  the  sparkling  cup  upon  the  sand, 
And  show  the  water  choked  with  ancient  dust. 
Then  if  they  flout  me  with  enangered  hand 
I  bare  my  shame  and  fright  them  from  the  brink. 


166 


BEGINNINGS         OF         AMERICAN          A  R<  'IIITKC  "II   RK 


1:1    ll.l        BKFORE       18OO 


SCUOOI.HOITSE    OF 
III    NliKKI.       YKARB      AiiO 


IOMKS        OK        KKVfll.l-  MOV  AHY         1 1    »  t    - 


A      BOMK8TKAD     AND     ITS     OLD     WKLI. 


EARLY    PAINTINGS    IN    AMERICA— Family  Group  by  John  Singleton  Copley, 
Tne  First  Native  Born  American  Artist  of  Exceptional  Skill 


PAINTING  OF  BISHOP  BERKELEY'S  FAMILY  BY  JOHN  SMYBERT,  ONE  OF  THE 
FIRST  EUROPEAN  ARTISTS  TO  COME  TO  AMERICA- Now  in  possession  of  Yale  University 
-  "It  is  probably,"  wrote  Horace  Walpole,  "  the  first  painting  of  a  group  of  figures  in  the  United  States"— 


ttt 

Ul 


Vfrtfntfaatt&CBifrn<£anlmfnt 


Hv    STUART   COPLEY 


rAINTING  was  little 
known  by  the  aboriginal 
Americans,  excepting  as 
they  used  color  as  a  per- 
sonal decoration  in  times 
of  tribal  wars  or  revelry. 
The  painters  of  the  Old 
World  found  it  sufficiently  difficult  to 
obtain  a  livelihood  in  civilization 
without  coming  to  the  savage  land. 
It  is  probable  that  the  first  artist  to 
dare  the  dangers  of  the  western  con- 
tinent was  the  adventurous  Jacques 
le  Moyne,  who  came  with  the  French 
expedition,  about  1565,  to  the  coast  of 
Florida.  The  stories  of  his  experi- 
ences were  not  such  as  to  induce  his 
fellow  artists  to  follow  him.  His 
companions  were  young  Huguenot 
nobles  who  came  to  seek  gold,  but 
found  famine.  They  fell  into  the 
hands  of  adventurous  Spaniards  who 
slaughtered  most  of  them,  but  Le 
Moyne  escaped  and  fled  to  the  woods. 
In  his  hiding  he  saw  one  of  his  com- 
rades hewn  to  pieces  before  his  eyes. 
After  fearful  suffering  the  French 
artist  reached  the  coast  and  was 
picked  up  by  a  small  v'essel  and  taken 
to  England. 

Joannes  With,  probably  from  the 
Netherlands,  came  to  America  about 
1585  to  secure  subjects  for  his  art. 
One  or  two  other  courageous  illustra- 
tors came  here  for  material,  but  none 
of  them  remained  any  length  of  time. 
Samuel  de  Champlain,  the  explorer, 
embellished  his  records  with  colored 
views  of  harbors,  block-houses,  ani- 
mals, rivers,  and  skirmishes  with  the 
Indian-. 

The  early  colonists  in  their  migra- 
tion from  the  Old  World  brought  no 
such  luxuries  as  paintings.  In  truth, 
most  of  them  had  strong  religious 
scruples  against  art. 

Regarding  the  first  foreign  artist  of 
real  ability  to  come  to  America  I  find 
some  controversy.  Mr.  Charles  Henry 
Hart,  an  authority  on  American  art, 
is  confident  that  Gustavus  Hesseluis. 


a  Swede,  was  the  first  painter  to  arrive 
in  America;  and  that  his  son,  John 
Hesseluis,  was  the  first  native-born 
artist.  He  bases  his  argument  on 
manuscript  written  by  Wertmuller,  in 
which  he  records  his  marriage  on 
January  8,  1801,  to  a  granddaughter 
"of  Gustaf  Hesseluis  of  the  Swedish 
nation,  and  painter  of  portraits,  who 
arrived  from  Sweden  in  1710." 
Accompanying  the  manuscript  are 
portraits  of  Gustavus  Hesseluis  and 
Lydia  his  wife,  painted  by  himself, 
and  now  owned  by  the  Historical  So- 
ciety of  Pennsylvania.  Critic  Hart 
says  that  these  portraits  "show  that 
Hesseluis  was  a  painter  of  no  mean 
ability  for  his  time." 

Gustavus  Hesseluis  was  barn  at 
Volkarna,  Dalarm,  Sweden,  in  1682, 
the  son  of  a  minister.  That  he  was 
truly  a  painter  is  proven  by  an  ad- 
vertisement in  The  Pennsylvania 
Packet  December  u,  1740: 

Painting  done  in  the  best  manner  by 
Gustavus  Hesseluis  from  Stockholm  and 
John  Winter  from  London.  Viz.  Coat  of 
Arms  drawn  on  Coaches.  Chaises.  &c.,  or 
any  kind  of  Ornaments.  Landskips,  Signs, 
Shcw-boards,  Ship  and  House  painting, 
Guilding  of  all  sorts.  Writing  in  Gold  or 
Color,  old  Pictures  cleaned  and  mended, 
&c. 

Hesseluis  was  in  Maryland  for 
some  time,  but  in  Philadelphia  in  1735 
he  purchased  a  house  and  lot  on  the 
north  side  of  High  street,  where  he 
resided  until  his  death.  May  25,  1755. 

The  popular  opinion  in  art  circles 
accords  the  honor  of  being  the  first 
pioneer  painter  in  America  to  John 
Watson,  a  Scotchman,  who  came  to 
the  country  in  1715  and  set  up  his 
easel  in  a  home  on  a  picturesque  ele- 
vation in  Perth  Amboy — then  the  cap- 
ital of  Xew  Jersey — overlooking  the 
sea  on  one  hand  and  on  the  other  the 
undulating  hills  and  rich  lowlands  of 
the  Jersey  shore.  The  most  that 
seems  to  be  known  of  him  is  that  he 
purchased  lands,  built  houses,  painted 
portraits,  and  lived  to  a  great  old  age 


of     3Firal     American 


in  the  land  of  his  choice.  There  were 
many  traditions  about  him,  probably 
growing  out  of  his  thrifty  habits  of 
usury  and  miserliness  in  his  practices. 
He  visited  Europe,  and  Dunlap  says 
in  his  history  of  art  that  he  brought 
back  to  America  many  pictures, 
which,  with  his  own,  made  the  first 
collection  of  paintings  in  this  country 
of  which  we  have  any  knowledge. 

It  is  said  that  a  good  many  of  Mr. 
Watson's  own  pictures  were  portraits, 
real  or  imaginary,  of  kings  of  Eng- 
land and  Scotland,  and  that  in  the 
Revolution  the  militia  in  that  section 
being  a  rough,  undisciplined  com- 
pany, took  great  delight  in  destroying 
the  monarchs  in  effigy,  and  along 
with  them  this  first  cabinet  of  fine  arts 
was  broken  up  and  its  treasures 
wasted.  Watson  died  in  1786  aged 
eighty-three  years. 

I  have  authority  to  state  here  that 
the  first  artist  to  come  to  America, 
whose  work  seems  to  have  made  any 
lasting  impression,  was  John  Smy- 
bert,  a  Scotchman,  who  exerted  a 
powerful  and  lasting  influence  on  the 
native-born  painters  who  were  his 
contemporaries  and  successors.  Dean, 
afterward  Bishop,  Berkeley,  resigned 
in  1728  the  richest  church  preferment 
in  Ireland  for  a  bare  maintenance  as 
principal  of  a  projected  "universal 
college  of  science  and  arts"  in  Amer- 
ica, "to  instruct  heathen  children  in 
Christian  duties  and  civil  knowledge." 
He  invited  John  Smybert,  a  young 
artist,  born  in  Edinburgh  about  1684, 
who  in  boyhood  was  apprenticed  to  a 
plasterer  and  house  painter,  to  be  a 
professor  of  drawing,  painting  and 
architecture  in  the  new  institution. 
The  project  was  a  failure  and  Dean 
Berkeley  returned  to  Ireland  a  disap- 
pointed man,  but  still  with  courage  to 
do  more  and  good  work  in  his  own 
country. 

Smybert  remained  in  New  Eng- 
land, living  in  Boston,  acquiring  fame 
in  his  profession  as  an  artist,  and  for- 
tune by  his  marriage  with  a  daughter 
of  Dr.  Williams,  who  was  "Latin 
schoolmaster  of  the  town  of  Boston 


for  fifty  years."  Smybert  died  in 
1751,  leaving  a  widow  and  two  chil- 
dren. 

There  appeared  about  this  time  a 
number  of  artists  and  to  have  one's 
portrait  painted  began  to  be  the  cor- 
rect fashion.  In  1750,  there  was  one, 
Theus,  painting  portraits  in  South 
Carolina,  Robert  Feke  in  New  Eng- 
land, John  Greenwood,  and  several 
others.  In  the  New  York  Gazette, 
July,  1754,  appears  this  item: 

LAWRENCE  KILBURN,  LIMNER 
Just  arrived  from  London  with  Capt. 
Miller,  hereby  acquaints  all  Gentlemen  and 
Ladies  inclined  to  favor  him  in  having 
their  pictures  drawn,  that  he  don't  doubt 
of  pleasing  them  in  taking  a  true  Likeness, 
and  finishing  the  Drapery  in  a  proper 
manner,  as  also  in  the  Choice  of  Atti- 
tudes suitable  to  each  Person's  Age  and 
Sex  and  giving  agreeable  satisfaction  as 
he  has  heretofore  done  to  Gentlemen  and 
Ladies  in  London. 

It  is  doubtful,  however,  if  either 
art  or  advertising  paid  in  these  pio- 
neer days,  for  it  appears  that  in  1772 
Kilburn  abandoned  his  practice  and 
opened  a  paint  store. 

There  came  to  Boston,  about  1750, 
a  traveling  artist,  Jonathan  B.  Black- 
burn, who  painted  family  groups  and 
for  fifteen  years  held  a  select  clientele. 

The  first  native  American  artist  of 
masterly  skill  was  born  in  Boston, 
July  3,  1737 — John  Singleton  Copley. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  Yorkshire  farmer 
who  had  settled  in  County  Limerick, 
Ireland,  married,  migrated  with  his 
wife  to  Boston  in  1736,  and  died  in 
the  West  Indies  about  the  time  of  his 
son's  birth.  Widow  Copley  opened 
a  tobacco  store  in  Boston  where, 
according  to  her  notices,  she  sold 
"The  best  Virginia  Tobacco,  Cut, 
Pigtail,  Spun,  by  Wholesale  and  Re- 
tail, at  the  cheapest  rates." 

About  ten  years  after  the  death  of 
her  first  husband,  Widow  Copley 
married  Peter  Pelham,  a  mezzotint 
engraver.  Under  his  guidance,  the 
boy  Copley  made  his  first  portrait — a 
painting  of  his  stepfather.  About  the 
time  he  was  seventeen,  young  Copley 
had  become  recognized  as  a  painter, 

170 


PORTRAIT  OP  MRS.  FORD  BY  JOHN  SINGLETON  COPLEY.  FIRST 
NATIVE  AMERICAN  ARTIST  WHOSE  WORK  PORTRAYED  GENIUS— 
Now  in  the  Art  Gallery  of  the  Wadsworth  Athenzum  at  Hartford,  Connecticut 


nf     Jtrst     American 


and  his  work  already  included  a  min- 
iature of  Washington,  whose  reputa- 
tion was  then  that  of  a  brave  Indian 
fighter.  He  married,  in  1769,  the 
daughter  of  Richard  Clarke,  a  wealthy 
merchant.  Copley  considered  his 
wife  the  most  beautiful  woman  in 
America  and  he  introduced  her  into 
many  of  his  paintings. 

The  Copley  home  was  an  eleven- 
acre  farm  on  Beacon  Hill,  Boston, 
and  in  1767  he  wrote:  "I  am  now  in 
as  good  a  business  as  the  poverty  of 
this  place  will  admit.  I  make  as 
much  money  as  if  I  were  a  Raphael 
or  a  Correggio,  and  three  hundred 
guineas  a  year,  my  present  income,  is 
equal  to  nine  hundred  a  year  in  Lon- 
don." 

Nevertheless,  he  sailed  for  Eng- 
land, in  June,  1774,  and  from  thence 
to  Italy  where  he  passed  the  winter  in 
Rome.  In  a  letter  to  his  wife  from 
Genoa  he  writes : 

"I  judged  it  best  to  take  advantage  of  so 
good  an  opportunity  and  purchased  a  suit 
of  clothes  for  the  winter.  Perhaps  it 
would  amuse  you  should  I  tell  you  what 
I  have  bought.  I  have  as  much  black  vel- 
vet as  will  make  a  suit  of  clothes.  For 
this  I  gave  about  five  guineas  ($25),  and 
about  two  more  for  as  much  crimson 
satin  as  will  line  it.  This  is  the  taste 
throughout  Tuscany;  and  to-day  I  have 
bought  some  lace  ruffles  and  silk  stock- 
ings." 

Because  of  political  disturbances  in 
America,  he  sent  for  his  family  who 
joined  him  in  July,  1775.  It  is  said 
that  "Mrs.  Copley  left  behind  her  in 
America,  Mrs.  Pelham,  the  artist's 
mother,  and  in  her  care  an  infant  only 
a  few  weeks  old,  which  she  was  afraid 


to  expose  to  the  trials  of  an  ocean 
voyage,  and  which  died  soon  after. 
She  took  with  her  three  children,  and 
was  soon  afterward  joined  by  her 
father,  Mr.  Clarke,  and  her  brothers, 
who  had  previously  moved  to  Canada. 
Mr.  Clarke  was  a  strong  Tory.  It 
was  to  him  that  the  tea  was  con- 
signed which  was  dumped  into  the 
harbor  at  the  'Boston  Tea  Party,'  and 
in  other  ways  he  suffered  so  heavily 
for  his  views  that  he  subsequently  re- 
ceived a  pension  from  the  British  gov- 
ernment up  to  his  death." 

Copley  was  inclined  to  favor  the 
American  party  in  England,  but  took 
no  part  in  the  dispute.  It  was  on  De- 
cember 5,  1782,  that  he  listened  to  the 
king's  speech  recognizing  America's 
independence.  At  that  time  he  was 
working  on  a  portrait  in  the  back- 
ground of  which  he  had  introduced  a 
ship,  and  upon  receiving  the  news  he 
painted  on  the  ship's  mast  the  first 
American  flag  seen  in  England. 

Copley's  career  in  London  carried 
him  to  renown,  and  then  began  to  de- 
cline. During  his  prosperity  his  man- 
sion was  opened  to  all  Americans  vis- 
iting London,  but  when  fortune 
turned  he. became  involved  in  finan- 
cial difficulties  and  borrowed  money 
to  advance  his  son.  It  is  told  that 
"patronage  fell  off;  almost  his  last 
important  work,  the  equestrian  por- 
trait of  the  Prince  Regent,  from 
which  he  had  hoped  great  things,  re- 
mained unsold ;  his  health  declined, 
and  his  life  did  not  long  outlast  his 
popularity."  He  died  in  1815  and 
was  buried  in  the  parish  church  at 
Croyden. 


"All  are  architects  of  Fate, 

Working  in  these  walls  of  Time ! 

Some  with  massive  deeds  and  great, 
Some  with  ornaments  of  rhyme. 


"Nothing  useless  is  and  low; 

Each  thing  in  its  place  is  best; 
And  what  seems  but  idle  show 

Strengthens  and  supports  the  rest. 


"For  the  structure  that  we  raise, 
Time  is  with  materials  filled ; 
Our  to-days  and  yesterdays 
Are  the  blocks  with  which  we  build." 


iflusir  in  Amrrira 


ra   of   ihr   JFirat  U'um- 
iluliltr  (IiuuVmnutum 


IIY      (LARA.      E.MKRSOM 


in  America  traces 
its  first  melodies  to 
the  quaint  chants  of 
the  savages.  The 
American  Indian  in- 
terpreted all  the  emo- 
tions of  life  into  song. 
He  had  songs  to  nerve  the  warriors, 
to  give  zest  to  sports  and  games,  and 
to  speed  the  spirits  to  the  happy  hunt- 
ing-ground. I  find  a  quaint  custom 
in  one  tribe.  Upon  the  death  of  a 
prominent  person,  the  young  men  of 
the  tribe  made  two  incisions  on  the 
left  arm  and  under  the  lip  of  the  flesh 
formed  put  a  willow  twig.  With  the 
blood  dripping  from  their  arms,  they 
marched  to  the  place  where  the  body 
was  lying,  singing  a  song  of  happi- 
ness. It  was  their  belief  that  the 
spirit  of  the  dead  person  could  hear 
the  song  and  that  it  would  cheer  him 
in  his  journey.  The  bleeding  arms 
were  supposed  to  show  their  sympa- 
thy and  love. 

With  the  coming  of  the  white  man 
the  first  Virginians  brought  the  folk- 
songs of  old  England.  The  first  na- 
tive singing  in  America  were  the 
Psalms  chanted  in  Puritan  religious 
services.  Songs  and  music  of  all 
kinds  were  held  in  distrust.  The 
"Bay  Psalm  Book,"  published  in  1640 
at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  was  the 
first  book  printed  in  the  colony.  For 
some  time  previous  to  this  but  five 
tunes  were  permitted.  These  in- 
cluded "Old  Hundred"  and  "York." 
It  is  believed  the  other  three  were 
"Hackney,"  (sometimes  known  as  St. 
Mary's),  "Winsor,"  and  "Martyrs." 
Hymns  began  to  be  used  in  1647. 

A  deep  theological  problem  con- 
fronted the  Americans  of  about  1648. 
I  find  evidence  of  a  vigorous  move- 
ment to  confine  singing  to  the  few 
"elect  of  God,"  allowing  the  congre- 
gation to  join  only  in  the  final 
"Amen."  Many  even  considered 
skilful  singing  as  wickedness.  These 
questions  created  serious  controversy  : 


Whether  women,  as  well  as  men ;  or  men 
alone  may  sing? 

Whether  carnall  men  and  Pagans  may  be 
permitted  to  sing  with  us,  or  Christians 
alone,  and  Church-Members? 

Whether  it  be  lawful  to  sing  Psalmes  in 
Meeter  devised  by  men? 

Whether  in  Tunes  invented? 

Whether  it  be  lawful  in  Order  unto 
Singing,  to  reade  the  Psalme? 

The  evidence  by  which  singing  was 
declared  a  sin  was  based  on  three  find- 
ings: First,  that  tunes  are  inspired; 
second,  that  to  sing  man's  melody  is 
only  a  vain  show  of  art;  third,  that 
God  cannot  take  delight  in  the  process 
where  the  man  of  sin  has  had  a  hand 
in  making  the  melody. 

There  were,  however,  some  daring 
liberals  who  sacrificed  their  reputa- 
tions in  the  cause  of  music,  and  as 
early  as  1717  a  singing  school  existed 
in  Boston. 

About  1673  it  was  attempted  to 
found  a  school  in  which  the  feet  were 
taught  to  keep  time  to  music.  The 
willful  instructor  was  named  Stenney, 
but  he  was  arrested  and  fined  one 
hundred  pounds. 

The  singing  school  caused  another 
discussion  in  which  this  query  was 
foremost:  "Is  it  possible  that  fathers 
of  forty  years  old  and  upward  can 
learn  to  sing  by  rule?  And  ought 
they  to  attempt  at  that  age  to  learn  ?" 
The  importation  of  a  church  organ 
from  London  to  Boston  in  1713  cre- 
ated consternation.  It  was  placed  in 
King's  Chapel,  and  many  preachers 
denounced  it  in  their  sermons.  It 
was  termed  "boisterous,"  and  it  was 
insisted  that  it  could  never  be  "justi- 
fied before  the  great  master  of  reli- 
gious ceremony."  It  was  at  this  time 
that  choir  singing  developed  through 
the  singing  schools. 

Then  came  the  first  American  com- 
poser— William  Billings,  born  in  Bos- 
ton, October  7,  1746.  He  was  appren- 
ticed to  a  tanner  and  wrote  his  first 
composition  with  chalk  upon  the  side 
of  leather  in  the  tannery.  Despite 


0f    3Htr0t     American 


the  ridicule  to  which  he  was  subject- 
ed, he  published  "The  New  England 
Psalm  Singer,  or  American  Choris- 
ter," in  1777.  Upon  hearing  his  first 
composition  sung  by  a  church  choir, 
this  first  American  composer  in  his 
enthusiasm  recorded  his  feelings  thus : 

"It  has  more  than  twenty  times  the  power 
of  the  old  slow  tunes,  each  part  straining 
for  mastery,  to  keep  the  audience  en- 
tertained and  delighted,  their  minds  sur- 
passingly agitated  and  extremely  fluctu- 
ated, sometimes  declaring  for  one  part, 
and  sometimes  for  another.  Now  the  sol- 
emn bass  demands  their  attention,  next  the 
manly  tenor;  now  the  lofty  counter,  now 
the  volatile  treble.  Now  here,  now  there; 
now  here  again — O  ecstatic !  Rush  on, 
you  sons  of  harmony !" 

The  true  American  spirit  of  prog- 
ress is  shown  in  the  introduction 
which  Billings  wrote  for  his  composi- 
tions. He  said: 

"Perhaps  it  may  be  expected  by  some, 
that  I  should  say  something  concerning 
Rules  for  Composition ;  to  these  I  an- 
swer that  Nature  is  the  best  dictator,  for 
all  the  hard  dry  studied  rules  that  ever 
were  prescribed,  will  not  enable  any  per- 
son to  form  an  Air,  any  more  than  the 
bare  Knowledge  of  the  four  and  twenty 
letters,  and  strict  Grammatical  Rules  will 
qualify  a  scholar  for  composing  a  piece  of 
Poetry,  or  properly  adjusting  a  Tragedy 
without  a  Genius.  It  must  be  Nature,  Na- 
ture must  lay  the  foundation,  Nature  must 
inspire  the  Thought.  .  .  .  For  my  own 
part,  as  I  don't  think  myself  confined  to 
any  Rules  for  Composition  laid  down  by 
any  that  went  before  me,  neither  should 
I  think  (were  I  to  pretend  to  lay  down 
rules)  that  any  who  come  after  me  were 
any  ways  obligated  to  adhere  to  them  any 
further  than  they  should  think  proper;  so 
in  fact  I  think  it  is  best  for  every  Com- 
poser to  be  his  own  Carver.  Therefore, 
upon  this  consideration,  for  me  to  dictate, 
or  pretend  to  prescribe  Rules  of  this  Na- 
ture for  others,  would  not  only  be  very 
unnecessary  but  also  a  very  great  piece  of 
Vanity." 

This  first  American  composer 
soon  won  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
He  was  a  patriot  during  the  American 


Revolution  and  many  of  his  tunes 
were  heard  around  the  camp  fires  of 
the  Revolutionary  Army,  or  the  notes 
of  "Chester"  from  the  fifers  of  the 
Continental  ranks. 

Music,  however,  did  not  prove 
a  profitable  occupation  and  he  suf- 
fered poverty.  He  gave  his  life  to 
the  muse  regardless  of  the  taunts  of 
his  fellowmen.  It  is  said  he  was  the 
first  to  use  the  violoncello  in  church 
music  in  New  England,  and  he  is 
credited  with  being  the  first  to  intro- 
duce concerts  in  the  colony.  Billings 
was  an  eccentric  man,  physically  de- 
formed, defective  in  sight,  and  un- 
tidy in  personal  appearance  and  habit. 
His  family  was  so  distressed  by  pov- 
erty that  the  assistance  of  the  com- 
munity was  solicited.  Billings  had  a 
sign  over  the  door  of  his  house  on 
which  was  inscribed  "Billings'  Mu- 
sic." I  have  heard  the  story  told  that 
one  night  two  cats  were  suspended 
from  it  by  their  tails  and  that  their 
howls  aroused  the  entire  neighbor- 
hood. The  ridicule  to  which  he  was 
subjected  is  also  shown  by  the  query 
which  he  received,  asking  if  snoring 
was  to  be  classed  as  vocal  or  instru- 
mental music.  After  a  rather  turbu- 
lent career,  this  first  American  com- 
poser died  September  29,  1800.  Of 
him  a  modern  music  critic  says: 
"Beethoven  could  have  obtained  no 
audience  in  America  in  the  Eigh- 
teenth century,  but  Billings  found  a 
willing  audience  and  cheered  many  a 
fireside  and  camp  where  higher  art 
would  not  have  been  introduced." 

I  have  been  searching  for  the  grave 
of  this  first  American  composer. 
While  it  is  known  that  he  was  buried 
somewhere  in  the  cemetery  on  Boston 
Common,  it  was  unmarked.  The 
cemetery  still  exists,  but  it  does  not 
seem  possible  to  discover  the  exact 
soot  where  the  first  American  com- 
poser was  laid  at  rest. 


BEFORE  IMAN  FOUND  A  NAME  FOR  ANY  THOUGHT,    OR    THING,    HE    HAD    HOPES 
AND1FEARS    AND  PASSIONS    AND    THESE   WERE    RUDELY    EXPRESSED    IN    TONES 


IMMUTABILITY. 


\&  nob]e  records  of  fte  centuries  I 
\£  living  witnesses  of  ages  dead  ! 
\£  Singly  comrades  true,wbose  stout  Wve 
for  L'fe,t brows  Dope's  eterA^l  lig^t 
Upon  our  p&Jbs  full  of  obscurities ! 


us  T>r  'tis  by  every  conflict  won 
The  knotted  sinews  cfrov,  w])lcj)  give  strength  coM 
And  confident,  and   in  tjje  ftas])  eo\d  iwr 
Of  storn,  feel,  wjtl)  sure  touci,  tbe  coning 
Of  fbe  restorincf  rtvin  *xnd  ft\it!)ful  SUA. 


' 


Scribe  "  of  the  Old  Philogrammatican  Library  at  Lebanon,  Connecticut 
One  of  the  First  Libraries  in  America,  1738 


of  ir3B—  dDtt?  of 
ICtbrartes  tn  Ammra 


3nrlinatlmtjB  of  tarlg 

Amrrtrami  >  3Jb.r  Book*  tljrg  firao  ano 

Ihrtr  trarurb  SieruBBtmta  on  fHatlrra  Jntrllrrtual 

anb  fHoral  >  A  ftrratia*  on  "  PljgaUk  "  man  tl|*  JfounoatUm  of  Uttrrarg 

Culture  In  til*  Starrtmtnattng  Snagittpntfl   of  tlj*  ^Irrt  Amrrtran 

BT 

MRS.  MARTHA  WILLIAMS  HOOKER 

OF  ONE    OT   THE    POCKDEBS    OF   THE    "  PuiLOGOAllXATICAN  "    LlBRART 


IN  old  record  book,  bound 
in  parchment  and  yel- 
low with  age,  has  come 
down  to  me  from  my 
great-grandfather.  It 
is  the  original  record 
of  one  of  the  first  libra- 
ries in  America.  Most  of  it  is  in 
the  handwriting  of  the  first  Governor 
Jonathan  Trumbull  of  Connecticut 
when  he  was  a  young  man,  and 
at  the  beginning  of  the  notable  career 
which  later  distinguished  him  as  one 
of  the  leading  jurists  and  patriots  of 
the  early  days.  This  old  record  has 
defied  the  lights  of  time  for  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty-eight  years  and  the 
entries  are  still  distinct. 

In  this  ancient  record  book  is  re- 
vealed the  life-story  of  the  old  library 
in  historic  Lebanon,  Connecticut,  be- 
ginning in  1738.  But  even  at  that 
time  we  find  that  "the  Book  Com- 
pany of  Durham,  Connecticut,  was 
instituted  on  the  3Oth  day  of  October, 
Anno  Domini,  1733,"  and  therefore 
must  have  been  five  years  older  than 
its  little  sister  in  Lebanon  with  the 
long  name  of  "Philogrammatican." 

The  name  itself  is  sufficient  to  dis- 
credit any  statement  that  the  early 


New  England  people  were  unlearned 
or  that  they  gave  scant  interest  to  lit- 
erary matters.  The  truth  is  that  these 
pioneer  Americans  were  not  only  book 
lovers  but  scholars;  even  more,  they 
were  pedagogues.  Look,  for  in- 
stance, upon  the  clerk  who  inscribed 
the  minutes  of  the  old  "Philogram- 
matican" library.  Jonathan  Trum- 
ble,  as  his  name  was  then  spelled,  was 
the  son  of  a  country  merchant,  and  a 
graduate  from  Harvard  in  the  class 
of  1727.  He  studied  theology  with 
the  clergyman,  the  Reverend  Solo- 
mon Williams,  but  upon  the  death  of 
an  older  brother  abandoned  the  study 
and  went  into  his  father's  business. 
At  that  time  many  of  the  goods  came 
from  foreign  countries  by  ship  to 
New  London,  and  thence  by  teams  to 
the  inland  towns  of  Connecticut  and 
Massachusetts.  These  men  were 
owners  of  some  of  these  importing 
vessels. 

Trumble  was  about  twenty-eight 
years  old  when  this  Library  Associa- 
tion was  formed  and  he  was  choser 
as  its  "scribe." 

The  village  clergyman,  the  Rev- 
erend Solomon  Williams,  was  one  of 
the  most  ardent  promoters  of  the  plan 


Utierarg  Jurltttattnttja  nf  lEarlg  Ammratt-s 


to  develop  a  system  of  co-operative 
reading  whereby  the  minds  of  his 
community  might  be  nourished  with 
intellectual  food.  The  pulpits  of  the 
meeting-houses  were  occupied  by  the 
most  learned  men  of  the  new  land  and 
Reverend  Williams  was  a  type  of  the 
old-time  scholar,  descended  from  sev- 
eral generations  of  scholarship.  He 
was  the  son  of  Reverend  William 
Williams  of  Hatfield,  and  the  grand- 
son of  Reverend  Solomon  Stoddard 
of  Northampton,  Massachusetts,  as 
was  also  Jonathan  Edwards,  the  emi- 
nent theologian  and  president  of 
Princeton  College. 

His  elder  brother,  Elisha  Williams, 
was  rector  (or  president)  of  Yale 
College  for  thirteen  years.  Reverend 
Williams  was  settled  over  the  flock 
in  Lebanon  in  1722  when  he  was 
only  twenty-two  years  of  age.  He 
married  Miss  Mary  Porter,  whose 
father  was  Judge  Samuel  Porter  of 
Hadley,  Massachusetts.  The  youth- 
ful minister  and  his  bride  had  ma- 
tured under  the  grandeur  of  Holyoke 
range  which  cast  its  shadows  on  the 
blue  Connecticut,  winding  through 
green  and  fertile  meadows. 

The  first  parish  of  Lebanon,  to 
which  they  came,  was  the  home  of  a 
goodly  number  of  intelligent  families. 
It  was  an  atmosphere  of  refinement 
and  culture.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
town  were  a  studious  people  and 
eagerly  digested  all  bits  of  informa- 
tion that  came  from  the  Old  World, 
•especially  such  rare  intellectual  feasts 
as  a  printed  book  from  Old  England. 
'There  were  frequently  expressed  de- 
sires that  some  way  might  be  devised 
.for  giving  them  better  literary  oppor- 
tunities, and  in  1738  practical  meas- 
nires  were  taken  for  this  purpose. 

It  was  thirty-eight  years  before 
'the  outbreak  of  the  American  Revo- 
lution and  the  radicalists  had  not 
organized  any  definite  plan  for 
remedying  existing  evils.  There  was 
time  for  literary  pursuits,  especially 
with  the  conservative  colonists  who 


had  full  faith  in  an  ultimate  peaceable 
disposition  of  affairs. 

It  was  well,  then,  that  the  book-lov- 
ers of  Lebanon  should  institute  a 
library,  which,  modest  as  it  may  now 
seem,  was  a  notable  factor  in  the 
mental  development  of  early  Amer- 
ica. 

Those  with  literary  inclinations 
from  far  and  near  cordially  indorsed 
the  proposed  undertaking.  Clergy- 
men from  the  different  communities 
became  interested  in  the  movement 
and  joined  the  Library  Association, 
conferring  upon  one  another  the  title 
of  "Covenanter"  and  approaching  the 
responsibility  with  a  reverence  that 
must  have  verged  on  bibliolatry. 

Unlike  modern  library  associations, 
there  was  no  constitution,  no  presi- 
dent or  board  of  officers,  but  a  strictly 
legal  covenant  was  entered  into  be- 
tween the  Reverend  Solomon  Wil- 
liams on  the  first  part,  and  the  leading 
men  of  his  town,  physicians,  mer- 
chants and  lawyers,  together  with 
clergymen  of  adjoining  towns  on  the 
other  part.  Each  one  agreed  to  con- 
tribute fifty  pounds,  or  two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars,  to  purchase  books. 
Reverend  Williams  was  treasurer, 
although  no  mention  is  made  of  such 
a  title,  and  Jonathan  Trumbull,  secre- 
tary, or,  as  he  was  called,  the 
"Scribe." 

The  covenant  of  the  old  book-lov- 
ers is  not  unlike  many  of  the  manu- 
scripts of  the  scholarly  inclined  of  the 
present  generation.  The  young  col- 
lege graduate  who  inscribed  it  seems 
to  have  a  very  human  relation  to  his 
collegiate  brother  of  to-day,  and  was 
undoubtedly  better  informed  in  Greek 
and  Latin  than  in  the  orthography  of 
his  own  language.  His  handwriting, 
which  lies  before  me,  is  so  legible, 
however,  that  I  pardon  his  excessive 
use  of  capital  letters  for  they  certainly 
are  quite  ornamental. 

"The  Covenant,"  I  here  transcribe 
from  the  original  entry  in  the  old 
record-book  before  me,  preserving 
the  quaint  spelling  and  capitalization: 

178 


COVENANT     OF     THE     EARLY     AMERICAN 

BI  BL1OPHILES 

TRANSCRIBED  FROM  ORIGINAL  RECORD  BOOK  OK  THE 
"PHILOGRAMMATICAN"  LIBRARY  AT  LEBANON,  CONNECTICUT 


This  Covenant  made  this  4th  Day  of  Jany.,  Anno  Domini,  1738.  Between  Eleazur 
Williams  of  Mansfield,  Joseph  Meacham  of  Coventry,  Thomas  Clap  of  Windham,  Jacob 
Eliot,  Eleazur  Wheelock,  Ebenezer  West,  Ebenezer  Gray,  Joseph  Fowler,  Gersham 
Clark,  John  Williams  and  Jonathan  Trumble,  (all  of  Lebanon,)  in  the  County  of  Wind- 
ham  and  Colony  of  Connecticut  in  New  England,  on  the  one  Part — and  Solomon  Williams 
of  the  said  Lebanon  on  the  other  Part.  Witnesseth — That  we,  the  above  named — 
Do  Covenant  and  agree  to,  and  with  the  said  Solomon  Williams,  His  Heirs,  Executors, 
in  manner  and  form  following — viz. 

COVENANT 


We  Do  Each  and  Every  of  us,  Severally 
Oblidge  ourselves,  our  Heirs — Executors, 
and  Administrators  To  pay,  or  Cause  to  be 
paid,  unto  The  Said  Solomon  Williams, 
His  Heirs  or  Order  the  full  and  just  Sum 
of  Fifty  Pounds  Current  money,  That  is, 
Twenty  Five  pounds,  at  or  before  the  first 
day  of  September  Next  Ensuing,  and 
Twenty-five  pounds  at  or  Before  the  first 
day  of  September  which  will  be  in  the  Year 
of  our  Lord  1740.  All  and  Every  of  which 
Fifty  Pounds  by  Each  and  Every  of  us 
Agreed  and  Covenanted  To  be  Paid ;  we  do 
hereby  Covenant  and  Agree  shall  be  by 
Said  Solomon  Williams  his  Heirs,  Execu- 
tors and  Administrators  Used  and  Im- 
proved to  Purchase  and  Buy  a  Library  of 
such  Usefull  and  Profitable  Books,  as  the 
Covenanters  by  Their  Major  Vote  Taken 
and  Given  in  manner  hereafter  to  be  Ex- 
pressed shall  be  Agreed  and  Concluded 
upon;  to  be  Holden  and  Kept  in  the  first 
Society  in  Lebanon  Aforsd,  as  a  Common 
Library  among  the  Covenanters,  for  Their 
Use  and  Improvement  Under  such  Re- 
strictions, Regulations,  and  Directions  as 
hereafter  in  this  Instrument  shall  be  Ex- 
pressed, or  in  Due  manner  and  form  shall 
be  Agreed — Voted  and  Concluded  on  by 
the  Proprietors  and  Covenanters  afore- 
said. Whereupon :  The  Said  Solomon 
Williams  doth  for  himself,  his  Heirs,  Ex- 
ecutors and  Administrators  Covenant  and 
Agree  to  and  with  the  above  named. 
.  .  .  (Names  of  Proprietors  follow.) 
Their  Heirs,  Executors,  Administrators 
and  Assigns  that  he  the  Said  Solomon  Wil- 
liams, His  Heirs,  Executors,  Administra- 
tors, shall  well  and  Truely  Pay  or  Cause 
to  be  paid  toward  the  afores'd.  Out  of  his 
Own  Proper  Estate  The  full  and  just  Sum 
of  Fifty  Pounds  money,  To  be  paid 
Towards  the  Use  aforesaid.  In  manner 


and  form  as  the  Several  Fifty  Pounds 
aforesaid.  That  is  Twenty  Five  Pounds  at 
or  before  the  First  day  of  September  next, 
and  Twenty  Five  Pounds  at  or  before  the 
First  day  of  September  which  will  be  in 
the  year  of  our  Lord  1740— And  then  fur- 
ther— Secondly  the  aforesaid  Solomon 
Williams  doth  bind  and  oblidge  himself, 
his  heirs  &c  to  Purchase  and  Deliver  into 
the  hands  of  the  Covenanters  aforesaid,  a 
Collection  of  such  books  and  such  sort  of 
books  as  shall  be  agreed  upon  and  con- 
cluded, to  be  bought  by  the  vote  of  the 
major  part  of  the  Covenanters,  made  as 
hereafter  expressed,  which  shall  amount  in 
the  whole,  to  the  whole  of  the  Several 
sums  covenanted  to  be  paid  by  the  Cove- 
nanters on  the  first  part.  To  the  said  Sol- 
omon Williams  Together  with  the  fifty 
Pounds  covenanted  and  agreed  by  him  to 
be,  added  to  the  same  Totall  amount  at 
the  Cheapest  Rates  they  can  Reasonably  be 
purchased  in  New  England  to  be  delivered 
at  or  before  the  first  day  of  September 
next— one  half  of  them — and  the  other  half 
of  them,  at  or  before  the  first  of  September 
A  D  1740. 

Whereupon  it  is  now  further  covenanted 
and  agreed  and  Determined  to,  by  and 
among  all  and  every  of  the  Covenanters 
both  on  the  one  and  other  part  mentioned 
in  manner  and  form — following — 

That  the  said  Collection  of  books  made 
and  Purchased  as  aforesaid,  shall  be  put 
into  a  comon  Library,  and  shall  be  held 
and  kept  within  the  Limits  of  the  first 
Society  in  Lebanon  aforesaid,  for  the 
Comon  use,  benefit  and  Advantage  of  the 
Covenanters  aforesaid,  and  those  of  their 
heirs  and  assigns  as  by  the  vote  agreed  on 
by  the  major  part  of  the  Proprietors  shaH 
be  allowed  to  Take  and  hold  Interest* 
Therein.  (OTXB) 


COVENANT    OF    EARLY    AMERICAN    BIBLIOPHILES    (Continued} 


Secondly,  That  the  said  Library  shall  be 
called  by  the  name  of  the  Philogrammati- 
can  Library,  and  that  the  Proprietors  and 
owners  Thereof  in  Relation  thereto  shall 
be  called  and  known  by  the  name  of  The 
Company  of  the  Philogrammatican  Library. 

Voted — That  the  said  Solomon  Williams 
shall  be  the  keeper  of  the  said  Library  until 
the  Proprietors  of  the  same  shall  by  their 
vote  Regularly  given  order  otherwise. 

Voted  that  a  True  Record  "Shall  be 
kept  and  Entries  made  of  the  votes  and 
,  Doings  of  said  Company.  It  is  agreed  that 
a  Book  shall  be  made  and  kept  by  some 
person  thereto  appointed  and  that  from 
time  to  time  two  persons  shall  be  appoint- 
ed, Truly  to  Enter  all  the  votes,  proceed- 
ings and  orders  of  the  Covenanters  and 
proprieters  of  said  Library  in  the  said  Book 
for  that  End  provided  and  shall  subscribe 
their  names  thereunto  which  shall  become 
evidence  that  These  Records  or  Entries 
made  were  the  acts  and  doings  of  said 
Company — 

It  was  also  voted — That  Three  Cove- 
nants of  Like  Tenour  and  date,  shall  be 
duly  executed  by  each  of  us — which  Cove- 
nants so  executed  Shall  be  lodged  in  the 
hands  of  the  Library  keeper.  It  was  also 
voted  that  a  true  copy  shall  be  made  of  the 
Covenant,  and  transcribed  in  the  forepart 
of  the  Book  Wherein  the  votes,  and  doings 
of  said  company  are  recorded.  Voted  that 
other  Covenanters  may  be  admitted  and 
received  to  make  additions  to  said  Library 
by  the  major  vote  of  the  Company  who 
shall  be  under  the  like  Restrictions  Regu- 
lations and  Directions  as  the  present  Pro- 
prietors are. 

In  witness  whereof  Both  Parties  and 
each  member  of  both  Parties  here  sub- 
scribe their  Hands  and  Seals  to  Three 
Covenants  of  like  Tenour  and  Even  Date 
with  these  presents,  one  of  which  being 


accomplished  the  Rest  shall  be  discharged 
Signed,  Sealed  &c  in  presence  of  us. 
Here  follow  the  names. 

WITNESSES 

Ralph  Wheelock  (L  S) 
Eleazur  Gillet  (L  S) 
Eleazur  Williams  (L  S) 
Joseph  Meacham  (L  S) 
Solomon  Williams  (L  S) 
Thomas  Clap  (L  S) 
Ebenezer  West  (L  S) 
Joseph  Fowler  (L  S) 
John  Williams  (L  S) 
Jacob  Eliot  (L  S) 
Eleazur  Wheelock  (L  S) 
Ebenezer  Grey  (L  S) 
Gersham  Clark  (L  S) 
Jonathan  T  rumble  (L  S) 

The  Covenant  contained  on  Three  pre- 
ceding pages  is  a  true  and  perfect  Tran- 
script of  that  made  and  executed  by  The 
Company  of  the  Philogrammatican  Library 
— In  Witness  whereof  we  here  by  the 
order  of  the  said  Company  subscribed 

Our  names — 
(as  above) 
JON'TH    TRUMBLE — 

Clerk— 


At  a  later  meeting  it  was  also 

Voted — That  each  Proprietor  may  bor- 
row Books  to  the  Value  of  Twenty 
Pounds  at  a  time  and  no  more — 

Voted — That  Jonathan  Trumble  be  ap- 
pointed to  buy  tanned  sheepskins — and  get 
the  Books  already  brought  into  the  Library 
covered  with  them — and  that  It  be  Done 
as  Speedily  as  may  be  with  Conveniency — 
at  the  Charge  of  the  Company. 


I  should  like  to  here  place  before 
you  the  interesting  records  of  each 
one  of  these  meetings  of  the  good 
bookmen,  for  every  page  of  the  old 
witness  which  they  left  behind  draws 
one  nearer  to  them,  and  one  soon  feels 
an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  se- 
lect literary  circle  and  can  almost 
hear  them  discuss  the  literary  quality 
of  the  books  of  the  day,  gathered  un- 
doubtedly in  a  large  hospitable  room 
in  which  a  severely  plain  table,  some 
straight-back  chairs  and  a  glowing 
fireplace  are  the  principal  objects  of 
luxury. 


Can  you  not  see  in  your  imagina- 
tion the  pious  and  reverend  Parson 
Williams,  questioning  the  propriety 
or  moral  influence  of  this  book  and 
that,  protesting  against  frivolity  and 
appealing  to  the  philosophical  in- 
stincts that  were  so  strongly  devel- 
oped in  the  wilderness  life  of  the 
early  Americans.  Possibly  Jonathan 
Trumbull,  who  was  some  ten  years 
younger  and  knew  something  of  poli- 
tics, supported  a  more  lenient  policy 
and  suggested  an  occasional  volume 
that  would  meet  the  popular  fancy. 
Whatever  may  have  been  these  dis- 

180 


Jlnrltnattnnfi  0f  lEarlg  Ammrana 


cussions — and  discussion  there  surely 
must  have  been,  for  whoever  heard  of 
a  literary  gathering  that  could  agree 
upon  what  literary  quality  really 
means — the  old  record-book  settles 
them  all  with  this  decisive  statement 
that  the  first  purchase  was: 


THE   BOOKS   OF   PHYSICK 


Dr.  Gray  and  Dr.  John  Williams  were 
appointed  to  get  a  proper  catalogue  and  de- 
liver to  Rev.  Solomon  Williams  in  order 
to  their  being  purchased.  And  that  £40  of 
the  first  purchase  be  in  Law  Books,  and 
that  Messrs.  Eliot,  Fowler,  and  Trumble 
procure  and  deliver  a  proper  catalogue  as 
above  said — 

A  Catalogue  also  of  Sundry  other 
Books.  Voted:  That  Rev.  Solomon  Wil- 
liams and  Rev.  Jacob,  Eliot  and  Messrs. 
Eben  Gray,  John  Williams,  and  Jonathan 
Trumble  be  a  Com.  to  look  over,  settle  and 
sort  the  catalogues  and  the  first  mentioned 
in  these  catalogues  by  them  to  be  bought 
first 


It  is  evident  that  the  original  "Cov- 
enant" proved  insufficient  to  meet  the 
emergencies  of  book  buying  and  book 
loaning,  for  in  1740  an  additional 
"Covenant"  was  made  in  which  the 
desire  is  expressed  that  "this  Library 
remain  one  joint  Library  front  Gene- 
ration to  Generation." 

Circumstances  which  these  good 
men  could  not  foresee  prevented  this 
idealistic  accomplishment.  The  de- 
velopment of  the  library,  however, 
was  well  directed,  and  in  1843,  at  a 
meeting  held  on  August  8,  this  record 
appears  in  the  book  before  me : 


Voted  that  the  Company  would  now 
proceed  to  purchase  the  Remaining  part  of 
the  collection  of  books  and  that  the  Rev. 
Solomon  Williams  be  desired  to  Procure  a 
bill  of  Exchange  and  send  it  to  London 
this  Fall  in  order  to  have  the  books  from 
thence  next  Spring  and  that  he  take  the 
best  method  for  obtaining  them  at  the 
Cheapest  sterling  price  and  order  them 

181 


insured  home  and  the  company  agree  to 
pay  their  respective  quota  to  the  Rev.  Sol- 
omon Williams  on  or  before  the  fifteenth 
day  of  October  next  This  meeting  was 
adjoined  by  vote  of  the  Company  until  the 
26  of  September  next  The  foregoing 
votes  truly  entered  by 

JON*TH  TKUMBLE,  Scribe. 

This  was  the  last  meeting  to  be  re- 
ported in  the  handwriting  of  Jona- 
than Trumbull  in  this  old  book.  Pos- 
sibly politics  diverted  his  interest 
from  literature.  Possibly  he  contin- 
ued in  the  literary  circle  but  inscribed 
his  minutes  in  another  book  which 
has  failed  to  find  its  way  down  the 
channel  of  the  generations.  I  have 
made  persistent  inquiry  among  the 
other  descendants  of  the  Reverend 
Solomon  Williams,  and  also  in  the 
Trumbull  family,  but  fail  to  support 
this  later  possibility.  This,  indeed, 
was  a  period  of  increasing  activity. 
There  were  troubles  brewing  and  pol- 
itics may  have  demanded  the  entire 
attention  of  the  scholars. 

The  old  record-book  is  silent — se- 
verely silent,  and  for  a  period  that 
gives  rise  to  a  multitude  of  probabil- 
ities. It  is  silent  for  forty-three 
years!  From  1743,  through  that  trag- 
ical sweep  of  time  in  which  occurred 
the  American  Revolution,  the  ancient 
volume  does  not  speak  until  the 
twenty-seventh  of  November,  1786. 
What  a  drama  of  human  passions  had 
been  played  in  this  long  interval. 
What  tremendous  clashes  of  powers 
had  taken  place,  and  what  a  stagger- 
ing blow  had  been  struck  to  tyranny. 
The  British  Empire  had  lost  its  rich 
colonies  in  America.  The  American 
people  had  declared,  bled  for,  and  es- 
tablished their  independence.  A 
young  giant  had  entered  the  arena  in 
the  conflict  for  the  world's  suprem- 
acy, and  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica stood  a  free  nation  before  the 
peoples  of  the  earth,  inviting  them  to 
break  the  chains  of  monarchy  and 
come  and  partake  of  the  cup  of 
Liberty. 


£ti?rarg  Jnrlinatinna  of  lEarlg  Ammrana 


Once  again  the  seared  old  pages 
speak  in  1786: 


27th  November  1786:  Present  Eleven 
Members — Mr.  Oliver  Huntingdon  was 
chosen  Moderator— Dr.  Thomas  Williams 
chosen  clerk — The  question  was  can- 
vassed whether  or  not  the  Company  be  dis- 
solved and  the  books  divided,  it  was  voted 
to  keep  and  continue  the  Library.  Voted 
that  Dr.  Thomas  Williams  shall  be  Libra- 
rian for  the  present.  Voted  that  Rev. 
Zebulon  Ely  shall  be  the  Librarian  at  the 
time  when  he  shall  purchase  a  share  in 
said  Library. 

Truly  entered  Thomas  Williams 

Clerk. 

Turning  over  the  pages  it  is  found 
that  there  was  held: 

a  Meeting  on  Sep.  25,  1792;    there  were 

present 

Rev.  Zebulon  Ely 

Rev.  Stephen  White 

Rev.  James  Cogswell 

Oliver  Huntington 

Eben  West 

Dyer  Hinckley 

Thomas  Williams. 

His  Excellency  Samuel  Huntington  Esq 
Ebenezer  Grey  } 

Peleg  Thomas  f  By  their  attorneys 

Jacob  Eliot  C 

deceased 

Voted  to  Divide  the  books  belonging  to 
The  Philogrammatican  Library  to  Each 
Proprietor  on  equal  shares — said  vote  im- 
plying of  consequence  the  Dissolution  of 
the  Company — 

Voted    that    Rev.    Zebulon    Ely,    Oliver 
Huntington,    and    Thos.    Williams,    make 
just  distribution  and  to  meet  and  divide  the 
books  by  lot 
»,  THOMAS  WILLIAMS  Scribe. 


When  one  considers  the  events  that 
passed  through  the  first  decades  of 
the  life  of  the  "Philogrammatican" 
Library  it  seems  remarkable  that  it 
could  have  existed  at  all,  and  if  it  was 
deserted  by  men  who  found  war  of 
greater  immediate  consequence  than 
intellectual  development,  it  is  a  signi- 
ficant fact  that  it  again  claimed  their 
attention  after  the  laying  down  of 
arms  in  the  great  struggle.  Even  be- 
fore the  Revolution  the  French  and 
English  War  had  occurred,  and  men 
and  money  had  been  given  to  the  ex- 
pedition against  Annapolis  and  Louis- 


burg,  which  was  led  by  Colonel 
Lathrop  of  Norwich.  Lebanon  had 
spent  so  much  in  men  and  money  in 
the  Revolutionary  War  that  they 
could  not  purchase  new  books  in 
1792. 

The  small  boys  who  had  played  in 
the  grass-grown  streets  of  the  quiet 
and  secluded  village  of  Lebanon  had 
become  men  and  offered  their  lives  as 
a  sacrifice  to  the  cause  of  liberty. 

Jonathan  Trumbull,  the  "scribe," 
had  become  Honorable  Jonathan 
Trumbull,  the  legislator  and  lawyer, 
and  the  beloved  "Brother  Jonathan" 
the  intimate  friend  and  "right-hand" 
confidante  of  General  Washington, 
who  relied  much  upon  his  judgment 
and  service  in  directing  the  American 
Revolution. 

Reverend  Solomon  Williams  had 
died  in  1775,  just  before  the  dawn  of 
liberty  and  his  sons  had  fallen  heir  to 
the  literary  pride  of  their  father  in 
the  "Philogrammatican"  Library. 
Thomas  Williams,  the  "scribe"  of  the 
library  who  had  some  time  succeeded 
Jonathan  Trumbull,  had  been  gradu- 
ated from  Yale  College  and  settled  as 
a  physician  in  his  native  town.  Wil- 
liam Williams,  his  brother,  had  been 
graduated  from  Harvard  College,  and 
had  seen  service  in  the  French  and 
English  War  on  the  staff  of  his  rela- 
tive, Colonel  Ephraim  Williams, 
founder  of  Williams  College,  Massa- 
chusetts, at  the  Battle  of  Lake 
George.  He  had  represented  his  old 
town  in  the  General  Assembly  and 
had  been  a  distinguished  member  of 
the  Continental  Congress  in  1776. 
Moreover  he  had  forever  perpetu- 
ated his  name  by  inscribing  it  on 
that  "roll  of  fame,"  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.  His  wife  was  a 
beautiful  woman,  Mary  Trumbull, 
the  daughter  of  his  old  friend,  Jona- 
than Trumbull. 

The  good  bookmen  who  had  organ- 
ized the  "Philogrammatican"  Library 
in  1738  had  most  of  them  passed 
away  in  the  lapse  of  forty-three  years 
which  the  mute  record-book  fails  to 


182 


Ctirrarg  Jlnrltnatinna  nf  lEarlg  Ammrattfi 


divulge,  and  in  1786  those  who  were 
still  living  were  in  venerable  and  in- 
active age  and  had  long  since  left  the 
responsibilities  of  life  on  younger 
shoulders. 

Thomas  Clapp,  one  of  the  first 
"Covenanters,"  rose  from  the  minis- 
try in  Windham  to  the  presidency  or 
rectorship  of  Yale  College.  This 
distinction  was  conferred  upon  him 
the  first  year  after  the  establishment 
of  the  library,  in  1739,  and  he  fulfilled 
its  duties  until  1766.  "He  contribu- 
ted much  to  improve  Yale  College 
and  was  the  means  of  building  a  new 
edifice  and  chapel.  He  was  a  man  of 
extensive  learning  and  gave  great 
attention  to  mathematics  and  astron- 
omy, and  constructed  the  first  Orrery 
made  in  this  country." 

Eleazur  Wheelock,  another  of  the 
select  circle  of  bookmen,  became  an 
educator.  He  was  first  a  teacher  of 
Indian  boys  in  Lebanon,  and  later  re- 
moved his  school  to  Hanover,  New 
Hampshire,  where  many  of  the  abo- 
riginal Americans  were  led  to  civili- 
zation and  learning.  From  this  work 
developed  Dartmouth  College,  of 
which  he  was  president,  as  was  also 
his  son. 

Eleazur  Williams,  an  original 
"Covenantei4,"  was  the  son  of  the 
Reverend  John  Williams  of  Deerfield, 
Massachusetts,  who  was  carried  to 
Canada  by  the  Indians  in  1704.  The 
son,  Eleazur,  escaped  capture  at  the 
same  time  only  because  of  his  fortu- 
nately being  away  from  home — at 
college — for  all  the  other  members  of 
the  family  were  taken  captives.  The 
son,  after  his  college  years,  settled  in 
Mansfield  as  a  minister. 


Joseph  Meachem,  still  another  of 
the  literary  clique,  was  also  a 
clergyman,  and  married  a  sister  of 
Eleazur  Williams.  She  was  taken 
captive  with  her  father  and  family  by 
the  Indians,  but  after  reaching  Can- 
ada she  was  rescued  by  the  French 
and  was  placed  in  a  school  in  Mon- 
treal where  she  received  two  or  three 
years  of  superior  training.  She  was 
returned  to  the  colonies  with  her 
father  and  younger  brothers  in  1707. 

There  were  many  new  faces  at  the 
meetings  of  the  Library  Association 
in  1786.  Reverend  Zebulon  Ely  was 
then  the  village  minister,  having  suc- 
ceeded the  late  Reverend  Solomon 
Williams.  His  Excellency,  Samuel 
Huntington,  governor  of  Connecti- 
cut, was  a  member  of  the  association 
for  a  short  time.  He  was  a  personal 
friend  of  William  Williams,  and  with 
him  signed  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence. 

Then  came  the  decade  of  construc- 
tive energy,  when  men  gave  the  best 
there  was  in  them  to  the  laying  of  the 
foundation  of  the  new  nation.  Lit- 
erary pursuits  were  left  largely  to 
men  who  made  a  business  of  it.  The 
newspaper  press  became  well  estab- 
lished. The  post-boy  brought  the 
news  regularly,  and  in  1792  the  old 
"Philocrrammatican"  Library  passed 
into  history. 

These  old  bibliophiles  did  their 
work  well  and  nobly.  May  all  good 
bookmen  of  the  years  to  come  exer- 
cise the  same  discrimination  and  con- 
scientiousness as  did  these  pioneer 
American  bookmen  of  one  of  the  first 
literary  clubs  on  the  Western  Conti- 
nent. 


LICENSE     TO     MAKE     BOOTS    AND    BOOTEES    IN     1815 
TRANSCRIBED  FROM  ORIGINAL  BY  BENJAMIN  C.  LUM 

WHEREAS  David  Lum  Junr  of  the  County  of  New  Haven  In  the  State  of  Connecticut  bath  duly 
applied  for  a  license  to  employ  a  manufactory  conducted  In  one  wood  building,  situate  in  the  county  of 
New  Haven  in  the  State  of  Connecticut  and  owned  by  Sd  Lum  of  the  county  of  New  Haven  in  State 
of  Connecticut  in  the  making  of  BOOTS  and  BOOTEES  during  the  term  of  one  year  to  commence  on  the 
eighteenth  day  of  April  1815  and  to  end  on  the  eighteenth  day  of  April  1816: 

Now    KNOW    YE,  That    the   said  David  Lum  Junr  is  hereby  licensed  to  employ  the  said  manu- 
factory in  the  making  of  BOOTS  and  BOOTEES,  for  the  said  term  of  one  year  as  above  defined,  in  con- 
formity with  the  laws  of  the  United  States.  WALTER  B.  BEALE 
Countersigned  at  Cheshire  in  the  Sd  Collection  District  this  iSth  day  of  April,   1815, 
S.  Hull  Jr.,  Collector  of  the  Revenue  for  the  Collection  District. 


.83 


BOOKS  IN  ONE  OF  FIRST  LIBRARIES  IN  AMERICA 
VOLUMES   SELECTED    BY  BOOK   LOVERS   IN    1738 

Transcribed  pages  from  the  Original  Record  Book  of  the  Philogramma- 
tican  Library  at  Lebanon,  Connecticut,  giving  an  accurate  idea  of 
the  literary  inclinations  of  the  pioneer  Americans.  Reverend  Solomon 
Williams,  a  prominent  book-lover  of  his  times,  made  two  or  three 
trips  on  horseback  to  Boston  to  learn  the  latest  literary  news  and 
then  sent  to  England  for  most  of  these  volumes. 
Ninety-four  books  were  recorded  in  1739,  others  were  added  in  1743. 


Page  I  of  Original  Record  Book. 

Folios— 
Rapin's  Hist,  of  England  

No. 
of 
Vols. 

,  a    z 

£ 

2 

S 

7 

D 

Chambers'  Dictionary    

•i  •> 

4 

10 

Cambden's  Brittannia    

,3    2 

2 

14 

Calmet's  Dictionary    

w    1 

5 

Burnet's  History  of  His  Own  Times  

£    2 

2 

8 

Barrow's  Works    

38    2 

I 

15 

Tillotson's  Works  

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2 

5 

Saurin's  Dissertations  

X   3 

10 

6 

Bates'  Works  ^i    o    o 

*•(/! 

Flavel's  Works  i  10    o 

Edward's  Theologia  Reformata  i  15     o 

Stillingfleet's  Origines  Sacra  o  15     o 

Coke's  Institutes  3    o    o 

Lilly's  Abridgement  2    o    o 

Quarto's  — 
Guise's  Paraphrase,  his  gift  to  us  015     o 

Wollaston's  Religion  of  Nature,  &c,  o    5    3 

Winslow's  Anatomy  Sterling  price 

14 

o 

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2  vols  ;£o  15    o 

Octavo,  &c. 
Coke's  Reports  7  vols.     200 

Bohun's  Declarations  and  Pleadings  Sterling 

5 

o 

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Canon  Law  Do. 

5 

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;£i3  15    3 

Pagt  3  of  Original  Record  Book. 

Gentlemen  Instructed  £o    5    o 

£22 

17 

Colamy's  Abridgmt.  of  Baxter's  Lives  o  10    o 

2 

Prideaux's  Commition,  &c  017    o 

3 

Ditton  of  Christ's  Resurrection  o    5     o 

Ray's  Wisdom  of  God  in  Creation  o    4    o 

Sherlock  on  the  Soul's  Immortality  o    4    o 

Sharp's  Sermons     o  12    o 

4 

Wilkin's  Principles  of  Natural  Religion  o    4    o 

Buxtorffie,  Synagoga  Judaia  Sterling 

4 

Langii  Medicina  Mentis  do. 

4 

6 

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2 

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Sir  Isaac  Newton's  Opticks  do. 

c 

Chamberlain's  Present  State  of  Great  Britain  .        do. 

6 

184 


Sterling 

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Waterland's  ist  Defence  and  Further  Vindica- 
tion          do. 

No.  of 
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2 
2 

£ 

s 

6 

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5 
5 

6 

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9 
4 
4 
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2 
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6 

6 
6 
6 

Waterland's  and  Defence  and  Further  Vindica- 
tion          do. 

Waterland's  Sermons  do. 

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Revelation  Examined  with  Candour  do. 

Watt's  Sermons  do. 

Logick  do. 

Philosophical  Essays  do. 

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Various  Sermons  and  Tracts  do. 

World  to  Come  do. 

Lyrick  poems  do. 

Misselaneous  Thoughts  do. 

£2  i 

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Scripture  History  

5 

2 
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3 
2 

2 
2 
2 
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8 
3 
3 
3 
i 

7 
4 
5 
5 
5 
6 

5 

10 

6 

6 

6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 
6 

6 
6 
6 
6 
6 

6 
6 

Humble  Attempts  

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Death  and  Heaven  

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Self-Murder  

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ippocrates  Aphorisms  

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£i  13    3                        13               6 

185 


w  Ammra 


$rraB   of  %  Ikpnblir  IB  tty  Monitor  of 
(DpinUm  —  tljr    Crater   an&   lEburotnr 


OKLAHOMA 


MISSISSIPPI 


AMERICAN   MUNICIPALITIES   OF 
THE    FUTURE 


BY    T.    E.     STAFFOHD 

EDITORIAL       IX 
THK       DAILY       OKLAHOMA!* 

The  people  .  .  .  are  giving  much 
attention  to  the  suggestion  of  municipal 
government  by  a  commission.  ...  By 
the  Houston  and  Galveston  plan  of  munici- 
pal government  the  mayor  and  four  com- 
missioners are  elected  at  large  every  four 
years.  They  each  get  the  same  salary— 
$1,200.  The  mayor  devotes  six  hours  a 
day  to  the  business  of  the  city;  the  other 
commissioners  give  as  much  of  their  time 
as  is  necessary.  One  of  the  advantages  of 
this  new  system  is  that,  by  reason  of  the 
commissioners  not  being  required  to  devote 
all  their  time  to  the  work,  it  is  possible  to 
procure  the  very  best  business  men  of  the 
city.  In  one  of  the  cities  which  is  gov- 
erned by  a  commission,  the  new  form  of 
administration  is  liked  so  well  that  there 
has  been  no  change  in  six  years,  except  on 
account  of  death  of  one  member.  He  keeps 
a  check  on  every  transaction  that  is  made 
in  the  city  government  every  day.  Among 
the  chief  advantages  of  the  new  form  of 
rules  is  the  abolition  of  retainers  and  hang- 
ers on.  Government  by  commission  has 
been  tried  not  only  in  Texas,  but  in  all  the 
cities  of  Europe,  and  wherever  it  has  been 
practiced  this  new  system  is  well  liked  and 
considered  a  great  improvement  over  the 
old  forms.  The  installation  of  this  kind  of 
government  in  a  city  enables  the  city  to  be 
run  the  same  way  that  business  institutions 
and  railways  are  managed.  Unnecessary 
expenses  are  eliminated,  and  a  community 
of  interests  is  fostered  and  maintained. 


PROGRESS    IN    ADJUSTING    THE 
RACE    PROBLEM 


BY  FHANK  JOHNSTON 

KIMTOKIAl.        IV 
THK       .JAC-KSON        KVKNM.Vfi       NKWS 

There  is  too  much  discussion  of  the  so- 
called  race  problem.  ...  In  the  South 
there  are  no  race  questions  whatever  that 
are  disturbing  the  peace  and  tranquility  or 
the  progress  and  prosperity  of  the  South- 
ern people.  There  may  be  some  new 
phases  of  racial  questions  in  the  far  future 
in  the  South,  that  may  require  remedial 
legislative  action,  or  action  by  the  state 
authorities,  but  such  is  not  the  case  at  pres- 
ent. .  .  .  Study  the  actual  conditions 
of  the  subject  as  they  exist  to-day  in  the 
South  with  an  intelligent  and  temperate 
scrutiny,  and,  what  those  of  us  who  take  a 
calm  and  correct  view  of  the  situation  real- 
ize to  be  the  situation  in  the  South.  And 
that  is  an  industrious,  contented  race  en- 
gaged in  the  work  of  improving  itself  with 
all  its  efforts,  tilling  the  soil,  and  engaged 
in  every  branch  of  industry,  living  as  a 
race,  quiet  and  contented  lives,  and  as  a 
race,  and  considering  their  history,  a  law- 
abiding  and  peace-loving  people.  With  the 
labor  and  muscle  of  these  people  the  South 
is  making  rapid  strides  in  progress  and 
prosperity.  The  South  is  rapidly  growing 
wealthy,  and  it  is  the  great  laboring  class 
of  the  South,  that  is  largely  composed  of 
negroes,  that  is  working  out  these  magnifi- 
cent results  for  the  South.  Not  that  the 
white  men  of  the  South  are  not  devoting 
all  of  their  labor  and  brains  and  energies 
to  this  great  work,  but  everybody  who  is 
informed  on  the  subject  knows  that  by  far 
the  greater  part  of  the  manual  labor  that  is 
necessary  for  the  development  and  rehabil- 
iation  of  the  South  is  furnished  by  the  ne- 
groes. In  all  this  splendid  movement  of 
the  South  in  material  development,  the  two 
races  are  working  together  and,  as  the  net 
result  of  their  mutual  efforts,  the  South 
will  soon  be  more  wealthy  and  prosperous 
than  at  any  time  in  its  entire  history. 

1 86 


<E0nt?mpnrarg 


in     Ammra 


ARIZONA 


MARRIAGE    AND    DIVORCE     ARE 
SUBJECT   TO    EVOLUTION 


Br    J.    \v.    SPEAR 

irni TOHI  A  i.     i  x 

THM      AKIZOBA      •KPOBLIOA3T 

A  few  people  of  this  country  have  be- 
come unnecessarily  excited  over  .  .  . 
the  doctrine  of  trial  marriages.  The  course 
oi  marriage  and  love  will  not  be  changed 
in  an  instant  on  the  recommendation  of 
any  man  or  woman.  What  changes  there 
may  be  will  come  with  changing  civiliza- 
tion, which  is  now  making  satisfactory  for- 
ward progress.  The  subjects  of  marriage 
and  divorce  have  not  been  treated  with 
good  sense  by  those  who  have  agitated 
them  the  most  loudly,  but  in  the  meantime 
the  great  mass  of  the  people  have  been  go- 
ing on  getting  better  all  the  time,  and 
slowly  approaching  a  proper  solution  of 
the  relation  between  men  and  women.  It 
is  an  error  on  one  side  to  regard  mar- 
riage as  a  wholly  divine  institution  and 
divorce  as  an  unpardonable  sin,  as  it  is  on 
the  other,  to  regard  marriage  as  the  possi- 
ble result  of  a  passing  whim.  There  is 
much  foolishness  on  the  part  of  those  en- 
thusiasts who  are  seeking  to  render  divorce 
in  any  circumstance  difficult  almost  to  the 
point  of  impossibility  and  to  prevent  by 
shame  and  humiliation  the  separation  of 
those  who  ought  to  be  separated.  "Whom 
God  hath  joined  together  let  no  man  put 
asunder,"  is  not  an  injunction  laid  upon 
divorce  courts. 

Marriage  is  a  solemn,  but  not  a  sacred 
institution.  .  .  .  Marriage  is  something 
more,  and  something  less  than  a  civil  con- 
tract. People  enter  into  it  with  a  few 
definite  promises  and  a  great  many  more 

.as  clearly  understood.  Marriage  and  di- 
vorce laws  at  any  stage  of  the  world's  his- 
tory are  the  product  of  the  best  human 
wisdom  and  experience  prior  to  that  time. 
That  wisdom  and  experience  are  more  val- 
uable guides  to  matrimonial  well-being 
than  the  views  of  extremist  agitators  on 
either  side.  A  trial  marriage,  necessarily 
entered  upon  with  doubt,  would  almost 

'Certainly  prove  a  failure. 

187 


TENNESSEE 


WILL,  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC  OUT- 
GROW STATE  LINES 


Br     GILBERT    D.     I'AIN  K 

KDITOBIAL       IJT 
THK      MKMPHIH       MKWH       •CIMITAB 

The  News  Scimitar  has  made  itself  clear 
as  to  its  attitude  on  states'  rights;  and  that 
attitude  is  that  it  would  not  to-day  brush 
down  all  the  state  lines  or  the  legal  evi- 
dences of  states'  rights;    but  that  the  ten- 
dency has  been,  and  is  and  will  be,  in  the 
direction  of  gradually  effacing  these  bar- 
riers and  fortifications;    and  their  final  re- 
moval  will   be   when   they   are   no   longer 
necessary,  which  will  be  when  the  people  of 
the  different  sections  need  have  no  fear  of 
a  lack  of  reasonable  consideration  from  the 
people   of   other   sections   of   the   country. 
.     .     .     We   do   not   agree   fully   with   the 
president  in  his  first  announcement,  which 
he  has  since  explained,  on  the  California 
Japanese  question.    This  is  one  of  the  very 
matters  in  which  states'  rights  to-day,  as  a 
local  safeguard,  is  still  essential.    We  have 
faith     in     the     intellectual     and     spiritual 
growth  of  Americans.    .    .    .    The  states 
as  a  whole  have  always  had  and  are  having 
more  from  time  to  time,  of  influence,  moral 
and  legal,  on  each  separate  state.    The  na- 
tion,   the    state,    the   county   and    the   city 
always  have  had,  and  are  having  more  in- 
terference with  even  a  man's  relations  to 
his   home   or   his   business.    The   criminal 
laws  and  the  civil  laws  fix  limits  for  his 
conduct  in  relation  to  his  family,  or  to  his 
community  affected  by  his  business  meth- 
ods.    In  all  relations  we  are  growing  more 
and  more  our  brother's  keeper.    While  the 
people  of  California  should  be  allowed  to 
determine    the    question    about    Japanese 
children  in  the  schools,  it  is  also  true  that 
there   is   a   radical   difference  between   the 
Japanese  and  the  negroes.    This  is  admit- 
ted and  felt  in  the  South.    The  Honorable 
John     Sharp    Williams,     the     Democratic 
leader  in  Congress,  and  rather  of  the  old 
school  of  politics  and  governmental  econ- 
omy and  methods,  says,  and  says  properly, 
that  the  objection  to  the  negro  in  the  South 
is  not  a  matter  of  color,  but  a  matter  of 
race.     He   says  with  great   force  that  the 
negro  is  half  child  and  half  devil.     He  is 
yet  an  infant  in  intellectual  and  moral  de- 
velopment    He  says  no  community  in  the 
South  would  take  offense  at  seeing  a  Jap- 
anese or  even  a  Chinese  at  a  hotel  table. 
The  Japanese  are  a  highly  developed  and 
civilized  race  of  people. 


<Enttt?mp0rarg 


in     Amertra 


ILLINOIS 


MASSACHUSETTS 


AMERICAN  CONSTITUTION  IS   IN 
ADVANCE    OF   TIMES 


BY    HORATIO    "W.     SEYMOUR 

KUITOHIAL      IK 
THK       CHICAGO       CHKOBTCI.K 

There  is  a  regrettable  inclination,  which 
seems  all  the  time  increasing,  to  bewail  the 
limitations  of  the  constitution.  The  presi- 
dent appears  greatly  impressed  with  the 
idea  that  if  he  were  only  unhampered  by 
constitutional  restrictions  he  could  be  of 
much  greater  service  to  the  country.  .  .  . 
European  newspapers  are  directing  atten- 
tion to  it  and  doing  so  approvingly.  They 
are  explaining  that  the  constitution  was 
framed  when  the  country  was  in  its  infancy 
and  that  it  has  been  outgrown.  This  is 
their  diplomatic  way  of  saying  that  Amer- 
ica and  its  constitution  are  not  worth  a 
cent  and  that  the  only  way  to  govern  peo- 
ple is  by  an  autocrat  and  lese  majeste  laws. 
This  is  to  be  deplored  from  every  point  of 
view.  Scripture  says  "the  law  is  not  made 
for  righteous  men,"  and  the  constitution  is 
not  made  and  is  not  needed  for  presidents 
like  Mr.  Roosevelt,  who  are  wise  and  just 
and  above  the  temptations  of  corrupt  poli- 
tics. It  is  made  for  the  salvation  of  the 
community  when  the  weak  or  violent  or 
wicked  man  gets  into  the  presidency.  Its 
restrictions  may  at  times  be  an  evil,  but 
they  are  a  necessary  evil  because  without 
them  under  some  administrations  liberty 
would  be  lost.  The  constitution  is  the 
voice  of  the  people.  Its  limitations  express 
the  people's  ideas  of  what  is  safe  and  just 
The  instrument  was  not  drawn  by  casting 
lots  or  throwing  dice.  It  was  the  care- 
fully thought-out  work  of  men  who  died  a 
century  ago,  but  who  knew  more  about 
political  philosophy  and  about  constitution 
building  than  all  the  statesmen  of  this  age 
put  together.  The  objections  made  to  it 
are  not  always  worthy  of  attention.  If  it 
did  not  interfere  with  the  cherished  plans 
of  some  people  it  would  not  be  worth  a 
straw.  .  .  .  The  United  States  Consti- 
tution is  far  in  advance  of  the  American 
people  of  the  present  day  and  that  the  cry- 
ing evil  of  the  twentieth  century  in  the 
United  States  is  not  that  the  constitution  is 
too  narrow  but  that  the  people  are  too  law- 
less and  too  impatient  of  wholesome  re- 
straint. .  .  .  What  the  people  of  this 
country  need  is  at  least  one-tenth  of  the 
law-abiding  instincts  of  those  countries 
which  do  not  know  what  liberty  is. 


SHALL  AMERICA  LIMIT  PRIVATE 
FORTUNES 


BIT    W.    H.    MERRILL 

KDITOKIAL      IK 

TH«       BOSTON"      IIKHALD 

A  progressive  tax  on  all  fortunes  be- 
yond a  certain  amount  .  .  .  would  not 
only  be  just  in  itself,  but  would  do  much 
to  allay  the  spirit  of  discontent  among  the 
people  over  the  undue  privileges  and  op- 
portunities enjoyed  by  the  rich.  ...  If 
a  man  has  accumulated  $5,000,000  or 
$10,000,000,  and  wishes  to  "hand  it  on"  to 
his  wife  or  his  son,  or  to  any  other  person, 
the  government  would,  by  a  tax,  take  all 
beyond  what  the  law  should  prescribe  as  a 
"healthy  limit."  .  .  .  Who  would  take 
the  money  thus  confiscated,  and  what 
would  become  of  it?  What  guarantee 
could  there  be  that  it  would  be  more  wisely 
disposed  of  than  by  the  man  who  made  it? 
The  government  is  not  an  individual.  It 
is  not  even  a  board  of  trustees  for  hand- 
ling bequests  and  legacies.  So  far  as 
money  is  concerned,  it  is  merely  a  huge 
machine.  .  .  .  Putting  quite  aside  the 
question  of  the  constitutional  warrant  for 
such  a  law,  or  of  its  ethics,  the  practical 
consideration  remains  whether  the  govern- 
ment would  make  better  use  of  this  sur- 
plus wealth  for  the  public  good  than  is 

now  made,  in  a  majority  of  cases,  by  the 
men  whose  ability,  industry  and  prudence 
accumulated  it?  Numerous  examples  of 
the  beneficent  use  made  of  "swollen  for- 
tunes" by  their  possessors  are  in  the  public 
mind.  Or,  on  the  business  side,  how  many 
great  enterprises  that  have  wrought  won- 
ders for  the  development  of  the  country 
and  the  increase  of  its  prosperity  would 
have  been  impossible  if  individual  fortunes, 
after  the  first  generation,  had  been  limited 
to  $250,000,  or  even  $1,000,000?  If  Con- 
gress would  repeal  some  of  the  present 
taxes  on  the  common  necessaries  of  the 
people,  and  enact  as  a  revenue  measure  a 
reasonable  inheritance  tax,  such  as  exists 
in  England,  and  a  graded  income  tax,  if  it 
can  be  lawfully  done,  the  restriction  and 
disposition  of  fortunes  may  very  well  be 
left  to  the  operation  of  natural  laws  and 
individual  judgment. 

188 


Qlijnuglft     in     Amrrira 


NEW   YORK 


TEXAS 


THE    AMERICAN    PURPOSE    IS 
COMMON    GOOD 


EDITORIAL      WHITE*      IV 
THM      WKW      TOBK      TMIBTTITK 

This  country,  this  union  of  states,  must 
have  government  which  serves  the  welfare 
of  all  its  members.  That  would  be  equally 
true  if  it  were  a  compact  and  centralized 
nation  or  if  it  were  the  loosest  kind  of  a 
confederacy.  A  principal  reason  for  the 
failure  of  the  old  confederacy  was  that  this 
fact  was  not  sufficiently  and  practically 
recognized  and  that  there  was  too  little 
striving  after  the  common  good  in  the  gov- 
ernments of  the  various  states.  It  was  "to 
promote  the  general  welfare"  that  the  Con- 
stitution was  ordained.  Now  it  will  not  do 
to  say  that  that  supreme  aim  can  be  de- 
feated by  the  action,  or  rather  the  inaction, 
of  a  single  state.  We  can  readily  imagine 
what  would  be  the  result  if  some  state 
were,  for  example,  so  to  neglect  the  en- 
forcement of  sanitary  laws  as  to  make  it- 
self a  plague  spot  and  a  menace  to  the 
health  of  its  neighbors,  or  were  to  regard 
the  criminal  code  so  lightly  and  to  be  so 
lax  in  police  administration  as  to  make  it- 
self an  asylum  for  evil-doers.  Such  con- 
duct on  the  part  of  any  state  would  be  gen- 
erally recognized  as  intolerable.  This 
growth  of  the  nation  and  the  closer  inter- 
weaving of  interstate  interests  have  not 
only  promoted  the  growth  of  a  spirit  of 
nationality,  but  also  have  made  necessary 
the  development  of  those  rights  and  powers 
of  the  federal  government  which  were  am- 
ply provided  in  the  Constitution,  but  which 
were  not  needed  and  were,  therefore,  held 
in  abeyance  until  recent  years.  National 
government  and  state  governments  alike 
have  rights,  but  the  neglect  of  duty  is  not 
among  them.  It  would  be  self -stultifica- 
tion to  say  that  the  welfare  of  the  people 
must  suffer  because  the  federal  government 
or  some  state  government  would  not  do  its 
duty  and  could  not  be  compelled  to  do  so. 
The  whole  theory  of  our  government  is 
that  government  exists  not  for  its  own 
arbitrary  sake,  but  for  the  sake  of  the  peo- 
ple and  their  welfare.  .  .  .  There  can 
be  no  surer  way  to  maintain  the  Constitu- 
tion and  to  preserve  the  fine  balance  be- 
tween state  rights  and  national  sovereignty 
than  for  both  federal  and  state  govern- 
ments to  be  as  scrupulous  in  fulfilling  their 
duties — to  the  whole  Union — as  they  are 
vigilant  and  sensitive  in  protecting  their 
rights  against  invasion  or  impairment 

189 


AMERICA    MUST   SAVE   LIVES  OF 
ITS    CHILDREN 


KI>1TOJIIAL       WBITKH      I  IT 
THB      HOUSTOW      CH»OWIOL« 

It  is  unfortunately  too  often  the  case  that 
the  people  see  where  matters  in  a  social 
and  economic  sense  are  going  wrong,  yet 
as  everybody's  business  is  nobody's  busi- 
ness, there  is  no  systematic  or  organized 
effort  made  to  set  things  right  until  condi- 
tions become  so  bad  that  the  protection  of 
society  makes  it  imperatively  necessary 
that  corrective  or  suppressive  action  be 
taken.  This  is  exactly  the  attitude  of  the 
public  towards  the  child  labor  question. 
Many  saw  the  evil,  many  were  not  brought 
into  contact  with  it,  therefore  could  not 
appreciate  its  magnitude  or  iniquity,  but  it 
is  now  being  pressed  upon  the  public  mind 
and  conscience.  It  is  most  fortunate  that 
there  are  to  be  found  some  people  in  this 
great  nation  who  are  both  willing  and  able 
to  give  their  time  and  money  and  influence 
towards  any  practical  movement  for  the 
betterment  of  social  and  moral  conditions, 
and  a  large  number  of  such  people  are 
making  organized  warfare  upon  the  in- 
famous system  of  child  labor.  .  .  . 
"Child  Labor — A  National  Disgrace — 
Children  Sacrificed  to  Greed — Girls  Are 
Cheaper  Than  Cotton."  These  are  fearful 
headlines,  yet  they  are  supported  by  la- 
mentable and  disgraceful  statistics.  Ten 
thousand  bovs  from  nine  to  thirteen  years 
old  work  in  coal  breakers.  Seventy-five 
hundred  children  under  sixteen  years  of 
age  work  in  glass  factories.  Hundreds  of 
them  work  all  night.  Sixty  thousand  little 
children  under  fourteen  years  of  age  toil 
in  Southern  cotton  mills.  Little  girls  eight 
years  old  work  through  a  twelve-hour 
night  Seventy-five  per  cent  of  the  spin- 
ners of  North  Carolina  are  only  fourteen 
years  old  or  under.  A  picture  is  given  of 
one  little  boy,  now  sixteen  years  of  age, 
who  for  six  years,  for  beggarly  wages,  has 
tied  stoppers  on  bottles  in  a  glass  factory, 
and  "his  bent  shoulders,  sunken  chest,  sal- 
low face  and  lusterless  eyes  are  the  signs  of 
nature's  protest  against  such  toil."  The 
pinched  faces  and  shrivelled  forms  of  the 
children  doomed  to  spend  their  lives  at 
work  in  factories  show  that  every  hope  of 
future  manhood  and  womanhood  is  des- 
tined to  be  destroyed,  and  the  state  is  be- 
ing robbed  of  what  is  or  should  be  its  most 
valuable  asset.  During  the  past  ten  years 
.  .  .  .  laws  have  been  passed  for  the 
protection  of  children  in  Iowa,  Maryland, 
Massachusetts,  New  York,  Missouri,  Dela- 
ware, Georgia,  Rhode  Island,  Kentucky. 
Kansas  and  Pennsylvania. 


<E0nt*mp0rarg 


in     Amrrtra 


ALABAMA 


PENNSYLVAMIA 


AMERICA   EXTENDS   FREEDOM 
TO  ALL  RELIGIONS 


CONQUEST  FOR  THE  PACIFIC 
MUST  NOT  COME 


K.VI   rilHIAl.       IV 

run     MOXTGOMKKT     A  i>  VKKTI  s  KK 

The  people  of  these  United  States  will 
naturally  watch  with  much  interest  the 
progress  of  events  in  France,  and  will  join 
the  friends  of  humanity  the  world  over  in 
hoping  and  praying  that  there  may  be  no 
bloodshed.  Of  all  wars  that  come  to  plague 
nations  religious  wars  are  the  most  im- 
placable and  deplorable.  When  men  go  to 
war  on  account  of  religious  difference  they 
seem  to  lose  sight  of  both  religion  and  hu- 
manity and  give  way  to  the  one  desire  to 
win  at  whatever  cost.  .  .  .  Among  all 
the  principles  distinctively  marking  our 
government  there  are  two  that  may  be 
called  supreme.  One  is  the  absolute  reli- 
gious freedom  of  all  the  people.  The  right 
to  worship  God  in  one's  own  wav,  without 
interference,  persecution  or  hindrance  by 
others,  is  one  of  our  dearest  rights.  Even 
if  the  peculiar  form  of  one's  religious  views 
may  be  repugnant  to  others,  and  may  even 
lead  to  what  others  may  look  on  as  ex- 
cesses, we  are  accustomed  to  regard  it 
with  tolerance,  feeling  that  no  one  has  the 
right  to  interfere  with  the  mode  of  belief 
or  worship  of  another.  .  .  .  Many  of 
the  first  white  settlers  on  this  continent 
had  been  driven  from  their  homes  by  reli- 
gious intolerance  or  had  fled  from  religious 
persecution.  They  came  to  America  to  be 
free  to  worship  God  in  their  own  way,  and 
although  in  the  early  days  some  of  the  new- 
comers were  intolerant  and  persecutive,  as 
a  general  thing  those  who  laid  the  founda- 
tions of  a  future  nation  were  willing  to 
leave  questions  of  religious  belief  for  each 
to  settle  in  his  own  way.  When  the  patri- 
ots and  statesmen  came  to  write  a  consti- 
tution for  the  new  government  that  was 
about  to  enter  on  its  career,  they  were 
careful  to  insert  the  words,  "Congress  shall 
make  no  law  respecting  an  establishment 
of  religion,  or  prohibiting  the  free  exercise 
thereof,"  and  no  feature  of  our  governmen- 
tal system  has  been  more  jealously  guarded 
than  that  In  all  the  trials,  struggles  and 
wars  through  which  the  country  has  passed 
absolute  freedom  of  religious  worship  has 
been  maintained. 


KDITORIAI.      I2T 
THK       PHILADELPHIA      IKQUIHEH 

It  has  been  seriously  urged  that  if  Japan, 
in  order  to  vindicate  the  right  of  Japanese 
youth  to  attend  the  public  schools  of  San 
Francisco  without  being  restricted  to  the 
use  of  any  particular  establishment,  were 
to  go  to  war  with  the  United  States,  then 
England,  under  the  existing  treaty,  would 
be  obliged  to  take  up  arms  against  us  also. 
.  .  .  Now  it  is  to  be  said  in  the  first 
place,  that  there  is  not  the  slightest  danger 
of  war  occurring  between  Japan  and  the 
United  States,  either  over  the  troubles  in 
San  Francisco  or  over  any  other  imagina- 
ble issue.  It  is  possible,  of  course,  but  it  is 
so  improbable  as  not  to  be  worth  consid- 
ering. The  Japanese  .  .  .  know  better 
than  to  engage  in  a  conflict  from  which 
they  would  emerge  bankrupt  and  ruined. 
.  .  .  But  assuming  the  occurrence  of 
what  is  barely  possible,  it  is  difficult  to  find 
in  the  text  of  the  Anglo- Japanese  treaty 
any  warrant  for  the  statement  that  Great 
Britain,  as  the  result  of  that  treaty,  would 
be  dragged  into  the  contest  or  else  forced 
to  repudiate  its  solemn  pledge.  .  .  . 
The  purposes  of  that  treaty  are  exhibited 
in  the  preamble.  They  are  "the  consolida- 
tion and  maintenance  of  general  peace  in 
the  regions  of  eastern  Asia  and  India;  the 
preservation  of  the  common  interests  of  all 
the  powers  in  China  by  insuring  the  inde- 
pendence and  integrity  of  the  Chinese  Em- 
pire and  the  principle  of  equal  opportuni- 
ties for  the  commerce  and  industry  of  all 
nations  in  China;  the  maintenance  of  the 
territorial  rights  of  the  high  contracting 
parties  in  the  regions  of  eastern  Asia  and 
India;  and  the  defense  of  their  special  in- 
terests." ...  In  the  second  article  of 
the  treaty  it  is  provided  that  "if  by  reason 
of  an  unprovoked  attack  or  aggressive  ac- 
tion, wherever  arising,  on  the  part  of  any 
other  power  or  powers,  either  contractor 
be  involved  in  war  in  defense  of  its  terri- 
torial rights  or  special  interests  mentioned 
in  the  preamble  the  other  contractor  shall 
at  once  come  to  the  assistance  of  its  ally 
and  conduct  war  in  common  and  make 
peace  in  mutual  agreement  with  it." 

igo 


Jfnarnal  »r 


Aramran  i 


Atnmran 


Sklattttg  Sift  ^iuraa  nf  JWnt 
tlfat  Ifaw  ^nter^ib  tutu 
nf  %  JUwtern  fllonttn^ni 


REPRODUCTIONS  FROM  RARE 

PRINTS  AND  WORKS  OF  ART 

(AMERICANA) 


(Original  Rrsrarr l^ra  into  Ant^aritalttir  fcattrrra — Amrrlrau.  SritiBl)  and 
tttrapran  JurrlfivrB — Priuatr  iountala.  BtartrH  and 
BontmrntB — ^ngititt? 

and    dfcmntao — 
3Folklorr  and  ftradttiuna 


0f  Am^riran 


by  ihr  Acanrtatrb  JJubliabrra  of  Amwriran  Rrrnrta,  Jnr. 
in  the  Aurirut  iHntrtrijialtiy  of  Nrui  ®  aunt  ,  (Cii  minnnuiralth.  of  <£un- 
urrtirirt,  in  QtmrtnrlQ  Art  toUlona,  four  bmika  to  fl?r  volume 
at  (t  ran  Dollars  annually.  3Fiftg  drntB  a  ro$nj  >  CCnntptlrft 
in  (ftallabaration  unlh  tltr  (Cunnrrtirut  Ma^azint 
Protofrfc  bu  rojnjrioJit  anb  grintrb  from  pr**a 
of  Ihr  Snrman   tithngra}ihmg 
publication  rntrrr!)  at  tltr 
©ffirr  at  Nrm  $au?n  aa  mail 
mattrr  of  ilie  arrnnli  rlaaa 


and 


dihrrr  oollara  annually  o*  Srorniu-fior  rrnta  a  ropy 


iXONDON    .    .    .    .  B.  F.  Stevens  &  Brown 

4  Trafalgar  Square,  W.  C. 
PARIS Brentano's 

37,  Avenue  de  1'Opera 
BERLIN      ....  Aaher  and  Company 

Unter  den  Linden  50 
DUBLIN     ....  Combrldge  and  Company 

18  Graf  ton  Street 
EDINBURGH     .    .  Andrew  Elliott 

17  Princess  Street 
MADRID     .    .    .    .  Ltbreria  de  Romo  y  Faaeell 

Calle  Alcala,  5 


ROME L.  Plale 

1  Piazza  dl  Spagna 
ST.  PETEHSBTTRO  Watklns  and  Company 

Mankata  No.  36 
CAIRO F-  Dlemer 

Shepheard's  Building 
BOMBAY Thaoker  and  Company  Limited 

Esplanade  Road 
TOKIO Methodist  Publishing  House 

2  Shichome,  Giz  Ginza 
MEXICO  CITT     .    .  American  Book  &  Printing  Co. 

1st  San  Francisco  No.  12 


of  tfr*  ®gr-(flgntgnarg  Number 

FIRST  VOLUME  SECOND  NUMBER 

Collecting  the  Various  Phases  of  History,  Art,  Literature, 
Science,  Industry,  and  Such  as  Pertains  to  the  Moral,  Intellectual 
and  Political  Uplift  of  the  American  Nation — Inspiring  Nobility 
of  Home  and  State — Testimonial  of  the  Marked  Individuality 
and  Strong  Character  of  the  Builders  of  the  American  Republic 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION — Coat-of-arms  of  Captain  John  Smith,  of  the  first  perma- 
nent English  settlement  in  America — The  three  Turks'  heads  were  conferred  upon 
him  by  Sigismundus  Bathor,  Duke  of  Transylvania,  for  bravery  In  the  Wars  of 

Hungary — Emblazoned  In  six  colors By  Charles  L.  N.  Camp 

.ANCIENT  ENGRAVINGS  OF  EARLY  AMERICA — Prints  from  quaint  pictures  of  the 

adventures  of  John  Smith  from  1597  to  1629  in  green  tint  on  imitation  parchment  193 

AMERICA — THE  RISE  OF  A  STRONG  PEOPLE — Nine  hundredth  anniversary  of 
Thorflnn's  Discovery  of  the  Western  Continent — Four  hundredth  anniversary  of 
the  Christening  of  the  New  World  as  America — Three  hundredth  anniversary  of 
the  Call  of  th«  Wilds  to  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  daring  men  who  heard 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  JOHN  SMITH— His  Own  Story  of  His  Birth,  Apprenticeship  and 

Youth — Embellished   with   family   arms 204 

ARMS  CONFERRED  FOR  CHIVALRY — Accurate  Translations  of  Latin  Memorials 
Issued  to  John  Smith  for  his  heroism  in  the  Wars  of  Hungary  in  1603 — Embellished 
with  reproductions  of  the  heraldic  order 205 

STRUGGLES  OF  THE  FIRST  CITIZENS  IN  AMERICA— True  Record  from  the  time  Of 

departure  from  England  in  1606,  to  the  arrival  in  Virginia  in  1607  and  the  hazard-        4 
ous  beginnings  of  a  World  Power — From  the  Journal   of  William  Simons,   "doc- 
tour    of    divinitle" 20« 

DAWN  OF  THE  NEW  WORLD — First  Permanent  English  Settlement  In  America — 
Foundation  of  the  people  who  in  three  hundred  years  have  stretched  over  domin- 
ions and  millions  across  the  continent  and  whose  Influence  permeates  the  earth — 
The  Nations  of  the  World  extend  tribute  on  this  ter-centennial — With  ten  repro- 
ductions of  rare  engravings  and  paintings Honorable  H.  St.  George  Tucker 

President  of  the  Jamestown  Exposition  209 

AN  OLD  ENGLISH  PLAY  ON  AMERICA— The  New  World  In  1607  was  the  Talk  of  the 
Taverns  in  the  Old  World  and  Playwrights  Introduced  it  into  their  dramas — 
Extract  from  "Westward  Hoe" 219 

THE  FIRST  ROMANCE  IN  AMERICA— The  story  of  the  heroism  and  fortitude  of  Poca- 
hontas — Her  marriage  to  John  Rolfe,  the  first  union  of  the  Western  Continent  and 
the  Eastern  Hemisphere — With  six  reproductions  from  rare  engravings  and  paint- 
ings    221 

IN  HONOR  OF  A  VALIANT  ADVENTURER— Loving  lines  inscribed  to  gallant  John 
Smith  by  Compeers — Ter-centenary  statue  to  be  unveiled  in  September  on  the  scene 
of  the  American  explorations By  William  Couper,  New  York  City  225 

AMERICAN  PROGRESS  ON  THE  PACIFIC  COAST— Voice  of  the  people  as  expressed 
through  the  Governors  of  the  American  Commonwealth  to  "The  Journal  of  Ameri- 
can History" By  Honorable  Albert  E.  Mead 

Governor  of  Washington  226 

UNTOLD  RICHES  OF  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS By  Honorable  Frank  R.  Gooding 

Governor  of  Idaho  231 

AMERICAN  CIVILIZATION  IN  THE  GREATER  ANTILLES 

By  Honorable  Beekman  Winthrop,  Governor  of  Porto  Rico  232 

RESOURCES  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTHWEST By  Honorable  Joseph  K.  Toole 

Governor  of  Montana  234 

OPPORTUNITIES  IN  THE  NORTHERN  BORDERLAND By  Honorable  E.  Y.  Sarles 

Governor  of  North  Dakota  235 

COMPULSORY  MILITARY  TRAINING  IN  AMERICA— Accurate  transcript  from  origi- 
nal order  issued  in  New  England  in  1765  and  contributed By  Benjamin  C.  Lum  230 

PUBLIC  CARE  OF  THE  POOR  IN  EARLY  AMERICA— Accurate  transcript  from  rec- 
ords of  Water-town,  Massachusetts By  M  Augusta  Holman 

Leomlnster,  Massachusetts  233 

THE  FIRST  AMERICAN  NOVELIST— Experiences  of  the  first  writer  In  the  New  World 
to  make  literature  his  sole  pursuit  and  to  earn  a  livelihood  by  Pen — The  first 

INDEX  CONTINUED  (OVER) 


Context  tpilfr  iEttgratnnga  att& 


SECOND     QITAHTBK  NINETEEN  SEVEN 

Chronicles  of  Those  Who  Have  Done  a  Good  Day's  Work  — 
Rich  in  Information  upon  Which  May  Be  Based  Accurate 
Economic  and  Sociologic  Studies  and  of  Eminent  Value  to 
Private  and  Public  Libraries  —  Beautified  by  Reproductions  of 
Ancient  Subjects  through  the  Modern  Processes  or  American  Art 

CONTINUATION  OF  INDEX 

American  Fiction  to  create  a  Literary  market  was  "Wieland,"  the  tale  of  mys- 
tery —  Career  of  Charles  Brockden  Brown  —  By  permission  of  the  author  from  his 
Literary  History  of  Philadelphia  ..............  By  Bills  Paxson  Oberholtzer,  Ph.D., 

University  of  Pennsylvania  236 

BAS-RELIEF  OF  CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN,  Father  of  Literary  Trade  In  Amer- 

ica ..........................  By  Dr.  R.  Tait  McKenzie,  Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania  240 

FIRST  PHYSICIANS  IN  AMERICA  —  Customs  and  practices  of  early  Doctors  as 
revealed  in  correspondence  of  John  Winthrop,  born  in  1606  —  Dutch,  Quakers  and 
Puritans  consulted  him  regarding  their  physical  ills  —  The  New  World  is  full  of  his 
praises  —  Beginning  of  American  medicine  —  With  eleven  transcripts  of  ancient  let- 
ters, and  reproduction  of  oil  portrait  of  John  Winthrop 

By  Walter  R.  Steiner,  M.A..  M.D.  241 

THE  FIRST  STEAMSHIPS  TO  CROSS  THE  OCEAN—  Recollections  of  men  who  partici- 
pated in  first  futile  attempts  to  Interest  capital  in  the  Possibilities  of  Communica- 
tion between  the  Continents  by  Steam  —  Opening:  the  Gateways  of  the  World  —  His- 
toric Voyages  —  Beginning  of  Commerce  —  With  transcript  of  log  of  the  Savannah 
and  twenty-nine  rare  prints  of  the  development  of  steam  navigation 

By  C.  Seymour  Bullock  261 

TRIALS  IN  EARLY  JUSTICE  COURTS  IN  AMERICA—  Court  record  of  Justice  Jabez 
Brainerd,  1773-1776  —  Serious  crimes  included  "Profane  cursing  and  swalring"  — 
The  "Gilty"  were  sentenced  to  stock  and  whipping-post  —  Debtors  frequently 
bound  over  to  their  creditors  in  servitude  —  Beginning  of  American  law 

By  Reverend  Bert  Francis  Case  284 

THE  HOME  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD  —  Illustrated  poem  ..............  By  Anna  J.  Qrannlss  28> 

A  MAN  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST  —  Poem  ........  By  John  Vance  Cheney,  Chicago,  Illinois  290 

TRAVEL  IN  AMERICA  —  Excerpt  by   Roland  D.   Grant,  an  American   traveler  —  With 

four  nature  Illustrations  in  photo-tone  ..........................................   292 

ODE  TO  AMERICA  .........................................  By  Donald  Lines  Jacobus  297 

WHEN  DAYLIGHT  DIES  —  An   Evening:  Pastoral  —  With  four  nature   Illustrations   In 

photo-tone  ......................  By  John  H.  Guernsey,  Government  Postal  Service  299 

THE  ACADEMY  OF  AMERICAN  IMMORTALS—  The  Hall  of  Fame  ....................   301 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  —  American  Novelist  ....................  302 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Washington  Irving  —  An  American  Litterateur  ...............   303 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  —  American  Philosopher  ...............   302 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Samuel  Finley  Breese  Morse  —  American  Inventor  ............   SOS 

EX  LJBRIS  —  American  adaptation  of  the  old  art  of  Book  Heraldry  that  originated 
within  half  a  century  of  the  invention  of  printing  —  -Reproductions  of  book  plates 
of  William  Penn  of  Pennsylvania  and  Paul  Revere  of  Massachusetts  ..............  304 

VOYAGES  OF  AN  OLD  SEA  CAPTAIN—  Adventures  in  South  America  and  in  the  ports 
of  the  Old  World  during  the  first  years  of  the  American  Republic  —  An  American 
citizen  impressed  into  the  British  service  —  His  daring  escape  after  years  of  cap- 
tivity and  conflict—  Autobiography  ..................  By  Captain  Jeremiah  Holmes  306 

MARRIAGE  CONTRACT  IN  AMERICA  IN  1675—  Transcribed  from  original 

By  Mary  R,  Woodruff  320 

TAVERN  AND  POST  ROAD—  With  three  illustrations  ..............  By  Norman  Talcott  321 

HOME  LIFE  IN  OLD  AMERICA  —  Eight  reproductions  of  Ancient  Estates  in  photo- 

tone  ............................................................................   325 

IN  THE  FIRST  HOMES  OF  AMERICA  —  With  four  exhibitions  of  antique  furniture 

By  Clara  Emerson  BIckford  328 

ANCIENT  AMERICAN  LANDMARKS—  Two   illustrations  of  the   first   days  of  Amer- 

ican   industry  ...................................................................   "* 

MODERN  AMERICAN  SCULPTURE  —  The  "Aztecs"  ..............  By  Louis  A.  Qudebrod 

Member  of  the  National  Sculpture  Society  332 

AN  INDIAN  LEGEND—  "The  Flight  of  Red  Bird"  ........................  By  Joe  Cone  33S 


Jrom   Attrirnt 


AI'KI  I.  HAT  JUNK 

The  Publishers  of  "The  Journal  of  American  History"  wish  to 
acknowledge  the  thousands  of  commendatory  letters  that  have 
been  received  since  the  Inaugural  Number.  Honorable  Charles 
W.  Fairbanks,  Vice  President  of  the  United  States,  writes  :  "  I 
congratulate  you  upon  its  excellence."  The  letters  include  words 
of  appreciation  from  leading  American  Scholars  and  Educators 

CONCLUSION  OF  INDEX 

FIRST  PATENT  IN  AMERICA  —  Granted  In  1646  to  the  Inventor  of  "an  engine  of  mill* 
to  go  by  water"  and  recorded  as  "Jenkes  Mopolye".  ..  .By  Emellne  Jenks  Cramp  ton 

Lineal  Descendant  of  the  Patentee  834 
LIFE  ON  GREAT  AMERICAN  PRAIRIES  A  GENERATION  AGO  —  Two  prints  from  "In 

the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi"  ................................  By  Wm.  H.  Mllburn  386 

GREAT  HEART  OF  THE  AMERICAN  DOMINION  —  Narrative  of  journey  In  the  wilder- 
ness of  the  Mississippi  Valley  In  1789-1790  —  The  experiences  In  the  Vast  Region 
that  Is  graining  control  of  the  American  nation  and  now  contains  twenty-two  of  the 
forty-five  United  States  —  Travel  In  early  days  of  American  Republic  —  With  repro- 
ductions and  prints  ..................................  By  Major  Samuel  S.  For  man  837 

VOTE  TO  PROSECUTE  NON-CHURCH  GOERS  IN  1664—  ..............  By  8.  L.  Griffith 

of  Danby,  Vermont  355 

ADVENTURES  IN  THE  AMERICAN  NORTHWEST  -  Life   story   of  a  Pioneer   Fur 
Trader  and  his  experiences  In  the  remote  parts  of  the  New  World  —  How  Amer- 
ican business  Instinct  led  the  way  for  civilization  —  Accurate  transcript  from  an 
almost  indecipherable  manuscript  recently  discovered  ..........  By  Sir  Peter  Pond  357 

SONNET  —  "Oh  Ye  That  Keep  the  Rule  of  Modern  Town"  .............  By  Horace  Holley  365 

ESTATE  OF  A  PROSPEROUS  AMERICAN  IN  1684  —  "Inventory  of  Lewis  Jones,  lately 
deceased,  of  goods  and  chattel  taken  by  us  whose  names  are  now  written  this 
twentieth  day  of  April,  1684"  —  Transcript  from  original  .......  By  Walter  E.  Jones 

of  Waltsfleld,  Vermont,  a  descendant  of  the  legator  366 

FIRST  8ILHOUETTIST8  IN  AMERICA—  Earliest  extant  type  of  Plctorlology—  Brown's 
notable   collection   of   portraits   of   distinguished   Americans  —  With   reproductions 
from  Original  Silhouettes  of  Daniel  Webster  of  Massachusetts,  Andrew  Jackson 
of  South  Carolina,  John  Randolph  of  Virginia,  Bishop  William  White  of  Pennsyl- 
vania ...............  .  .......................................  By  Howard  Marshall  367 

"WILL  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  IN  1788—  Mother  of  the  first  President  of  the  United       ., 
States  —  Transcribed  from  Clerk's  office  at  Fredericksburg,  Virginia 

By  Mrs.  Helen  Cook  Porter  of  Baltimore,  Maryland  372 
LIFE  STORIES  OF  GALLANT  AMERICANS—  John  Thomas—  Colonel  of  Spartanburg 

and  Jane  Thomas'  Famous  Ride  .......................  By  Mrs.  Robert  J.  Herndon  373 

DAVID  NOBLE  —  PATRIOT  OF  PITTSFIELD  —  He  gave  his  wealth  and  then  his  life  to 
the  cause  of  American  Independence  ......................  By  Mrs.  Sara  B.  Francis 

Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania  376 

PHINEAS  SLAYTON  —  The  Venerable  Volunteer  —  He  Fought  in  the  American  Revolu- 
tion and  had  to  be  "Coaxed  to  go  home"  In  the  War  of  1812  —  Anecdote  contributed 

By  Carrie  J.  Doane  of  Arlington,  Iowa  378 

CONTEMPORARY    THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA—  "The    Press    of    the    Republic    Is    the 
Moulder  of  Public  Opinion  —  the  Leader  and  Educator"  ............................ 

Must  American  Prosperity  be  Retarded  .........................  By  John  P.  Young 

In  San  Francisco  (California)  "Chronicle"  379 
Are  These  America's  Needs?  —  A  Great  Problem  ..............  By  George  W.  Norton 

In  Portland  (Maine)  "Evening  Express"  379 
Omens  of  the  Fiercest  Conflict  Known  to  History  — 

In  Louisville  (Kentucky)   "Herald"  380 
North  and  South  are  United  Forever 

In  Richmond  (Virginia)  "Times-Dispatch"  380 
Human  Brotherhood  —  Hands  Across  the  Sea 

In  Charleston  (South  Carolina)  "News  and  Courier"  SSI 
Man's  Ambition  —  Quest  of  the  North  Pole 

In  Washington  (District  of  Columbia)  "Post"  381 
LAST  LEAF—  EDITORIAL  COMMENT 
PRIVATE  LETTER  WRITTEN  BY  GEORGE  WASHINGTON,  Father  of  the  American 

Republic,  to  an  Intimate  friend  in  which  he  warns  against  Impending  dangers.  .  .Cover 


Ait*i*tt<lp*Hftktrit/Amtrie»*  Rtcordi,  tyji-trn  Ck*}tl  Street,  fftw  Hmven, 


are  thtLinU  that fluw  thy  iLaSe.but to 
-£lhatj\t\v  thy  GraCC  ancl  (flory brighter  Ire* 

OJ  Salvages, much-Cixittiz'd  ty    th 
—BiJL.Jh*v»  thy  Sftrit;and  to  it    Glory 
S"o,thou.art  t  it/unit,  l>ut  (jclde 

tfUljSkjtiV  fift:  snnf^iA  isiclf  to 

1    ! 


AMEHIi  A  -    KNKJJIT    KRRANT 

Rare  Engravings 
from  the  Originals  in 

The  True  Travel-,  Adventure*  ami  ObMrvatioas 
of  Captaiae  John  Sr 

in 
Europe,  Asia,  Africke.  and  Aoitr 

Beginning 
About  the  Yeere  1^3-  and  ' 


TWAHH3 


ad) 


»riT 


ai 


•ohsmA  ba«  .sioiil  A  ,«i«A  ,9qo 
alaah 
bcu  , 


The  Adventures  of  John  Smith  in  the  War  o/  the  T,urkesandtoe 
Christians  in  which,  by  signal  torches  from  the  M!!,' fee  ktspt 
in  communication  with  the  Army  at  seven  iniles  diafaftfp  94bfe? 
his  stratagem  drove  back  twenty  ^^gif^ffj^fj^jf 

.  GRVALGO  CapL  oj 


John    Smith's   acceptance   of   the   challenge  of  a  Turkish    warrior 

regaine  his  friend's  head,  or  lose   his  owne,"  in    which   he 

promptly  took  the  head,  horse  and  armour  of  his  combatant  and 

graciously   »ent   "  his   body   and  his  rich  apparel  back  to  Town  " 


ai 


OOJ> 


ior-n«w   ifeirf-mT  R  to  sjjasiU: 
sd   do  airf   9&ol  10  ,ba$. 

bae  JO*JJBC:  ^rf  9 

f  o)  Joed  Imaqqs  rtoh  aid  baa   ^bod   ^trf  •• 


;^ntos 


Journal  »f 


Afltfliran  Ifslnrj 


VOLUME  I 

JTIJTMTMBV      8JCVEX 


Ammra 


XDITKD      I!T 


THEVKI.TA.V      MILLKH 


NUMBER  II 

BEOOVD QUAKTIM 


0f 


$ixnarrath  Auuiurraarg  of  OUjorfutn'a  DtBronrry 
uf  tbr  HJratrrn  QJontinrttt  J*  3fattr  l$tmorratli  AmuurrHaru 
of  tyr  OUprtBtettng  nf  ttj*  Nrw  Worto  an  "AmrrtnT  J* 
2tyrrr  Ijmt&rrMt}  AmuurrHarg  of  ttfr  (Eall  of  tt|^  3BUoa 
to  thr  Auglo-&axuu3  ana  thr  Daring  fHrn  mb,n 


E  American  people  to 
day  stand  at  the  thresh- 
old  of  a  new  chronologi- 
I  cal  epoch.  Time  has 
marked  its  footsteps  and 
is  now  balancing  the 
accounts  of  finished  cen- 
turies. Marvelous  as  has  been  the 
sweep  of  progress  across  the  Western 
Continent,  the  work  of  civilization  is 
to-day  but  in  its  beginning.  The  un- 
covered wealth  of  the  wilderness  is 
but  the  intimation  of  the  possibilities 
of  the  coming  epoch.  Many  of  the 
powerful  nations  of  the  earth  could 
be  devoured  in  the  virgin  forests  that 
are  yet  unmeasured  and  unmarked  by 
the  trails  of  men  and  whose  secrets 
the  white  race  is  yet  to  learn. 

From  Panama  to  the  Arctic  runs  a 
wild  confusion  of  mountains  like  a 
caravan  that  never  passes  by,  whose 
camel  backs  are  laden  with  the  sky — 
thousands  of  miles  north  and  south, 


until  the  awful  range  plunges  beneath 
the  sea  in  the  Aleutian  Islands — that 
can  never  be  touched  in  survey  by 
half  a  dozen  generations,  and  the 
blessed  Alps  of  Europe  could  be 
hopelessly  lost  in  its  legions  of  peaks. 

The  new  epoch  must  reveal  won- 
ders that  to-day  are  not  even  dreams. 
The  next  century  of  American  prog- 
ress is  beyond  the  comprehension  of 
finite  mind. 

Ambassador  Porter  recently  said: 
"If  we  may  judge  the  future  progress 
of  this  land  by  its  progress  in  the  past, 
it  does  not  require  that  one  should  be 
endowed  with  prophetic  vision  to  pre- 
dict that  this  young  but  giant  Repub- 
lic will  dominate  the  policy  of  the 
world.  Woven  of  the  stoutest  fibers 
of  other  lands,  nurtured  by  a  com- 
mingling of  the  best  bloods  of  other 
races,  her  manifest  destiny  is  to  light 
the  torch  of  liberty  till  it  illumines 
the  entire  pathway  of  the  earth." 


\ 


©all  nf  it?*  MUto  attin  %  ilim 


IS  is  the  nine  hundredth 
anniversary  of  the  tradi- 
"•          tional  discovery  of  Amer- 
ica.     It  was  in  the  year 
J  1007,    according    to    the 

Sagas,  that  Thorfinn, 
after  having  sailed  from 
Norway  to  Greenland,  on  the  previ- 
ous year,  came  to  Vinland  with  three 
ships  and  one  hundred  and  sixty  per- 
sons, sighted  New  Foundland  and 
Nova  Scotia,  sailed  along  the  New 
England  coast  and  landed  upon  an 
island  where  they  spent  the  winter. 
For  three  years  these  adventurers  are 
said  to  have  lingered  on  the  Western 
Continent,  spending  most  of  the  time 
in  a  bay,  which  has  been  identified 
with  Mount  Hope  Bay,  and  trading 
with  the  Esquimaux.  The  Norwe- 
gians returned  to  the  Old  World  in 
ion,  and  Thorfinn  died  about  1016, 
leaving  no  record  that  shows  that  his 
journeys  were  in  the  interests  of  dis- 
covery but  rather  as  trading  expedi- 
tions. Whatever  may  be  the  truth  of 
the  Sagas,  the  New  World  remained 
in  darkness  until  the  coming  of  Col- 
umbus four  hundred  and  eighty-five 
years  later.  It  was  he  who  opened 
the  gateway  and  started  the  stream 
of  immigration  that  is  to-day  continu- 
ing in  its  ceaseless  flow  of  more  than 
a  million  adventurers  each  year. 


IS  is  the  four  hundredth 
anniversary  of  the  nam- 
ing  of  America.  Five 
il  years  after  Columbus 
proclaimed  to  the  East- 
ern  Continent  that  in  the 
far  West  there  was  a 
New  World  the  vastness  of  which  he 
dare  not  intimate,  one  Americus  Ves- 
pucci came  to  the  mainland  and  on 
his  return  to  the  Old  World  recorded 
his  claims  as  a  discoverer,  soliciting 
the  services  of  the  geographers  to  the 
extent  that  in  1507  a  little  publication 
entitled  "Cosmopgraphiae  Introducio," 
edited  and  issued  by  two  scholars, 
Waldseemuller  and  Ringmann,  at  the 
college  of  St.  Die  in  the  Vosges  coun- 


try, spoke  of  the  mysterious  land  as 
"America."  It  is  said  that  Ringmann 
was  an  ardent  admirer  of  Vespucius 
and  his  quick  wit  applied  the  name  as 
mark  of  honor  to  him.  The  friends 
of  Columbus  gave  little  heed  to  the 
naming  of  the  New  World.  Its  rich 
possibilities  were  their  only  concern. 
"America"  was  occasionally  repeated 
until  it  finally  appeared  on  Schoner's 
globe  in  1515  and  was  adopted  by  a 
map  maker  in  1517.  From  this  the 
name  gained  general  circulation  and 
it  was  soon  fastened  so  firmly  on  the 
minds  of  the  people  that  not  even  the 
friends  of  Columbus  could  overcome 
it.  The  matter  of  justice  came  too 
late,  and  Columbus  forever  lost  the 
distinction  that  was  justly  earned  by 
him.  It  is  one  of  the  instances  that 
are  so  very  common  even  to-day 
where  the  lust  for  gold  blinds  the 
seeker  from  greater  honors. 

It  is  just  four  hundred  years  ago 
that  Alvar  Nunez  Cabeza  de  Vaca, 
the  Spanish  explorer  who  accompa- 
nied Narvaez  to  Florida,  was  born. 
This  gallant  cavalier  at  twenty  years 
of  age  came  to  the  New  World  and 
faced  its  dangers  in  a  daring  march 
along  the  southern  borders.  He  was 
wrecked  near  Matagoria  Bay  in 
Texas  and  captured  by  the  Indians. 
He  gained  their  confidence  by  be- 
coming a  medicine  man  in  their  tribe 
and  finally  escaped,  and  after  experi- 
ences the  like  of  which  few  men  have 
ever  known,  de  Vaca  reached  Mexico, 
discovering  the  Rio  Grande  during 
his  wanderings.  He  later  turned  his 
attention  to  the  far  South  and  was  the 
first  explorer  of  Paraguay,  dying  at 
the  age  of  fifty-two  years. 

This  is  the  three  hundredth  anni- 
versary of  the  arrival  of  Poutrin- 
court  in  Nova  Scotia.  Two  years 
before,  Sieur  De  Monts  had  founded 
Port  Royal  in  Acadia,  now  Annapolis, 
under  many  difficulties,  and  only  by 
the  arrival  of  Poutrincourt  was  the 
settlement  made  permanent.  Seven 
years  later,  Samuel  Argall  of  Vir- 
ginia went  to  Acadia  on  an  expedi- 
tion and  ravaged  the  French  colony. 


,'<     'I '  \' •  ifnmjor  Artnat 


. 


toTr'ince    SIGISMVO^DVS,     C 


..JI07V  /It 


John  Smith,  with  a  guard  of  six  thousand,  three  spare  horses, 
before  each  "a  Turkes  head  upon  a  lance,"  returning  from  his 
triumphs  with  two  thousand  prisoners,  to  the  Prince's  Palace 
where  the  •  three  Turkes  heads "  are  emblazoned  on  his  shield 


MIT  H.  {c&C:ap.tiu&:Xnjtfa.:'&&SELti\V  <rp 
_:NALBRITS  in  TARTARIA 


John  vounded  in  battle,    taken  prisoner  and   sold  in  the 

slave-market   to   a  noble   Gentlewoman  in  Constantinople,    whose 
affection  for   him  so  angered  her  brother  that  he  strippc 

and  fled 


.aaa-orf  .rrisqe  aeirU  .bifcjtt/oitt  xia,5o   frfaa$   & 

••'H. ;  ".soctBl  « 
soal 
ftfsirfa    >.iif  flo  bsnoxsftf 


™arm    fafuaitmH    ow*   ift 


f 


io[ 

>orn. 

-: — 


/^SAT  ^^ 

wrecRea     near     MaTagona 
;          Texas  and  captured  by-  the  Indians, 
gained    theiis  confidence   by   be- 

«<*>  rv  «s*i»  *4    »«.-••  f*^- 


odj  :  riB    isnoei'iq 

ni 
•     >.  sri 


.9l:J6d  ni  babnuow    ,rfJim2 

s    o) 
i«ri  bsiena  oe  mid 


j 


M 


fri.fi 


' 


VM  nan 


were  s< 


aio   John  Smith  held  a  prisoner  by  the  American  Aborigines 

in    1607   iiinl  VAti  JfrrtnTr    the  sacred  pretence  of  the  Holy  Idol 

while   the    Priest   and  the  Conjuror  weave  a  spell  about  him  and 

their   weird   incantations  and  hideous  outcries 


tlj? 


far 


'H    (Eimlt^attntt 


Fourteen  years  from  this,  Acadia 
was  captured  by  the  English,  and 
four  years  later  restored  to  the 
French,  only  to  be  again  captured  in 
1690,  re-taken  in  1691,  and  finally 
made  an  English  stronghold  in  1710. 
It  is  on  this  scene  that  Longfellow 
set  his  beautiful  classic  "Evangeline." 


is  the  three  hundredth 
anniversary  of  Hendrick 
Hudson's  exploration  of 
the  coast  of  Greenland 
and  his  discovery  of  the 
existence  of  an  open  po- 
lar sea.  In  1607,  under 
the  Muscovy  Company,  he  started  in 
search  of  a  northwest  passage.  A 
year  later  he  made  a  second  voyage 
and  on  the  following  year,  under  the 
Dutch  East  India  Company,  he  coast- 
ed along  Labrador  to  the  southward, 
touching  at  New  Foundland,  Penob- 
scot  Bay,  Cape  Cod  and  the  Chesa- 
peake. On  this  expedition  he  sailed 
up  the  Hudson  river  as  far  as  Albany. 
It  is  still  one  year  later  that  he  entered 
the  strait  and  bay  which  bear  his 
name.  On  this  voyage  his  crew  be- 
came mutinous  because  of  severe 
hardships  and  set  Hudson  adrift  in  a 
small  boat.  Nothing  was  ever  heard 
from  him  or  his  seven  companions 
and  his  terrible  sufferings  and  tragic 
end  can  only  be  surmised. 

It  is  the  three  hundredth  anniver- 
sary of  the  first  establishment  of  the 
planting  of  the  flag  of  the  English- 
speaking  people  on  the  coast  of 
Maine.  In  1607,  two  ships,  the 
"Mary  and  John"  commanded  by 
George  Popham,  and  the  "Gift  of 
God"  commanded  by  Raleigh  Gilbert, 
were  sent  out  with  one  hundred  men 
from  England  and  reached  the  mouth 
of  the  Kennebec  river  in  Maine  on 
August  the  nineteenth,  founding  the 
settlement  on  the  northern  Atlantic 
coast  at  Fort  George.  Popham  was 
left  to  establish  a  colony  at  Sabino. 
and  Gilbert  returned  home.  During 
the  severe  winter,  Popham  died  and 
on  the  arrival  of  a  ship  with  pro- 


visions the  next  year  the  colonists 
who  had  survived  were  willing  to 
abandon  the  colony. 

It  is  the  three  hundredth  anniver- 
sary of  the  movement  that  sent  the 
Pilgrims  to  Plymouth  Rock  a  few 
years  later.  It  was  in  1607  that  the 
first  Separatists  from  Northern  Eng- 
land went  into  Holland,  seeking  re- 
ligious liberty.  On  the  following 
years  many  of  their  friends  followed 
them  until  the  movement  to  America 
began  and  in  1620  the  "Mayflower" 
came  to  the  New  England  coast. 
This  seems  to  have  been  an  age  of  ex- 
pansion. The  call  of  the  American 
wilds  echoed  through  the  Old  World. 
Strong  men  answered  it.  The  ocean 
swept  them  to  the  jungle  shores. 
The  forests  moaned  before  their 
power  and  fell  at  their  feet.  Wild 
beast  and  wild  man  were  driven  back 
before  the  steel  of  civilization.  Log 
cabins,  villages,  towns,  cities,  rose 
from  the  wilderness — a  hundred,  a 
thousand,  millions  of  men  and  women 
lifted  their  towers  of  civilization  until 
to-day  they  pierce  the  skies  and  their 
domes  reflect  the  light  of  the  sun  to 
the  New  Comers  from  the  Old  World 
long  before  their  feet  have  felt  the 
soil  of  the  Republic  that  three  hun- 
dred years  ago  was  establishing  its 
first  English-speaking  settlement  at 
Jamestown,  Virginia,  and  is  to-day  a 
World  Power. 


Here  was  human  freedom  planted 

In  the  region  of  the  West ; 
Here  the  torch  of  Truth  was  lighted, 

Typifying  all  that's  best. 
Here  was  suffered  strong  men's  an- 
guish, 

Here  did  heroes  do  and  die. 
Honor  we  this  soil  as  sacred, 

Honor  we  nobility. 
'Mid  the  serried  ranks  of  nations, 

'Mid  the  navies  of  the  earth, 
With  a  pride  both  just  and  noble, 

Honor  we  our  nation's  birth. 


903 


of  itolpt 


In  Sjta  ©ranr  Abwuturrc  nub  (Dbsrruations  in 
Srlattng  9?ia  18lrtl|.  in  1573,  Apprrnttrwlji}!  anh 


Ifi23 


HE  was  borne  in  Willoughby  in  Lincolne-shire,  and  a  Scholler  in  the  two  Free- 
schooles  of  Alford  and  Louth.  His  father  anciently  descended  from  the  ancient 
Smiths  of  Crudley  in  Lancashire;  his  mother  from  the  Rickands  at  great  Heck  in 
York-shire.  His  parents  dying  when  he  was  about  thirteene  yeeres  of  age,  left  him 
a  competent  means,  which  hee  not  being  capable  to  manage,  little  regarded;  his 
minde  being  even  then  set  upon  brave  adventures,  sould  his  Satchell,  bookes,  and 
all  he  had,  intending  secretly  to  get  to  Sea,  but  that  his  fathers  death  stayed  him. 
But  now  the  Guardians  of  his  estate  more  regarding  it  than  him,  he  had  libertie 
enough,  though  no  meanes,  to  get  beyond  the  Sea.  About  the  age  of  fifteene  yeeres 
hee  was  bound  an  Apprentice  to  Mr.  Thomas  Sendall  of  Linne,  the  greatest  Mer- 
chant of  all  those  parts;  but  because  hee  would  not  presently  send  him  to  Sea,  he 
never  saw  his  master  in  eight  yeeres  after.  At  last  he  found  meanes  to  attend  Mr. 
Perigrine  Barty  into  France,  second  sonne  to  the  Right  Honourable  Perigrine,  that 
generous  Lord  Willoughby,  and  famous  Souldier;  where  comming  to  his  brother 
Robert,  then  at  Orleans,  now  Earle  of  Linsey,  and  Lord  great  Chamberlaine  of 
England;  being  then  but  little  youths  under  Tutorage  :  his  service  being  needlesse, 
within  a  moneth  or  six  weekes  they  sent  him  backe  againe  to  his  friends;  who 
when  he  came  from  London  they  liberally  gave  him  (but  out  of  his  owne  estate) 
ten  shillings  to  be  rid  of  him;  such  oft  is  the  share  of  fatherlesse  children,  but 
those  two  Honourable  Brethren  gave  him  sufficient  to  returne  for  England.  But, 
it  was  the  least  thought  of  his  determination,  for  now  being  freely  at  libertie  in 
Paris,  growing  acquainted  with  one  Master  David  Hume,  who  making  some  use  of 
his  purse,  gave  him  Letters  to  his  friends  in  Scotland  to  preferre  him  to  King 
lames.  Arriving  at  Roane,  he  better  bethinkes  himselfe,  seeing  his  money  neere 
spent  downe  the  River  he  went  to  Haver  de  grace,  where  he  first  began  to  learne 
the  life  of  a  souldier:  Peace  being  concluded  in  France,  he  went  with  Captaine 
Joseph  Duxbury  into  the  Low-countries,  under  whose  Colours  having  served  three 
or  foure  yeeres,  he  tooke  his  journey  for  Scotland,  to  deliver  his  Letters.  At 
Ancusan  he  imbarked  himselfe  for  Lethe,  but  as  much  danger,  as  ship-wracke  and 
sicknesse  could  endure,  hee  had  at  the  holy  He  in  Northumberland  neere  Barwicke: 
(being  recovered)  into  Scotland  he  went  to  deliver  his  Letters.  After  much  kinde 
usage  amongst  those  honest  Scots  at  Ripweth  and  Broxmoth,  but  neither  money  nor 
means  to  make  him  a  Courtier,  he  returned  to  Willoughby  in  Lincoln-shire;  where 
within  a  short  time  being  glutted  with  too  much  company,  wherein  he  took  small 
delight,  he  retired  himselfe  into  a  little  wooddie  pasture,  a  good  way  from  any 
towne,  invironed  with  many  hundred  Acres  of  other  woods  :  Here  by  a  faire  brook 
he  built  a  Pavillion  of  boughes,  where  only  in  his  cloaths  he  lay.  His  studie  was 
Machiaz'ills  Art  of  warre,  and  Marcus  Aurelius;  his  exercise  a  good  horse,  with  his 
lance  and  Ring;  his  food  was  thought  to  be  more  of  venison  than  any  thing  else; 
what  he  wanted  his  man  brought  him.  The  countrey  wondering  at  such  an  Her- 
mite;  His  friends  perswaded  one  Seignior  Theodora  Polaloga,  Rider  to  Henry 
Earle  of  Lincolne,  an  excellent  Horse-man,  and  a  noble  Italian  Gentleman,  to  insin- 
uate into  his  wooddish  acquaintances,  whose  Languages  and  good  discourse,  and 
exercise  of  riding  drew  him  to  stay  with  him  at  Tattersall.  Long  these  pleasures 
could  not  content  him,  but  hee  returned  againe  to  the  Low-Countreyes.  Thus  when 
France  and  Netherlands  had  taught  him  to  ride  a  Horse  and  use  his  Armes,  with 
such  rudiments  of  warre,  as  his  tender  yeeres  in  those  martiall  Schooles  could 
attaine  unto;  he  was  desirous  to  see  more  of  the  world,  and  trie  his  fortune. 


Arms    (tafrrrrii    far   (Efrftmtat 

>  <^ 

(Traiuslations  from  ihr  (Original   £atht  ftlrmoriale  3oaurb   to  3uhu 
&mtllt  anil  &rrorar&  in  lEfia  Narraiiur  of  tljr  dars  of  tljr  tost  In  1603 

SIGISMVNDVS  BATHOR,  by  the  Grace  of  God,  Duke  of  Transilvonio,  Wallachia, 
and  Moldavia,  Earle  of  Anchard,  Salford  and  Growenda;  to  whom  this  Writing 
may  come  or  appeare.  Know  that  We  have  given  leave  and  licence  to  lohn  Smith 
an  English  Gentleman,  Captaine  of  250.  Souldiers,  under  the  most  Generous  and 
Honourable  Henry  Volda,  Earle  of  Meldritch,  Salmaria,  and  Peldoia,  Colonell  of  a 
thousand  horse,  and  fifteene  hundred  foot,  in  the  warres  of  Hungary,  and  in  the 
Provinces  aforesaid  under  our  authority;  whose  service  doth  deserve  all  praise  and 
perpetuall  memory  towards  us,  as  a  man  that  did  for  God  and  his  Country  over- 
come his  enemies :  Wherefore  out  of  Our  love  and  favour,  according  to  the  law  of 
Armes,  We  have  ordained  and  given  him  in  his  shield  of  Armes,  the  figure  and 
description  of  three  Turks  heads,  which  with  his  sword  before  the  towne  of  Regall, 
in  single  combat  he  did  overcome,  kill,  and  cut  off,  in  the  Province  of  Transilvania. 
But  fortune,  as  she  is  very  variable,  so  it  chanced  and  happened  to  him  in  the  prov- 
ince of  Wallachia,  in  the  yeare  of  our  Lord,  1602.  the  18.  day  of  November,  with 
many  others,  as  well  Noble  men,  as  also  divers  other  Souldiers,  were  taken  prison- 
ers by  the  Lord  Bashaw  of  Gambia,  a  Country  of  Tartaria;  whose  cruelty  brought 
him  such  good  fortune,  by  the  helpe  and  power  of  Almighty  God,  that  hee  delivered 
himselfe,  and  returned  againe  to  his  company  and  fellow  souldiers,  of  whom  We  doe 
discharge  him,  and  this  hee  hath  in  witnesse  thereof,  being  much  more  worthy  of  a 
better  reward;  and  now  intends  to  returne  to  his  owne  sweet  Country.  We  desire 
therefore  all  our  loving  and  kinde  kinsmen,  Dukes,  Princes,  Earles,  Barons,  Gov- 
ernours  of  Townes,  Cities,  or  Ships,  in  this  Kingdome,  or  any  other  Provinces  he 
shall  come  in,  that  you  freely  let  passe  this  the  aforesaid  Captaine,  without  any 
hinderance  or  molestation,  and  this  doing,  with  all  kindnesse  we  are  always  ready 
to  doe  the  like  for  you.  Sealed  at  Lipswick  in  Misenland,  the  ninth  of  December,  in 
the  yeare  of  our  Lord,  1603. 

SIGISMVNDVS  BATHOR. 


With  the  proper  privilege  of  his  Majestic. 

To  all  and  singular,  in  what  place,  state,  degree,  order,  or  condition  whatso- 
ever, to  whom  this  present  writing  shall  come :  I  William  Segar  Knight,  otherwise 
Garter,  and  principall  King  of  Armes  of  England,  wish  health.  Know  that  I  the 
aforesaid  Garter,  do  witnesse  and  approve,  that  this  aforesaid  Patent,  I  have  scene, 
signed,  and  sealed,  under  the  proper  hand  and  Scale  Maunal  of  the  said  Duke  of 
Transilvania,  and  a  true  coppy  of  the  same,  as  a  thing  for  perpetuall  memory,  I 
have  subscribed  and  recorded  in  the  Register  and  office  of  the  Heralds  of  Armes. 
Dated  at  London  the  nineteenth  day  of  August,  in  the  yeare  of  our  Lord,  1625.  and 
in  the  first  yeare  of  our  Soueraigne  Lord  Charles  by  the  grace  of  God,  King  of 
great  Britaine,  France,  and  Ireland;  Defender  of  the  faith,  &c. 

WILLIAM  SEGAR. 


nit  Hfoitrttt    in  Ammra 


Arruratc    JUrauBrript    from    Ibr    Smikr    nf    prnrrrMugs    and 
Arrtfcrnts  of  Ihr  3f  iret  $Jr  rmattntt  tngltfilj  Srttlrmrnt  in  Amrrtra 

BY  WILLIAM  SIMONS 

"  DOCTOUB  OF  DlVINITM  " 

N  the  19  of  December,  1606.  we  set  sayle  from  Blackwall,  but  by 
vnprosperous  winds  were  kept  six  weekes  in  the  sight  of  Eng- 
land; all  which  time,  Mr  Hunt  our  Preacher,  was  so  weake 
and  sicke,  that  few  expected  his  recovery.  —  Yet  although  he 
were  but  twentie  myles  from  his  habitation  (the  time  we 
were  in  the  Downes)  and  notwithstanding  the  stormy  weather,. 
nor  the  scandalous  imputations  (of  some  few,  little  better  then 
Atheists,  of  the  greatest  ranke  amongst  vs)  suggested  against  him,  all  this 
could  never  force  from  him  so  much  as  a  seeming  desire  to  leaue  the  business, 
but  preferred  the  service  of  God,  in  so  good  a  voyage,  before  any  affection 
to  contest  with  his  godlesse  foes,  whose  disasterous  designes  (could  they  haue 
prevailed)  had  even  then  overthrowne  the  businesse,  so  many  discontents  did 
then  arise,  had  he  not  with  the  water  of  patience,  and  his  godly  exhortations 
(but  chiefly  by  his  true  devoted  examples)  quenched  those  flames  of  envie,  and 
dissention. 

We  watered  at  the  Canaries,  we  traded  with  the  Salvages  at  Dominica; 
three  weekes  we  spent  in  refreshing  our  selues  amongst  these  west-India  Isles  ; 
in  Gwardalupa  we  found  a  bath  so  hot,  as  in  it  we  boyled  Porck  as  well  as  over 
the  fire.  And  at  a  little  Isle  called  Monica,  we  tooke  from  the  bushes  with  our 
hands,  neare  two  hogshheads  full  of  Birds  in  three  or  foure  houres.  In  Meins, 
Mona,  and  the  Virgin  Isles,  we  spent  some  time,  where,  with  a  lothsome  beast 
like  a  Crocodil,  called  a  Gwayn,  Tortoises,  Pellicans,  Parrots,  and  fishes,  we 
daily  feasted.  Gone  from  thence  in  search  of  Virginia,  the  company  was  not  a 
little  discomforted,  seeing  the  Marriners  had  3  dayes  passed  their  reckoning" 
and  found  no  land,  so  that  Captaine  Ratliffe  (Captaine  of  the  Pinnace)  rather 
desired  to  beare  vp  the  helme  to  returne  for  England,  then  make  further  search. 
But  God  the  guider  of  all  good  actions,  forcing  them  by  an  extreame  storme 
to  hull  all  night,  did  driue  them  by  his  providence  to  their  desired  Port,  beyond 
all  their  expectations,  for  never  any  of  them  had  scene  that  coast.  The  first 
land  they  made  they  called  Cape  Henry;  where  thirtie  of  them  recreating  them- 
selues  on  shore,  were  assaulted  by  fiue  Salvages,  who  hurt  two  of  the  English 
very  dangerously.  That  night  was  the  box  opened,  and  the  orders  read,  in 
which  Bartholomew  Gosnoll,  lohn  Smith,  Edward  Wingfield,  Christopher 
Newport,  lohn  Ratcliffe,  lohn  Martin,  and  George  Kendall,  were  named  to  be 
the  Councell,  and  to  choose  a  President  amongst  them  for  a  yeare,  who  with 
the  Councell  should  governe.  Matters  of  moment  were  to  be  examined  by  a 
lury,  but  determined  by  the  maior  part  of  the  Councell,  in  which  the  President 
had  two  voyces.  Vntill  the  13  of  May  they  sought  a  place  to  plant  in,  then 
the  Councell  was  sworne,  Mr  Wingfield  was  chosen  President,  and  an  Oration- 
made,  why  Captaine  Smith  was  not  admitted  of  the  Councell  as  the  rest. 

Now  falleth  every  man  to  worke,  the  Councell  contriue  the  Fort,  the  rest 
cut  downe  trees  to  make  place  to  pitch  their  Tents  ;  some  provide  clapbord  to 
relade  the  ships,  some  make  gardens,  some  nets,  &c.  The  Salvages  often  vis- 
ited vs  kindly.  The  Presidents  overweening  jealousie  would  admit  no  exercise 
at  armes,  or  fortification,  but  the  boughs  of  trees  cast  together  in  the  forme  of 

•6 


,%ri!/  tJusJhite  <fc/ff#Avz  w>fc%  GyXSmJfk 
TrtW  detincrvJ^to  Sum  priflwr. 

ZOC? 


and  flaw  hf  S*bt*cltd  3$  ^ their 


Captain    '  h  condemned  to  cl«  nes  04  Xbe 

Ne\v  Workl  -Or.air.t   sce;;es  of   \       si.-r.tcrce  ar.  i  his    tragic    vt - 
by  the  daughter  of  the  Savage  King  at  the  moment  of  execution — 
Reproduced  from  Rare  Engravings  from  Captain  :  ures 


fcxptr 


XLATAHW  O1 


mmra 


'.  neve 
but 


ckwall,  but  by 
of  Eng- 

( the    time    we 
weatherr 
ttle  better  then 
U  this 
the  bu.c 
e  any  affV 

did 


.       -j,   i;  ••  -  !/       .        •        ii,:.,  • 


nm 

ication,  but  the 


then 
ration 

the 

a»9*  i*uuQ**>IvjVf  waHiapbord  to 
often  vis- 
o  exercise 
he  forme  of 


of  Jftrat  (EttiHrnn  in  Amrrira 


Captain  John  Smith  in  an  attempt  to  force  the  American  Savages 
into  subjection,  "snatched  the  King  by  his  long  locke  and  with 
Tils  Pistoll  realie  bent  against  his  breast,  led  him  trembling 
neare  dead  with  feare"  and  addressed  the  terrified  aborigines 


nfioriom  A  adJ  ; 
,'>oa  s-iaot  gooi  aid  vd  91 
»L<  ^' 


£>truggl?H  0f  Jfirat  Citizen*  in  America 

a  halfe  moone  by  the  extraordinary  paines  and  deligence  of  Captaine  Kendall. 
Newport,  Smith,  and  twentie  others,  were  sent  to  discover  the  head  of  the 
river:  by  divers  small  habitations  they  passed,  in  six  dayes  they  arrived  at  a 
Towne  called  Powhatan,  consisting  of  some  twelue  houses,  pleasantly  seated  on 
a  hill ;  before  it  three  fertile  Isles,  about  it  many  of  their  cornefields,  the  place 
is  very  pleasant,  and  strong  by  nature,  of  this  place  the  Prince  is  called  Powha- 
tan, and  his  people  Powhatans,  to  this  place  the  river  is  navigable :  but  higher 
within  a  myle,  by  reason  of  the  Rockes  and  Isles,  there  is  not  passage  for  a 
small  Boat,  this  they  call  the  Falles,  the  people  in  all  parts  kindly  intreated 
them,  till  being  returned  within  twentie  myles  of  lames  towne,  they  gaue  iust 
cause  of  iealousie,  but  had  God  not  blessed  the  discoveries  otherwise  then  those 
at  the  Fort,  there  had  then  beene  an  end  of  that  plantation;  for  at  the  Fort, 
where  they  arrived  the  next  day,  they  found  17  men  hurt,  and  a  boy  sjaine  by 
the  Salvages,  and  had  it  not  chanced  a  crosse  barre  shot  from  the  Ships  strooke 
downe  a  bough  from  a  tree  amongst  them,  that  caused  them  to  retire,  our  men 
had  all  beene  slaine,  being  securely  all  at  worke,  and  their  armes  in  dry  fats. 

Herevpon  the  President  was  contented  the  Fort  should  be  pallisadoed,  the 
Ordnance  mounted,  his  men  armed  and  exercised,  for  many  were  the  assaults, 
and  ambuscades  of  the  Salvages,  and  our  men  by  their  disorderly  stragling 
were  often  hurt,  when  the  Salvages,  by  the  nimblenesse  of  their  heeles  well 
escaped.  What  toyle  we  had,  with  so  small  a  power  to  guard  our  workemen 
adayes,  watch  all  night,  resist  our  enemies,  and  effect  our  businesse,  to  relade 
the  ships,  cut  downe  trees,  and  prepare  the  ground  to  plant  our  Corne,  &c,  I 
referre  to  the  Readers  consideration.  Six  weekes  being  spent  in  this  manner, 
Captaine  Newport  (who  was  hired  onely  for  our  transportation)  was  to  returne 
with  the  ships.  Now  Captaine  Smith,  who  all  this  time  from  their  departure 
from  the  Canariets  was  retained  as  a  prisoner  vpon  the  scandalous  suggestions 
of  some  of  the  chief e  (envying  his  repute)  who  fained  he  intended  to  vsurpe 
the  government,  murther  the  Councell,  and  make  himselfe  King,  that  his  con- 
federates were  dispersed  in  all  the  three  ships,  and  that  divers  of  his  confeder- 
ats  that  revealed  it,  would  affirme  it,  for  this  he  was  committed  as  a  prisoner: 
thirteene  weekes  he  remained  thus  suspected,  and  by  that  time  the  ships  should 
returne  they  pretended  out  of  their  commisserations,  to  referre  him  to  the  Coun- 
cell in  England  to  receiue  a  check,  rather  then  by  particulating  his  designes 
make  him  so  odious  to  the  world,  as  to  touch  his  life,  or  vtterly  overthrow  his 
reputation.  But  he  so  much  scorned  their  charitie,  and  publikely  defied  the 
-vttermst  of  their  crueltie,  he  wisely  prevented  their  policies,  though  he  could 
•not  suppresse  their  envies,  yet  so  well  he  demeaned  himselfe  in  this  businesse,  as 
all  the  company  did  see  his  innocency,  and  his  adversaries  malice,  and  those 
suborned  to  accuse  him,  accused  his  accusers  of  subornation ;  many  vntruthes 
were  alledged  against  him ;  but  being  so  apparently  disproved,  begat  a  generall 
liatred  in  the  hearts  of  the  company  against  such  vniust  Commanders,  that  the 
President  was  adjudged  to  giue  him  2001.  s  that  all  he  had  was  seized  vpon,  in 
part  of  satisfaction,  which  Smith  presently  returned  to  the  Store  for  the  generall 
vse  of  the  Colony.  Many  were  the  mischiefes  that  daily  sprung  from  their 
ignorant  (yet  ambitious)  spirits ;  but  the  good  Doctrine  and  exhortation  of  our 
Preacher  Mr  Hunt  reconciled  them,  and  caused  Captaine  Smith  to  be  admitted 
of  the  Councell ;  the  next  day  all  receiued  the  Communion,  the  day  following 
the  Salvages  voluntarily  desired  peace,  and  Captaine  Newport  returned  for 
England  with  newes;  leaving  in  Virginia  100.  the  15  of  lune  1607. 

Being  thus  left  to  our  fortunes,  it  fortuned  that  within  ten  dayes  scarce  ten 
amongst  vs  could  either  goe,  or  well  stand,  such  extreame  weaknes  and  sicknes 
oppressed  vs.  And  thereat  none  need  marvaile,  if  they  consider  the  cause  and 
reason,  which  was  this ;  whilest  the  ships  stayed,  our  allowance  was  somewhat 


tuning   nf   a   Morlft 


bettered,  by  a  daily  proportion  of  Bisket,  which  the  sailers  would  pilfer  to  sell, 
giue,  or  exchange  with  vs,  for  money,  Saxefras,  furres,  or  loue.  But  when 
they  departed,  there  remained  neither  taberne,  beere-house,  nor  place  of  reliefe, 
but  the  common  Kettell.  Had  we  beene  as  free  from  all  sinnes  as  gluttony, 
and  drunkennesse,  we  might  haue  beene  canonized  for  Saints  ;  But  our  Presi- 
dent would  never  haue  beene  admitted,  for  ingrossing  to  his  private,  Oatmeale, 
Sacke,  Oyle,  Aquavitce,  Beefe,  Egges,  or  what  not,  but  the  Kettell  ;  that  indeed 
he  allowed  equally  to  be  distributed,  and  that  was  halfe  a  pint  of  wheat,  and  as 
much  barley  boyled  with  water  for  a  man  a  day,  and  this  having  fryed  some 
2,6.  weekes  in  the  ships  hold,  contained  as  many  wormes  as  graines  ;  so  that  we 
might  truely  call  it  rather  so  much  bran  then  corne,  our  drinke  was  water,  our 
lodgings  Castles  in  the  ayre  :  with  this  lodging  and  dyet,  our  extreame  toile  in 
bearing  and  planting  Pallisadoes,  so  strained  and  bruised  vs,  and  our  continual 
labour  in  the  extremitie  of  the  heat  had  so  weakened  vs,  as  were  cause  sufficient 
to  haue  made  vs  miserable  in  our  natiue  Countrey,  or  any  other  place  in  the 
world.  From  May,  to  September,  those  that  escaped,  liued  vpon  Sturgeon 
and  Sea-crabs,  fiftie  in  this  time  we  buried,  the  rest  seeing  the  Presidents  pro- 
iects  to  escape  these  miseries  in  our  Pinnace  by  flight  (who  all  this  time  had' 
neither  felt  want  nor  sicknes)  so  moved  our  dead  spirits,  as  we  deposed  him; 
and  established  Ratcliffe  in  his  place,  (Gosnoll  being  dead)  Kendall  deposed, 
Smith  newly  recovered,  Martin  and  Ratcliffe  was  by  his  care  preserved  and 
relieued,  and  the  most  of  the  souldiers  recovered,  with  the  skilfull  diligence  of 
Mr.  Thomas  Wotton  our  Chirurgian  generall.  But  now  was  all  our  provision 
spent,  the  Sturgeon  gone,  all  helps  abandoned,  each  houre  expecting  the  fury 
of  the  Salvages  ;  when  God  the  patron  of  all  good  indevours,  in  that  desperate 
extremitie  so  changed  the  heart  of  the  Salvages,  that  they  brought  such  plenty 
of  their  fruits,  and  provision,  as  no  man  wanted. 

And  now  where  some  affirmed  it  was  ill  done  of  the  Councell  to  send  forth? 
men  so  badly  provided,  this  incontradictable  reason  will  shew  them  plainely- 
they  are  too  ill  advised  to  nourish  such  ill  conceits  ;  first,  the  fault  of  our  going 
was  our  owne,  what  could  be  thought  fitting  or  necessary  we  had,  but  what  we- 
should  find,  or  want,  or  where  we  should  be,  we  were  all  ignorant,  and  suppos- 
ing to  make  our  passage  in  two  moneths,  with  victuall  to  Hue,  and  the  advantage- 
of  the  spring  to  worke  ;  we  were  at  Sea  fiue  moneths,  where  we  both  spent  our 
victuall  and  lost  the  opportunitie  of  the  time,  and  season  to  plant,  by  the  vnskil- 
full  presumption  of  our  ignorant  transporters,  that  vnderstood  not  at  all,  what 
they  vndertooke. 

Such  actions  haue  ever  since  the  worlds  beginning  beene  subject  to  such 
accidents,  and  every  thing  of  worth  is  found  full  of  difficulties,  but  nothing  so- 
difficult  as  to  establish  a  Common  wealth  so  farre  remote  from  men  and  meanes,, 


By  this  obserue ; 


Good  men  did  ne'er  their  Countries  ruine  bring. 

But  when  euill  men  shall  iniuries  beginne ; 

Not  caring  to  corrupt  and  violate 

The  iudgments-seats  for  their  owne  Lucr's  sake : 

Then  looke  that  Country  cannot  long  haue  peace, 

Though  for  the  present  it  haue  rest  and  ease. 


/ 


Captain  John  Smith  taken  captive  by  the  Savages  and  bound 
tree    to    be  shot   to  ikath    while    his   executioners   triumphantly 
danced  about  him.  swinging  their  bows  and  arrows  and  - 
him   to   torture— Specimen   of   ancient  er.  -fa's  book 


imrimi    of    a    Utorlfc 


act 

.1  every  thing  of  worth  is  found  f 
ult  as  to  a  Common  wealth  so  farre  remote  fro: 


ill  men 


l 


iood  ?.'rifim3  ctt  3ntv«iaK»  Jnsorm   ^o   n9trrtO9q3—  ymfioJ   oJ   mid 


'nttthltrulttk 

tfiA  tfuf^ty  '</  P«m»unk«e 


Vi/ 


Rare  Engravings  of  the  Adventures  of  Captain  John  Smith,  his 
daring  escapades  with  the  Native  Americans,  his  captures  and 
escapes,  his  dangers  and  his  triumphs  in  establishing  the 
First  Permanent  English  Settlement  on  the  Western  Hemisphere 


A\ 


zid    ,dJim3  ado],  aiftjqaD  io  aswJasvLA 
baa  asii/lqao  aid    ^tuonsm, 

sdJ     30id2tfd*J39     at    Mlqm;/;-.;     Bhf    br.r. 
d?  a  afe 


iaiun   nf  tlj? 


orld 


Jfirat  flrrmanrnt 

•ttwlir.h  0rttlrmrnt  in  America  J* 

^'muiiUitinu  nt"  a  Jlruplr  mini  in  (Ehrrr 

l}ra  IT.    lutur    ^trrtrhrh    llirir    Onmiuimt    and    fRillions 

AcrnBB  tl|p  (Enntinrnt  anb   uil|nar    3nflurncr   iJrrtnratra    thr 

tarth     ./*     Nations     of    thr    fforlb    txtruii    anhutr    on    thir.    arr-drnlruuial 

BY 

HONORABLE  H.  ST.  GEORGE  TUCKER 

PRESIDENT  or  THE  JAMESTOWN  EXPOSITION  — DEAN  OF  mi   >i  HO<M.  OK  POLITICS    AMI    DIPLOMACY    AT    <;EORUB 

WASHINGTON  UNIVERSITY,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C\—  FORMER  DEAN  or  WA-IIIM.THS    ANII  LEE 

UNIVKR.XITY  AT  LEXINOTON,  VmiiiMA     KOUMKK  I'RK-IHENT 

or  THE  AMERICAN  HAI:  A>-<"  i  \TION 


N  this  ter-centenary  of 
the  first  permanent 
English  settlement  in 
America  I  am  im- 
pressed more  than  ever 
before  with  the  words 
of  my  friend,  Gov- 
Henry  A.  Wise,  that  gal- 
lant Virginian,  who  in  speaking  of 
Jamestown,  eloquently  exclaimed : 
"Here  the  old  world  first  met  the  new. 
Here  the  white  man  first  met  the  red 


•ernor 


for  settlement  and  civilization.  Here 
the  white  man  wielded  the  ax  to  cut 
the  first  tree  for  the  first  log  cabin. 
Here  the  first  log  cabin  was  built  for 
the  first  village.  Here  the  first  village 
rose  to  the  first  State  Capital.  Here 
was  the  first  capital  of  our  empire  of 
states — here  was  the  very  foundation 
of  a  nation  of  freemen,  which  has 
stretched  its  dominion  and  its  millions 
across  the  continent  to  the  shores  of 
another  ocean.  Go  to  the  Pacific  now 


OLDEST  RUINS  OP  A  PROTESTANT  ECCLESIASTICAL  STRUCTURE  IN  AMERICA 
Historic  Tower  of  the  Old  Church  at  Jamestown,  Virginia— Remains  of  the  third  edifice  of  the  first 
Protestant  organization  in  New  World— Preserved  by  Society  for  Preservation  of  Virginia  Antiquities 


to  measure  the  progression  and  power 
of  a  great  people." 

"And  it  is  here,"  adds  President 
Tyler  of  the  grand  old  College  of  Wil- 
liam and  Mary,  "that  the  new  world 
witnessed  the  first  trial  by  jury,  the 
first  English  church,  the  first  English 
marriage,  and  its  first  legislative 
assembly." 

The  whole  English-speaking  world 
must  pay  homage  to  Old  James- 
town on  this  three  hundredth  anniver- 
sary. In  it  is  written  much  of  the 
earth's  history,  for  as  Dr.  Tyler  says: 
"Had  the  expedition  that  came  to 
Jamestown  in  1607  failed  of  a  perma- 
nent footing  on  these  shores,  the  op- 
portunity of  establishing  here  an  An- 
glo-Saxon colony  might  have  passed 
away  never  to  return.  The  Span- 
iards, who  claimed  all  North  America, 


might  have,  by  establishing  settle- 
ments of  their  own,  prevented  any 
further  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
English." 

It  is  therefore  not  an  idle  specula- 
tion to  consider  America  as  she  might 
have  been  to-day — a  Spanish-speak- 
ing nation,  or,  possibly  lost  by  Spain 
in  some  of  the  wars  that  would  have 
arisen,  under  the  colonial  government 
of  one  of  the  Old  World  monarchies. 
It  does  not  seem  possible  that  the 
American  spirit  could  ever  have  been 
held  in  subjection  whatever  might 
have  been  its  guardianship.  The  very 
air  of  the  continent,  wherever  one  may 
go  from  ocean  to  ocean  and  from  the 
snows  of  the  farthest  northern  bound- 
ary to  the  tropical  fragrance  of  the 
Southland,  is  the  breath  of  Self-Gov- 
ernment — the  nature-stilled  air  of  the 
Republic. 


BUST    OF    JOHN    SMITH 
By  Baden  Powell,  Sculptor 


An  Old  English  Oil  Painting  of  Captain  John  Smith,  painted  after  the  engraved 
portraiture  of  the  adventurer  in  his  own  book,  when  he  was  thirty-seven  years  of 
age,  in  1616,  the  year  that  Pocahontas  went  to  England,  the  wife  of  John  Rolfe, 
and  was  presented  at  the  Court  of  King  James  as  "  Lady  Rebecca"— Captain  John 
Smith  died  at  the  age  of  fifty-three  years,  after  a  life  of  remarkable  adventures 


Jftrat 


lEngluslf 


It  is  with  these  sentiments  in  mind 
that  it  is  well  for  every  American — 
and  every  brother  of  the  great  broth- 
erhood of  nations — to  look  back 
through  the  panorama  of  three  hun- 
dred years  to  that  notable  day  in  1607 
when  the  British  flag  planted  the  first 
permanent  English-speaking  settle- 
ment on  the  Western  Hemisphere,  and 
endowed  it  with  its  mother-tongue. 

Wonderful  tales  of  the  Golden 
Land  of  promise  were  being  told  in 
the  Old  World.  London  was  agog 
with  the  news  of  its  resources.  Ad- 
venturers, poets,  playwrights,  were 
gathering  in  London  and  the  New 
America  was  the  talk  of  the  taverns. 
Old  London  in  this  day  of  the  dawn 
of  the  New  World  was  an  interesting 
picture.  I  can  do  no  better  than  to 
describe  it  in  the  words  of  Edwin  Ful- 
ton Rorebeck  who,  in  speaking  of 
London  as  the  mother  of  Virginia, 
said  a  few  days  ago : 

London  was  the  metropolis,  the 
great  feeder  for  England,  Scotland 
and  Ireland,  and  the  guilds  or  compa- 
nies of  Salters,  Vintners,  Drapers, 
Goldsmiths,  Haberdashers,  Skinners, 
Mercers,  Grocers,  Fishmongers,  Tay- 
lors, Ironmongers,  Clothworkers, 
were  laying  the  foundations  which 
were  to  make  the  city  the  great  com- 
mercial clearing  house  for  the  whole 
world.  While  the  town  had  a  solid 
citizenship — peaceable  folk,  such  as 
shop  and  tavern  keepers,  artisans, 
Thames  boatmen,  and  drawers  of  sack 
and  "carowses" — it  was  also  a  day  of 
a  floating,  superficial  population  made 
up  of  idle  rich,  needy  adventurers,  dis- 
charged sailors  and  soldiers,  royster- 
ers,  "Roaring  Boys,"  poets,  play- 
wrights and  actors,  living  by  their 
wits,  keeping  London  in  good  humor, 
and  incidentally  being  thrust  into  jail 
for  lese  majestic.  Gallants,  adven- 
turers, poets,  hobnobbed  together  at 
the  taverns  which  abounded  in  Lon- 
don— the  Mermaid,  the  Horn,  the 
Cock  and  Bottle,  the  Old  Boar's  Head, 
the  Cheshire  Cheese — these  are  the 
names  of  the  trysting  places  where 
Shakespeare,  Ben  Jonson,  Smith  and 


Gosnold,  and  others  of  their  ilk,  scrib- 
blers and  sword-stickers,  fraternized 
and  sought  inspiration  in  huge  "ca- 
rowses" of  sack.  Here  ballads  des- 
tined to  become  classics  were  written 
and  sung;  here  brave  enterprises 
which  changed  the  world's  cosmog- 
raphy were  conceived  and  later  car- 
ried into  execution. 

The  fever  of  speculation  was  in  the 
air,  rich  and  poor  fell  victims  to  the 
plague.  Virginia,  the  beautiful,  mys- 
terious, unknown  land  across  the  great 
waters,  was  reputed  to  be  fabulously 
rich  in  gold  and  other  precious  metals. 
Tales  were  told  in  the  tap-room  of  a 
city  of  gold  located  in  the  interior  of 
America,  a  city  of  which  the  Span- 
iards had  accurate  information  and 
for  which  they  were  searching. 

The  closing  years  of  the  sixteenth 
century  witnessed  a  great  awakening 
in  the  public  mind  of  England  regard- 
ing the  possibilities  of  colonial  ex- 
pansion. It  had  taken  one  hundred 
years  to  bring  about  this  awakening; 
one  hundred  years  of  imagination,  of 
vague  rumors  and  reports  and  of 
maritime  ventures,  since  Columbus 
opened  the  ponderous  gates  of  the 
Atlantic ;  one  hundred  years  of  desul- 
tory exploration  without  a  resulting 
settlement.  But  now  things  were 
taking  on  a  new  appearance.  The 
Spanish  Armada  had  but  recently 
been  destroyed,  and  the  country  of 
Elizabeth  had  become  "Mistress  of 
the  Seas,"  ready  and  eager  under  the 
flush  of  success  to  extend  the  power 
and  supremacy  of  the  nation  to  the 
bounds  of  the  earth.  The  El  Dorado 
of  the  New  World  offered  the  best 
field  for  the  test  of  this  exuberance 
of  popular  feeling  whether  the  mo- 
tive be  commerce,  romance,  ambi- 
tion, love  of  adventure,  freedom 
from  restraint  or  religion. 

This  passion  received  a  decided 
check,  however,  by  the  disastrous 
attempt  of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  to 
found  a  colony  in  the  New  World. 
In  1584,  Raleigh  sent  out  two  vessels 
under  the  Captains  Armidas  and  Bar- 
low and  these  traversed  the  Carolina 


*«3 


160r 


in 


MASSACRE    IN     1622    IN     FIRST    PERMANENT    SETTLEMENT    IN    AMERICA 

Old  Print  in  the   Scheeps-Togt  van  Anthony  Chester  Na  Virginia, 
gedaan  in  het  jaar  1620— Printed  at  Leyden  by  Peter  Vander  in  1707 


coast  and  named  the  country  Vir- 
ginia. The  next  year  a  colony  of 
one  hundred  and  eight  men  made  a 
settlement  on  the  Island  of  Roanoke 
but  one  year  sufficed  for  the  experi- 
ment when  the  colonists  abandoned 
their  lovely  hamlet  and  returned  to 
England.  The  next  year  fifty  men 
left  at  the  deserted  settlement  were 
massacred  by  the  Indians.  But 
Raleigh  was  not  yet  discouraged.  A 
new  colony  was  planted  and  this  time 
the  solitude  was  cheered  by  the  pres- 
ence of  woman.  But  this  did  not 
avail,  and  of  the  fate  of  the  colony 
we  know  nothing.  The  settlement 
and  the  settlers  disappeared  without  a 
trace  of  their  fate.  The  only  thing 
known  of  their  year's  existence 
there  is  the  fact  that  a  female  child 
was  born  there  and  it  was  named 
Virginia.  These  disasters  gave  the 
colonization  scheme  such  a  set-back 


that  for  fifteen  years  Virginia  lay 
abandoned  and  obscure. 

The  great  East  India  Company  had 
been  organized,  in  1600,  and  was 
throwing  open  the  gates  of  the  rich 
East.  Sir  Francis  Drake,  in  1577- 
1580,  had  encircled  the  globe.  The 
wealth  of  the  Western  World  awaited 
the  men  with  the  courage  to  come  and 
take  it. 

At  this  juncture  Captain  John 
Smith  arrived  in  his  native  country 
after  many  years  of  adventure  in  Mo- 
rocco, Turkey  and  the  Orient.  In 
company  with  Bartholomew  Gos- 
nold,  Edward  Maria  Wingfield,  Rob- 
ert Hunt  and  others,  Smith  began 
urging  the  colonization  of  Virginia 
and  as  a  result  letters  patent  were 
issued  by  the  King,  James  I,  to  the 
territory  on  the  sea-coast  of  America 
from  the  thirty-fourth  to  the  thirty- 
eighth  degrees,  north  latitude,  to- 


lEttgltalf 


gethcr  with  all  the  islands  within  a 
hundred  miles  of  these  shores  and 
extending  to  the  Western  Ocean. 

Under  this  authority  there  set  sail 
from  Blackwall,  England,  on  the 
nineteenth  day  of  December,  1606, 
one  hundred  and  five  aspiring  colo- 
nists. These  vessels  were  the  "God 
Speed,"  "Discovery,"  and  "Susan 
Constant,"  the  largest  being  of  less 
than  one  hundred  tons  burthen. 

The  beginning  of  the  voyage  was 
inauspicious  and  discouraging.  Buf- 
feted about  by  angry  seas  for  six 
weeks  before  losing  sight  of  their 
home  land,  internal  dissensions  were 
added  to  their  discomforts.  At  last 
they  encountered  more  favorable 
weather,  and,  by  the  old  circuitous 
route,  reached  the  West  Indies  where 
they  landed  and  carried  on  a  smart 
trade  with  the  "Salvages."  After 
resting  several  weeks  they  resumed 
the  journey  toward  Virginia.  Their 
expectation  was  to  land  on  Roanoke 
Island  but  one  of  the  great  Cape  Hat- 


teras  storms  bore  them  out  of  their 
course  and  carried  them  beyond  their 
expected  landing  place.  So  it  was 
that  on  the  twenty-sixth  day  of  April, 
1607,  they  made  the  coast  of  Virginia 
and  landed  at  a  point  which  they 
named  Cape  Henry.  To  the  opposite 
point  they  gave  the  name  Cape 
Charles,  both  names  being  in  honor 
of  the  sons  of  their  King.  A  party 
of  thirty  went  ashore  at  Cape  Henry 
to  recreate  themselves  and  received 
their  first  lesson  in  Indian  warfare, 
being  attacked  by  a  body  of  savages 
who  crept  upon  them  from  the  hills 
and  forests.  In  looking  about  for 
the  best  place  for  a  settlement  the 
colonists  cruised  about  for  two  or 
three  weeks.  They  anchored  at  a 
point  which  they  called  Point  Com- 
fort and  partook  of  the  oysters  which 
they  gathered  along  the  beach  and  of 
the  strawberries  which  they  said  were 
fine,  "four  times  bigger  and  better 
than  ours  in  England."  But  they 
were  not  quite  satisfied  with  Point 


BURNING    OP    FIRST    PERMANENT    ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT    IN    AMERICA 
Old  print  in  the  archives  of  the  Historical  Exhibit  at  the   Jamestown  Exposition 


Ififlr     uter-flkninuttal     ttt     Ammra 


[Enl»ixedfrom»cutinth«5V-*///i-7<^»TO«X«//«««j'C«*««-  ffa  rirffxla,feaaa*  in  ktt  jaarlOW.     Printed  at  Leyden  by  Peter  Vandcr,  1707.     A  pamphlet,    inno.] 

FIFTEEN    YEARS    AFTER    FIRST    PERMANENT    ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT     IN    AMERICA 


Comfort  as  a  location  for  their  settle- 
ment, and,  proceeding  up  the  river, 
which  they  called  James,  they  hoped 
to  find  a  better  place.  It  may  be, 
too,  they  still  had  thoughts  of  that 
ignus  fatui  of  all  the  early  explora- 
tions, the  Northwest  Passage  to  In- 
dia. On  the  thirteenth  day  of  May 
they  moored  their  boats  to  the  trees 
and  landed  on  a  projection  from  the 
northern  shore  of  the  river  and  that 
very  day  the  ax  was  buried  in  the 
trees  of  the  primeval  forest  and 
the  first  shafts  were  hewn  out  for  the 
foundation  of  the  city  of  the  Royal 
James,  henceforth  to  be  called  James- 
town, the  first  permanent  English  set- 
tlement in  the  New  World. 

Of  the  trials  and  tribulations  of 
this  infant  settlement,  the  world  is 
familiar.  There  were  seasons  of  sun- 
shine and  seasons  of  shadow,  times  of 
plenty  and  starving  times ;  there  were 
dissensions  within  and  savage  treach- 
ery and  cruelty  without.  So  many 
were  the  discouragements  that  the 
colony  must  have  perished  miserably 
had  not  the  masterful  spirit  of  John 


Smith  prevailed.  He  it  was  who 
pacified  the  Indians  and  procured 
from  them  the  life-sustaining  corn ; 
he  it  was  who  quieted  the  internal 
strifes  by  firmness  and  a  requirement 
that  "he  who  will  not  work  shall  not 
eat." 

Three  hundred  years  have  passed 
away  since  this  memorable  day  in 
May,  1607,  but,  despite  the  spirit  of 
commercialism  which  is  abroad  in  our 
fair  land,  there  are  thousands  of 
brave  souls  and  true,  from  the  ice- 
bound North  to  the  sun-kissed  South, 
that  thrill  with  patriotic  pride  at 
the  remembrance  of  "Old  James- 
town." This  village,  for  it  was  never 
more  than  a  village,  was  verily  the 
keystone  of  the  arch  of  "the  land  of 
the  free  and  the  home  of  the  brave." 

Little  now  remains  of  this  cradle 
of  the  English  race  in  America,  ex- 
cept the  ruins  of  the  tower  of  the  old 
church  within  whose  walls  nearly 
three  centuries  ago  the  Gospel  was 
preached  and  songs  of  praise  went  up 
from  the  great  hearts  of  those  brave 
adventurers  who  were  ready  to  suffer, 

2t6 


ROYAL  ARMS  AND  SEAL  ON  THE  FIRST 
MAP  OF  THE  FIRST  ENGLISH  SETTLE- 
MENT IN  AMERICA— Issued  in  John  Smith's 
"Historic"  published  in  London,  England,  in  1629 

yea  to  die,  if  need  be,  to  plant  the 
standard  of  liberty  on  the  soil  of 
America.  This  old  .tower  has  well 
withstood  the  storms,  vandalism  and 
neglect  of  nearly  three  hundred  years 
and  stands  to-day  an  impressive  land- 
mark, a  prophetic  reminder  of  the 
mutability  of  all  things  material. 

Lancet  slits  high  up  in  the  tower 
indicate  that  it  was  used  as,,  a  fort  or 
block-house  against  sudden  attacks  of 
Indians.  In  our  minds'  eye  we  can 
see  rough  old  Sir  William  Berkley  or 
the  noble  Nathaniel  Bacon  going 
through  these  narrow  slits,  but  not  on 
the  same  day,  as  Bacon  and  the  gov- 
ernor never  could  agree.  Ivy  creeps 
over  the  ruined  walls  of  the  tower, 
clinging  to  the  bricks  like  the  his- 
torical associations  which  cluster 
about  everything  connected  with  the 
place. 

This  was  not  the  first  church  but 
most  likely  the  third.  The  first  was 
made  by  "hanging  up  an  old  sail, 
fastening  it  to  three  or  four  trees, 
seats  of  logs,  and  a  bar  of  wood  be- 


tween  two  trees  served  for  a  pulpit." 
The  next,  so  says  Smith,  was  "like  a 
barn,  set  upon  crotchets."  The  third 
was  the  one  on  which  the  old  tower 
still  stands.  On  this  spot  Pocahontas, 
the  tried  and  true  friend  of  the  Eng- 
lish, received  the  rites  of  Christian 
baptism  and  here  she  was  married  to 
John  Rolfe,  April,  1614.  Powhatan 
readily  consented  to  the  alliance  and 
sent  his  brother  to  give  away  his 
daughter.  It  was  a  memorable  day, 
as  may  be  supposed,  in  the  annals  of 
Old  Jamestown  and  it  may  be  doubted 
whether  a  single  adult  in  the  colony 
was  absent  from  the  ceremony.  Sir 
Thomas  Gates  beamed  with  happiness 
while  the  dusky  countenances  of  the 
brothers  of  Pocahontas  and  other 
youths  and  maidens  of  the  forest 
glowed  with  pleasure. 

In  the  churchyard  about  the  old 
tower  lies  the  tombs  of  the  Sher- 
woods,  the  Blairs,  the  Harrisons, 
Lady  Frances  Berkley  and  many 
others  whose  names  are  familiar  to 
every  schoolboy  and  girl  of  the  land. 
Men  and  women  of  high  degree  or 
low,  they  sleep  side  by  side  "waiting 
for  a  Joyful  Resurrection"  as  some  of 
the  inscriptions  on  the  tombstones  de- 
clare. The  old  fort  of  colonial  days 
was  near  the  church  and  its  ruins  are 
still  discernible.  It  was  used  by 
Cornwallis  as  a  part  of  his  fortifica- 
tion in  the  closing  campaign  of  the 


GRAVES  OP  THE  FIRST  SETTLERS 
One  of  first  interments  in  Jamestown 


Ififlr     Gkr-<E*tti*mttal     in     Ammra    19flr 


RUINS    OF    FIRST    PERMANENT    ENGLISH    SETTLEMENT    IN    AMERICA 
Old  Ambler  Mansion  on  Jamestown  Island-Preserved  by  the  Society  for  the  Preservation  of  Virginia  Antiquities 


Revolution  and  again  by  General 
McClellan  in  the  Civil  War.  Save 
for  these  two  interruptions  the  soli- 
tude of  the  place  seems  not  to  have 
been  disturbed  from  the  date  of  the 
abandonment  of  the  colony  in  favor 
of  Williamsburg  in  1699,  to  1892, 
when  the  patriotism  of  the  country 
cried  out  for  the  preservation  of  the 
historic  ruins  and  the  Association 
for  the  Preservation  of  Virginia  An- 
tiquities secured  the  title  to  the  prop- 
erty. Since  that  date  much  has  been 
done  to  preserve  the  place  from  fur- 
ther demolition  and  also  to  restore  the 
foundations  of  some  of  the  ancient 
buildings.  The  general  government 
has  erected  a  bulwark  to  prevent  the 
never-ceasing  tide  of  the  mighty 
James  from  making  further  inroads 
upon  the  sacred  soil,  many  acres  of 
which  it  has  long  since  carried  toward 
the  sea. 

In  addition  to  the  Ter-Centennial 
Exposition  which  opens  April  26,  on 


the  shores  of  Hampton  Roads,  in 
commemoration  of  the  three  hun- 
dredth anniversary  of  the  founding  of 
this  settlement,  the  national  govern- 
ment will  this  year  commemorate  the 
event  by  the  erection  of  an  obelisk 
within  the  limits  of  the  first  settle- 
ment. Thus  at  last  Jamestown  is 
coming  into  its  own 

The  American  people  are  now 
gathering  at  the  shrine  of  the  Na- 
tion's birth ;  the  peoples  of  the  earth 
are  paying  homage  to  the  Western 
Continent,  to-day  one  of  the  greatest 
powers  in  civilization ;  the  brother 
nations  of  the  Eastern  Continent  are 
extending  a  beautiful  tribute  of  Good 
Will  by  sending  their  military  and 
naval  emissaries  to  join  the  wonder- 
ful pageant  of  Peace  in  which  the  sol- 
diers of  all  flags  are  to  march  side  by 
side  in  the  Land  of  the  Stars  and 
Stripes. 

The  United  States  has  never  hith- 
erto permitted  armed  companies  of 

218 


foreign  soldiery  to  visit  this  country; 
consequently  for  the  first  time  Amer- 
icans will  see  an  international  en- 
campment— the  greatest  military 
spectacle  the  world  has  ever  seen — 
the  grandest  naval  rendezvous  in  his- 
tory. 

It  is,  indeed,  a  bright  omen  of  the 
future  when  the  soldiers  and  sailors 
of  all  nations  meet  in  Peace  and 
Friendship.  It  also  is  beyond  com- 
prehension to  consider  this  vast  wil- 


derness of  three  hundred  years  ago 
and  then  gaze  upon  it  as  a  World 
Power  to-day,  and  to  realize  that 
quaint  Old  Jamestown  is  in  a  few 
short  days  to  witness  the  competitive 
flights  of  the  airships  of  all  countries, 
the  races  of  dirigible  balloons  for 
commercial  purposes,  and  see  the 
conceptions  of  the  brain  of  men  and 
the  products  of  man's  skilful  hand  of 
three  marvelous  centuries. 

Truly,  this  is  an  Age  of  Wonders ! 


AN        OLD        ENGLISH        PLAY         ON       AMERICA 


The  New  World  was  the  Talk  of  the  Taverns  in  the  Old  World— Gallants,  Ad- 
venturers and  Poets  told  tales  of  its  Fabulous  Riches  —  Playwrights  made 
mention  of  it  in  their  Dramas— One  of  Popular  Plays  of  the  Day  was  "Westward 
Hoe,"  written  by  Johnson,  Chapman  and  Marston,  In  which  appear  these  lines: 


Scapethrift:  Is  there  such  treasure 
there,  Captain,  as  I  have  heard? 

Captain  Seagull:  I  tell  thee,  golde  is 
more  plentiful  there  than  copper  is 
with  us;  and  as  for  much  redde  cop- 
per as  I  can  bring,  He  have  thrice  the 
waight  of  gold.  Why,  man,  all  their 
dripping  pans  and  their  chamber 
pottes  are  fine  gold;  and  all  the 
chaines  with  which  they  chaine  up 
their  streets  are  massie  gold ;  and  all 
the  prisoners  they  take  are  fettered  in 
gold ;  and  for  rubies  and  diamonds, 
they  goe  forth  on  holy  days  and 
gather  'hem  by  the  seashore,  to  hang 
on  their  children's  coates,  and  stick 
in  their  capps,  as  commonly  as  our 
children  weare  saffron  guilt  brooches 
and  groates  with  hoales  in  'hem. 

Scapethrift:  And  is  it  a  pleasant 
countrie  withall? 

Seagull:  As  ever  the  sun  shinde  on ; 
temperate  and  full  of  all  sorts  of  ex- 
cellent viands ;  wilde  boare  is  as  com- 
mon as  our  tamest  bacon  is  here ;  ven- 
ison as  mutton.  And  then  you  shall 


live  freely  there,  without  sargeants, 
or  courtiers,  or  lawyers,  or  intelli- 
gencers. .  .  .  Then  for  your 
meanes  to  advancement,  there  it  is 
simple,  and  not  preposterously  mixt. 
You  may  be  an  alderman  there,  and 
never  be  scavenger ;  you  may  be  a 
nobleman,  and  never  be  a  slave.  You 
may  come  to  preferment  inough,  and 
never  be  a  pandar ;  to  riches  and  for- 
tune inough,  and  have  never  the  more 
villiance,  nor  the  lesse  wit.  Besides, 
there  we  shall  have  no  more  law  than 
conscience,  and  not  too  much  of 
either;  serve  God  inough,  eat  and 
drinke  inough,  and  "inough  is  as  good 
as  a  feast." 

Spcndall:  Gods  me!  and  how  farre 
is  it  thether? 

Seagull:  Some  six  weekes  sayle,  no 
more,  with  any  indifferent  winde. 
And  if  I  get  to  any  part  of  the  coast  of 
Africa,  lie  saile  thether  with  any 
winde  or  when  I  come  to  Cape  Finis- 
ter,  ther's  foreright  winde  continuall 
wafts  us  till  we  come  at  Virginia. 


aig 


This  portraiture  of  Pocahontas  is  from  a  rare  engraving  now  in  the  possession  of  Mrs. 
Herbert  Jones,  of  Sculthorpe  Rectory,  near  Fakenham,  England,  and  believed  to  be  an 
original  by  Simon  de  Passe.  It  is  embellished  with  a  Latin  inscription  and  is  a  small 
quarto-size  engraving  that  may  possibly  be  the  one  referred  to  in  the  letter  of  March 
29, 1617,  quoted  in  Birch's  "  Court  and  Times  of  James  I,"  which  reads:  "  The  Virginian 
woman,  whose  picture  I  sent  you,  died  this  last  week  at  Gravesend  as  she  was 
returning  homeward."  There  is  another  portrait,  that  claims  to  be  the  original  of 
Pocahontas,  now  in  possession  of  Mrs.  Stewart,  of  Heachem,  England,  representing 
Pocahontas  in  native  costume,  seated,  with  her  only  child,  the  John  Rolff  from  whom 
some  of  the  first  Virginia  families  have  sprung,  standing  at  her  side.  There  is  no  in- 
scription on  this  ancient  English  canvas  but  it  bears  all  the  marks  of  authenticity 


Itt  Amerua 


®I  I  KRE    is    no    romance    in 
American    Literature 
more  beautiful  than  that 
of   the    Indian    princess, 
Pocahontas,  her  woman- 
ly courage  and  fortitude, 
her  fidelity  to  the  white 
race  and  the  dawn  of  the  light  of  civ- 
ilization  which  lifted   her   from   sav- 
agery to  the  Court  of  King  James 
and  the  admiration  and  "love  of  the 
English-speaking  world. 

The  American  people  should  pay 
homage  to  her  memory  on  this  anni- 
versary of  the  deeds  of  heroism  in 
which  this  beautiful  Indian  girl 
offered  her  life  to  the  cause  of  civili- 
zation. Whether  or  not  the  tradition 
of  the  rescue  of  the  gallant  John 
Smith,  as  he  was  about  to  be  slain  by 
her  father's  tribe,  is  true  does  not  in 
the  least  diminish  the  nobility  and  the 
beauty  of  this  Indian  maid.  That  she 
was  the  power  behind  the  throne  is 
beyond  all  doubt  and  to  her  must  be 
given  the  credit  for  the  influence  that 
several  times  saved  the  absolute  ex- 
termination of  the  English-speaking 
settlement  which  to-day  claims  the 
attention  of  the  world  as  the  cradle 
of  the  Republic. 

The  first  Anglo-American  alliance, 
the  first  union  of  continents — in  truth  I 
the   blending   of   the    American-born  I 
strain  with  the  strong  blood  of   1 .11 
rope,  a  strain  that  has  ever  since  and  | 
is  to-day  making  the  American  race 
the  strongest  on  the  face  of  the  earth 
—was   that  of  this   daughter  of  the 
American  Indians  and  a  son  of  Old 
England.     From   this   union   has   de- 
scended many  of  the  illustrious  Vir- 
ginians who  have  full  claim  to  blood 
more   noble   than   monarchal    royalty 
— a  blood  that  has  forced  civilization 
along. 

On  that  notable  wedding  day,  in  I 
April  of  1614,  the  American  aborig- 
ines and  the  white  men  concluded  a  I 
peace  which  was  stamped  in  brass  I 
and  proclaimed  to  whomsoever  it  I 
might  concern.  The  little  church  I 
with  pews  and  pulpit  of  cedar  was  I 
trimmed  with  sweetest  April  flowers. 
Pocahontas,  the  bride,  the  daughter 
of  the  old  war-chief,  Powhatan.  was 


Memorial  Window  presented  by  the  Indian  Girls  of 
Hampton  Institute  to  St.  John's  Church  at  Hamp- 
ton, Virginia,  the  oldest  standing  Protestant  Ec- 
clesiastical structure  on  the  Western  Continent 


Old  engraving  of  Pocahontas  Rescuing  Captain  John  Smith 


led  to  the  altar  by  her  aged  uncle, 
Apachisco,  with  the  consent  of  her 
father  and  friends.  Two  of  her 
brothers  were  present,  the  ritual  of 
the  Church  of  England  was  read  by 
Reverend  Richard  Buck,  and  the  first 
citizens  of  the  new  America  witnessed 
the  union  of  the  continents. 

Three  years  before,  Pocahontas  had 
been  baptized  into  Christianity  and 
christened  "Rebecca."  Her  true 
name.  Matoaka,  given  her  by  her 
father  at  birth,  had  long  been  lost  in 
the  affectionate  pet  name  of  Poca- 
hontas, meaning  "little  Wanton." 

The  bridegroom,  John  Rolfe,  was 
a  widower,  a  member  of  an  ancient 
family  of  Heacham,  County  Norfolk, 
England,  a  strong  man  who  had  been 
secretary  of  state  in  the  English  col- 
ony and  was  highly  respected.  He 
took  his  Indian  bride  to  England 
where  her  lovable  disposition  won 
the  hearts  of  the  English  people.  She 
was  introduced  at  court  by  Lord  and 
Lady  Delaware  and  her  name  was  on 
the  lips  of  the  English  aristocracy. 
Some  of  the  old  state  records  bear 
these  entries: 

1616.  June.  Sir  Thomas  Dale  returned 
from  Virginia  and  brought  divers  men  and 


women  of  that  country  to  be  educated  in 
England.  One  Rolfe  also  brought  his 
wife  Pocahuntas  the  daughter  of  Powha- 
Uin — "the  Barbarous  Prince." 

While  in  the  full  light  of  Old 
World  civilization  the  darkness  of  the 
long  night  fell  upon  her,  and  these 
last  few  lines  from  the  old  state  rec- 
ords close  the  story. 

1617,  18  Jan.,  London.  The  Virginia 
woman  Pocahuntas  has  been  with  the 
King.  She  is  returning  home  sore  against 
her  will. 

1617.,  29  March,  London.  The  Virginia 
woman  died  at  Gravesend  on  her  return. 

The  register  of  the  Church  at 
Gravesend  relates : 

1616,  May  2,  Rebecca  Rrplf,  wyff  of 
Thomas  Rrolf,  gent.  A  Virginia  Lady 
borne,  was  buried  in  the  Chauncell. 

One  year  later,  in  1618,  the  old 
war-chief,  Powhatan,  scarred  by 
many  a  conflict  between  savagery  and 
civilization,  went  to  his  sleep  and 
while  to-day  the  English-speaking 
people  of  the  world  are  paying  hom- 
age to  the  memory  of  this  dear 
daughter  of  the  forests,  who  would 
dare  say  that  she  who  died  in  the 
golden  light  of  civilization  is  not  res-t- 
ing in  the  arms  of  her  barbarian 
father  upon  whom  the  light  of  under- 
standing never  dawned? 


Chapman's  Famous  Picture  of  the  Baptism  of  Pocahontas  in  1613 


Old  Engraving  of  the  Marriage  of  Pocahontas  to  John  Rolfe  about  April  15,  1614 


Oil  Painting  of  Lord  Delaware 

Who  Arrived  at  Jamestown  on  June  10, 1610 

And  Introduced  Pocahontas  to  the  Court  of  King  James  in  England  In  1617 

Original  in  Possession  of  the 

Society  for  the  Preservation  of  Virginia  Antiquities 
in  the  State  Capitol  at  Richmond,  Virginia 


BRONZE    STATUS    OP    CAPTAIN    JOHN    SMITH 

BT  WILLIAM  OOUPER  OF  NEW  YORK 

TO  BB  UHVBILBD  AT  JAMB8TOWN  ISLAND 

REPTKMBEK,    NINBTEBN   HDNDRBD   AND   SBVEN 

BT  TH«  80CIBTY   FOB  THB  PRB8BBVATION  OF  VIRGINIA  ANTIO.UITIM 


Jin  Irotwr  of  a  Wtattt  Atomtiirm 


<Ibf  »r  Coving  Ctnra  3u«rrtbrb  to  felUrat  Julpi  tnrttij  bg 
b>   (Eomiirm  are  again  brMralri>  to  h.im   on   UyU   dljrrr 


of 


TO  G  FRIE: 

••.  •  - 

Tar 

Ami  .ins   too.    •  -    thy 

•       *< 
Now  some  will  aske,  what  Kr»- 


Is  added  to  thy  st««r-  K.r  all  thi>  ^ 

Th'  ;i 

'I'h'   .'-t    ••  .I  for  perils,  fwioe  am! 

all; 
Tis  1 


Amrrtr*« 


TO  I 

three   Turks    »n 

Before  two 

found  a  common 

We. 

In    faux     .Vincrica;    where    thott 
wo 
icsse   renowne   amongst  their 

i  warres,  that  thu«  ti\  twm- 


>sc  tyrants  daunt  thy  match- 

of  envies  spight? 
joontry  yet  reward  thy  merit, 
rs  take  delight? 
i  so  few  sheets  doth  more  ex- 

jmes  great.  thii>  is  thy  happi- 

:Mki' 


Land, 

-.'.rtiiT,    Gr- 
and pen  in  bold,  ruffe,  Mar- 

•  /  and  bfar*-  away  the  f>r 
esar  and  i  Can  it  be, 

see 
our 

^c  a  Bedlem  or  a  Stage. 

RICH.  JAMIS. 


KRJFND 

m  gore, 
>ugnt  be- 


in  actions  great  and  good  : 

taught  the  wor 


H  VCW  TOBK 

TO  Ti 

j'TBM  ur VDiiKO  / 


Jtt  H0tt0r 


Haltattt  Afoimtt«r?r 


HtytBt  Honing  Einra  3nerribrb  to  (gallant  inh.it  fctntth  bg 
fyifl  (Comprrro  arr  again  brotratfb  to  him  on  thin  CEhrrr 
Aumurraarii  of  f|ia  Ainrrirau  Explorations 

TO  HIS  APPROVED  FRIEND 

To   combate   with   three   Turks   in   single 

du'le, 
Before  two  Armies,  who  the  like  hath 

done? 
Slaine  thy  great  lailor;  found  a  common 

weale 
In    faire    America;    where    thou    hast 

wonne 
No  lesse   renowne   amongst  their   Savage 

Kings, 

Than  Turkish  warres,  that  thus  thy  hon- 
our sings. 
Could  not  those  tyrants  daunt  thy  match- 

lesse  spirit, 

Nor  all  the  cruelty  of  envies  spight? 
Will  not  thy  Country  yet  reward  thy  merit, 
Nor  in  thy  acts  and  writings  take  delight  ? 
Which  here  in  so  few  sheets  doth  more  ex- 
presse 

Than  volumes  great,  this  is  thy  happi- 
nesse.  RICHARD  MEADE. 


TO  HIS  DESERVING  FRIEND 

Mongst   Frenchmen,   Spanyards,   Hungars, 

Tartars,  Turks, 
And   wilde  Virginians   too,   this   tells   thy 

works : 
Now  some  will  aske,  what  benefit?  what 

gaine  ? 

Is  added  to  thy  store  for  all  this  paine? 
Th'  art  then  content  to  say,  content  is  all, 
Th    ast  got  content  for  perils,  paine  and 

thrall ; 
Tis  lost  to  looke  for  more:  for  few  men 

now 

Regard  Wit,  Learning,  yalour ;  but  allow 
The  quintessence  of  praise  to  him  that  can 
Number   his   owne   got   gold,    and    riches, 

than 
Th'    art    Valiant,    Learned,    Wise;    Pauls 

counsell  will. 

Admire  thy  merits,  magnifie  thy  skill. 
The  last  of  thine  to  which  I  set  my  hand 
Was   a   Sea   Grammar;   this  by   Sea  and 

Land, 

Serves  us  for  imitation:  I  know  none, 
That  like  thy  selfe  hast  come,  and  runne, 

and  gone, 
To  such  praise-worthy  actions:   bee't  ap- 

prou'd, 
Th'  ast  well  deserv'd  of  best  men  to  be 

lou'd : 

If  France,  or  Spame,  or  any  forren  soile 
Could   claime   thee   theirs,    for   these   thy 

paines  and  toile, 
Th'    adst    got    reward    and    honour,    now 

adayes, 
What  our  owne  natives  doe,  we  seldome 

praise. 
Good    men   will   yeeld   thee   praise;    then 

sleight  the  rest; 
Tis  best  praise-worthy  to  have  pleas  d  the 

best 

TUISSIMUS  ED.  lORDEN. 


TO  MY  WORTHY  FRIEND 

Deare   noble   Captaine,   who   by   Sea   and 

Land, 

To  act  the  earnest  of  thy  name  hast  hand 
And  heart;  who  canst  with  skill  design  the 

Fort, 
The  Leaguer,   Harbour,  City,   Shore,  and 

Port: 
Whose  sword  and  pen  in  bold,  ruffe,  Mar- 

tiall,  wise, 

Put  forth  to  try  and  beare  away  the  prize, 
From  Caesar  and  Blaize  Monluc :  Can  it  be, 
That  Men  alone  in  Gonnals  fortune  see 
Thy  worth  advanc'd?  no  wonder  since  our 

age, 
Is  now  at  large  a  Bedlem  or  a  Stage. 

RICH.  JAMES. 


TO  HIS  NOBLE  FRIEND 

To  see  bright  honour  sparkled  all  in  gore, 

Would  steele  a  spirit  that  ne're  fought  be- 
fore: 

And  that's  the  height  of  Fame,  when  our 
best  bloud, 

Is  nobly  spilt  in  actions  great  and  good : 

So  thou  hast  taught  the  world  to  purchase 
Fame, 

Rearing  thy  story  on  a  glorious  frame, 

And  such  foundation  doth  thy  merits  make 
it, 

As  all  detractions  rage  shall  never  shake 
it; 

Thy  actions  crowne  themselves,  and  thy 
owne  pen, 

Gives  them  the  best  and  truest  Epiphonem. 
BRIAN  O  ROVRKE. 


Thou  hast  no  need  to  covet  new  applause, 
Nor  doe  I  thinke  vaine-glory  moves  thee 

to  it; 
But  since  it  is  thy  will   (though  without 

cause) 
To  move  a  needlesse  thing,  yet  will  I  doe 

it. 
Doe  it  in  briefe  I  will,  or  else  I  doe  the 

wrong. 

And  say,  read  or'e  Captaine  Smiths  for- 
mer song; 

His  first  then  will  invite  thee  to  his  latter: 
Reader,   'tis   true;    I   am   not   brib'd   to 
flatter. 

EDW.  INGHAM. 


Ammratt  progrf  00  an  %  ffanfir  (to0i 


nf  tlj*  IJnipl*  aa  £xjirrssrii 
from  HI*   (gtromunra   of  tij*  Aau»rtran  (Enmm0ntn*aitffH 


THE   JOURNAL   OF   AMEHICAN    HISTORT 
BT 

HONORABLE  ALBERT  E.  MEAD.  GOVERNOR  OF  WASHINGTON 


coast  of  the  State  of 
Washington  was  visited 
by  the  early  English, 
Spanish,  and  Portu- 
guese  explorers  in  the 
sixteenth,  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries. 
To  Vancouver,  the  English  explorer 
of  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, is  due  the  first  full  and  authentic 
information  regarding  our  coast  line 
and  the  indentures  of  the  sea.  The 
search  for  the  fabled  Straits  of  Anian 
led  the  early  navigators  to  our  shores. 
The  first  American  to  visit  the  region 
now  embraced  in  Washington  was 
Captain  Gray,  of  Boston,  in  1789. 
His  expedition  consisted  of  the  ships 
"Columbia"  and  "Washington."  This 
visit,  antedating  that  of  Vancouver, 
forms  part  of  the  American  title  to  all 
of  the  old  Oregon  country,  which 
now  embraces  all  of  the  states  of  Ore- 
gon, Washington,  and  Idaho,  and 
that  portion  of  Montana  lying  west 
of  the  main  range  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  Our  title  to  the  region 
reads,  "by  occupation  and  discovery." 
As  early  as  1809,  American  trap- 


pers visited  what  is  now  the  State  of 
Washington.  In  1811,  Stewart  and 
Ross,  of  the  Pacific  Fur  Company,  at 
Astoria  (John  Jacob  Aster's  Com- 
pany) established  trading  posts  on 
the  Spokane  and  the  Okanogan  riv- 
ers, and  remained  over  the  winter 
there.  Other  Americans,  in  later 
years,  also  established  trading  posts 
in  various  parts  of  the  territory  which 
afterwards  became  Washington. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  during  the 
War  of  1812  the  British  secured  pos- 
session of  the  trading  post  at  Astoria, 
and  that  for  a  number  of  years  there- 
after the  post  was  administered  by 
the  Hudson  Bay  Company.  Astoria 
is  now  in  the  State  of  Oregon,  being 
on  the  south  bank  of  the  Columbia 
River.  In  1825,  Dr.  McLauglin. 
chief  factor  of  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany, removed  the  headquarters  of 
the  concern  from  Astoria  to  the  more 
advantageous  locality  of  Vancouver, 
on  the  north  bank  of  the  Columbia 
River,  now  in  the  State  of  Washing- 
ton. There  the  Company  built  up  an 
extensive  post;  surrounding  it  by 
more  than  three  thousand  acres  of 

a»6 


frnm  HaBtjwgfam  bg  (Soumtar 


farm  land,  which  it  tilled  assiduously ; 
and  establishing  in  connection  with  it 
the  headquarters  for  all  the  Hudson 
Bay  Company's  operations  in  the  re- 
gion lying  north  of  the  then  Mexican 
boundary  (now  the  northern  bound- 
ary of  California),  north  to  the  Arctic 
Ocean  and  east  to  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. All  the  region  then  was 
claimed  by  Great  Britain;  and  its 
affairs  both  politically  and  commer- 
cially were  handled  solely  and  exclu- 
sively by  the  Hudson  Bay  Company. 
Vancouver  was  the  real  capitol  of  the 
great  province.  From  Vancouver 
went  out  Peter  Skeene  Ogden,  a 
minor  official  of  the  Hudson  Bay 
Company,  to  discover  the  river  in 
Utah  which  now  bears  his  name,  and 
which  in  turn  gave  its  name  to  the 
prosperous  city  of  Ogden.  From 
here  also  went  the  men  to  establish 
the  first  settlements  in  what  is  now 
British  Columbia. 

Following  the  Hudson  Bay  Com- 
pany came  the  missionaries.  The 
first  real  American  settlement  in 
Washington,  aside  from  the  fur  posts, 
was  that  made  by  the  missionary, 
Marcus  Whitman,  at  Waiilaptu,  in 
1836.  There  he  and  many  others  met 
their  death  in  an  awful  massacre  by 
the  Cayuse  Indians,  in  1847.  Early 
in  the  forties  the  tide  of  western  emi- 
gration began  to  flow  toward  the 
Oregon  country;  and  hundreds  of 
families  moved  across  the  plains  in 
ox-carts  and  wagons  to  found  homes 
in  the  fertile  valleys  of  this  region. 
The  Willamette,  now  in  Oregon, 
seemed  to  be  the  first  objective  point ; 
but  from  there  many  penetrated  into 
what  is  now  Washington;  and  in 
1844  established  the  first  settlement 
on  Puget  Sound,  at  Tumwater. 

In  1853,  Congress  created  the  Ter- 
ritory of  Washington  out  of  a  part  of 
the  Territory  of  Oregon ;  and  the  new 
political  organization  came  into  being 
on  March  2,  1853.  It  then  included 
all  of  what  is  now  Washington, 
Idaho,  and  the  western  part  of  Mon- 
tana. Its  next  door  neighbor  on  the 
east  was  the  Territory  of  Nebraska. 


The  Northern  Pacific  Railroad 
was  completed  to  Puget  Sound  from 
the  head  of  Lake  Superior  in  1883; 
and  following  its  completion  popula- 
tion increased  rapidly.  In  1889,  when 
the  Territory  contained  a  population 
of  242,046,  Washington  was  admitted 
to  the  Union  as  a  State,  the  exact  date 
of  admission  being  November  n. 

A  new  commonwealth,  far  off  here 
on  the  Western  shore  of  the  conti- 
nent, Washington  has  yet  played  her 
part  in  the  history  of  the  Nation. 
During  the  savage  Indian  wars  of 
1854-55-56  she  put  two  regiments  of 
volunteers  into  the  field.  In  1862, 
when  the  population  of  the  Territory 
perhaps  did  not  exceed  ten  thousand 
souls,  she  gave  a  full  regiment  for  the 
defense  of  the  Union.  Lack  of  trans- 
portation, and  because  of  its  need  at 
home  to  take  the  place  of  the  regu- 
lars withdrawn  for  the  war,  caused 
this  regiment  to  spend  its  four  years 
of  service  on  the  Coast;  doing  not 
idle  garrison  duty,  but  holding  the 
savage  tribes  in  check.  In  addition 
to  these  contributions  to  the  arms  of 
the  Nation,  many  of  the  citizens  of 
the  Territory  served  notably  in  the 
Union  Army  in  other  organizations. 
Chief  among  them  all  was  Isaac  In- 
galls  Stevens,  a  West  Point  graduate, 
a  distinguished  engineer  officer  of  the 
Army  in  the  Mexican  War,  and  the 
first  governor  of  the  Territory  of 
Washington.  Stevens  also  had  served 
as  delegate  in  Congress  from  the  ter- 
ritory from  1857  to  1861.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  war  he  tendered  his 
services  to  the  government,  and  rose 
by  various  stages  to  be  major-gene- 
ral of  volunteers.  His  dramatic 
death  at  the  Battle  of  Chantilly,  in 
1862,  while  leading  his  division  in  a 
charge  is  part  of  the  National  history. 
It  is  interesting  to  note  also  that  j. 
Patton  Anderson,  who  came  here  in 
1853  as  first  United  States  marshal 
for  the  Territory,  and  who  served  as 
delegate  in  Congress  for  Washington 
from  1855  to  1857,  served  with  dis- 
tinction in  the  Confederate  Army 
during  the  war,  rising  to  be  brigadier- 


a    mt 


$arifir    (Enaat 


general ;  and  also  served  for  a  time  in 
the  Confederate  Congress  as  a  mem- 
ber from  Florida. 

In  the  days  before  the  Civil  War, 
Generals  Grant,  Sherman,  Sheridan, 
and  McClellan  all  served  at  army 
posts  in  Washington  Territory;  and 
these  posts  cherish  many  traditions 
about  their  associations.  Pickett, 
afterwards  a  great  Confederate  gen- 
eral, famous  for  his  charge  at  Gettys- 
burg, as  a  captain  in  the  Ninth  United 
States  Infantry,  played  a  prominent 
part  in  the  early  life  of  Washington. 
In  1857  and  1859,  when  the  dispute 
as  to  the  boundary  line  in  the  extreme 
northwestern  part  of  Washington 
came  near  plunging  this  country  and 
Great  Britain  into  war,  Pickett  was 
in  command  of  the  American  forces 
which  landed  on  the  islands  in  dis- 
pute and  held  them  for  this  govern- 
ment. Captain  Raphael  Semmes  of 
the  Navy,  later  commander  of  the 
Confederate  privateer  "Alabama," 
was  in  those  days  in  command  of  the 
vessel  of  the  American  Navy  in  these 
waters,  and  co-operated  with  Pickett. 

The  period  between  the  establish- 
ment of  Washington  as  a  territory 
and  the  completion  of  the  Northern 
Pacific  Railroad,  was  one  of  slow 
growth  for  the  Territory,  but  was 
marked  by  material  progress.  The 
people  developed,  in  a  measure,  the 
wonderful  resources  of  the  common- 
wealth; shipped  their  lumber  from 
the  ports  of  Puget  Sound  to  the  ports 
of  the  civilized  world ;  opened  up  coal 
mines ;  and  even  built  a  railroad  with 
their  own  resources  long  prior  to  the 
time  when  steel  rails  connected  them 
with  other  portions  of  the  continent. 
The  last  ten  years  has  been  the  period 
of  the  State's  greatest  development 
and  progress.  The  population  of  the 
State  now  is  approximately  900,000, 
as  against  518,103  in  1900;  this  in  an 
area  of  66,880  square  miles.  Ridged 
through  its  approximate  center  from 
north  to  south  by  the  Cascade  Moun- 
tains, the  State  has  two  markedly  dif- 
ferent regions.  The  Western  por- 
tion, which  now  contains  the  bulk  of 


the  population,  is  notable  for  its  fine 
harbors,  its  enormous  areas  of  stand- 
ing timber,  its  manufacturing  enter- 
prises, its  fertile  valleys,  its  stores  of 
coal  and  minerals,  its  enormous  trade 
by  direct  lines  of  steamships  with  the 
Orient,  Alaska,  and  the  maritime  na- 
tions of  the  world,  and  its  remarkably 
prosperous  cities,  chief  of  which  is 
Seattle,  with  a  population  of  approxi- 
mately 200,000.  Tacoma,  also  on  the 
Sound,  has  a  population  of  85,000, 
and  is  growing  rapidly.  Bellingham, 
Everett,  Aberdeen,  Hoquiam,  and 
Olympia  also  are  important  towns. 

The  eastern  portion  of  the  State, 
while  great  in  manufacturing  and 
other  departments  of  industry,  is 
chiefly  notable  for  its  agricultural  and 
horticultural  resources.  It  produces 
approximately  35,000,000  bushels  of 
wheat  per  year,  and  other  agricul- 
tural products  in  proportion.  The 
chief  city  of  Eastern  Washington  is 
Spokane,  with  a  population  of  80,000. 
Other  important  towns  are  Walla 
Walla,  Yakima,  and  Ellensburg. 

The  fish  products  of  the  State  ag- 
gregate a  value  of  between  $10,000,- 
ooo  and  $12,000,000  a  year.  Ap- 
proximately 4,000,000  tons  of  coal 
are  produced  annually  in  the  State. 
The  lumber  and  woodenware  prod- 
ucts aggregate  annually  a  value  of 
about  $70,000,000.  And  in  every 
department  of  industry  the  increase 
is  notable.  For  instance,  there  are 
approximately  86,000  acres  devoted 
to  fruit  culture  in  the  State,  an  in- 
crease of  one  hundred  per  cent  in  the 
last  two  years.  Irrigation  in  the  arid 
and  semi-arid  regions  of  eastern 
Washington,  the  advent  of  the  trolley 
line  in  rural  communities,  the  great 
extension  of  all  transportation  facil- 
ities, contribute  materially  to  this  de- 
velopment. The  Northern  Pacific, 
Great  Northern,  and  Harriman  lines 
all  have  termini  in  the  State,  and 
other  systems  reach  here  by  traffic 
arrangements  with  these.  A  notable 
feature  of  the  present  year  has  been 
the  coming  of  various  other  transcon- 
tinental lines.  Nearly  2,000  miles  of 


228 


from 


bg 


new  mainline  railroad  tracks  are  now 
under  construction  within  the  State, 
to  be  added  to  the  3,300  miles  of 
mainline  that  the  State  now  contains. 
In  addition  to  this  3,300  miles  of 
mainline  there  are  approximately  six 
hundred  of  side-track.  In  the  last 
eighteen  months,  millions  of  dollars 
have  been  expended  by  various  sys- 
tems in  the  purchase  of  terminal  fa- 
cilities on  Puget  Sound.  Every  rail- 
road line  of  importance  within  five 
hundred  miles  of  our  shores  is  build- 
ing hither. 

In  the  State  of  Washington  the 
pure  American  strain  predominates. 
Our  people  are  drawn  chiefly  from 
the  other  states  of  the  Union,  every 
section  of  the  continent  having  a  well- 
proportioned  representation  here.  In 
addition,  we  have  a  considerable  for- 
eign-born population  drawn  chiefly 
from  the  United  Kingdom  and  from 
the  northern  countries  of  Europe.  A 
large  portion  of  the  foreign-born  ele- 
ment has  entered  upon  agricultural 
pursuits.  In  fact,  the  development 
of  a  number  of  our  newer  and  richer 
agricultural  sections  is  due  entirely 
to  the  industry  of  newcomers  from 
Northern  Europe;  and  almost  with- 
out exception  these  people  are  among 
the  thriftiest  and  most  industrious  in 
the  Commonwealth.  In  the  intensely 
American  atmosphere  and  environ- 
ment of  the  State,  the  immigrants  we 
have  received  have  become  quickly 
assimilated  into  our  population.  Im- 
migration has  had  absolutely  no  evil 
effect  on  our  citizenship. 

This  is  a  state  of  abundant  oppor- 
tunity for  all  industrious  men  and 
women.  It  would  seem  that  there  is 
something  here  worth  while  in  every 
department  of  human  activity.  La- 
bor commands  the  highest  wage  scale 
on  earth,  and  is  in  constant  demand. 
Our  resources  are  being  developed 
rapidly,  but  the  development  does  not 
keep  pace  with  the  development  of 
our  constantly  increasing  markets. 
Our  sea  trade  is  becoming  prodigious. 
The  last  fiscal  year  showed  an  in- 
crease of  more  than  $10,000,000  in 

MI 


the  export  and  import  trade  of  our 
Puget  Sound  ports.  All  these  things 
mean  opportunity  both  for  capital  and 
labor.  Hence  there  is  no  Capital  and 
Labor  problem  in  the  State  of  Wash- 
ington. 

The  greatest  need  of  the  State  to- 
day is  more  transportation  facilities. 
But  this  is  coming  rapidly.  Of 
course,  we  need  more  industrious 
men  and  women,  and  more  capital  to 
develop  our  natural  wealth.  But 
these  will  come  with  the  better  trans- 
portation facilities.  And  parentheti- 
cally I  might  remark  that  this  need 
of  our  State  is  but  the  need  of  the 
whole  country.  Transportation  is  a 
civilizer  and  a  builder,  for  it  creates 
opportunities. 

We  are  proud  of  the  population  of 
the  State  of  Washington,  because  it 
is  the  testimony  of  all  careful  observ- 
ers that  it  is  the  most  representative 
population  of  any  American  State. 
Drawn  as  it  is  from  every  portion  of 
the  Republic,  and  from  the  parent 
European  stock,  it  is  a  fair  sample  of 
the  population  of  the  whole  country. 
The  composite  Washingtonian  is  a 
composite  American.  That  progres- 
sive, independent,  sturdy  patriotism 
that  is  finding  its  expression  through- 
out the  American  Union,  is  well  ex- 
emplified in  the  State  of  Washington. 
Our  people  are  demanding  better 
government  here  in  Washington,  and 
are  paying  more  attention  to  the  du- 
ties and  responsibilities  of  citizenship 
than  ever  before.  I  think  we  are  in 
advance  of  many  of  the  states  in  this 
regard.  But  we  are  simply  express- 
ing, perhaps,  more  fervently  than 
elsewhere  the  prevailing  American 
assertion  that  all  our  governments, 
local  or  national,  must  be  adminis- 
tered in  accordance  with  the  doctrine 
of  the  Square  Deal ;  and  that  no  priv- 
ileged classes  shall  exist  in  any  of 
our  communities.  The  State  of 
Washington  is  doing  its  utmost  to 
maintain  a  high  standard  of  citizen- 
ship. More  than  two-thirds  of  all 
the  taxes  paid  in  the  State  are  ex- 
pended for  free  education.  In  addi- 


Ammran 


mt 


JJarifir    (Eoaat 


tion  to  the  public  schools  maintained 
in  every  community,  the  State  sup- 
ports a  State  University,  a  State 
Agricultural  Cpllege  and  School  of 
Science,  and  three  State  Normal 
Schools.  We  have  more  than  2,500 
school  districts  in  the  State,  in  two 
hundred  and  eighty-five  of  which 
there  are  schools  of  higher  grade 
These  schools  are  taught  by  5,179 
teachers,  and  attended  by  170,386 
children  out  of  a  total  of  207,099  chil- 
dren of  school  age  within  the  State. 
The  State  demands  high  qualifica- 
tions from  its  teachers.  We  are  con- 
stantly drawing  to  the  work  of  educa- 
tion in  Washington  the  best  material 
to  be  found  in  the  country.  Our 
school  laws  are  enlightened  and  mod- 
ern, our  system  of  instruction  that 
approved  by  the  foremost  men  in  the 
teaching  profession. 


You  ask  me  if  corporal  punish- 
ment has  been  abolished.  It  has  not. 
Its  use  lies  within  the  judgment  of 
the  administrators  of  the  schools 
themselves;  and  since  the  schools  are 
administered  by  a  high  class  of  men 
and  women,  there  has  been  no  public 
demand  for  new  regulations  on  this 
subject. 

In  all  of  our  cities  and  towns 
churches  are  among  the  finest  build- 
ings. The  number  of  these,  and  their 
attendance,  denote  that  the  people  of 
this  State  are  a  God-fearing  people. 

To  your  concluding  inquiry,  "Do 
you  believe  that  patriotism  is  waning 
or  increasing  in  the  United  States?" 
I  must  reply  most  emphatically  that 
patriotism  is  increasing  in  the  United 
States,  and  that  the  citizenship  is 
growing  better  year  by  year. 


COMPULSORY  MILITARY  TRAINING  IN   AMERICA 

Accurate  Transcript  from  Original  Order  Issued  in  New  England  in  1765  and  Contributed 
BY    BENJAMIN    C.    LUM 

To  Mr  John  Howd  Clark  of  the  First  Training  Band  in  Darby  in  ye  2d  Ridgment 
Greeting — Whereas  by  a  Courtmarshall  held  in  Sd  Darby  by  the  Commissions  Officers 
of  Sd  Train  Band  on  the  3d  Day  of  June  A  D  1765  these  Several  Persona  hereafter  names 
ware  Ordered  and  Adjudged  to  pay  the  Several  fines  hereafter  affixed  to  their  names  for 
nonappearance  and  Defiance  in  the  Vewing  of  arms  on  the  6th  Day  of  May  1765  being 
Training  Day  Duely  warned  whereof  Execution  Remains  to  be  Done — These  are  therefore 
in  his  Majesties  Name  to  Command  you  that  of  the  goods  Chattels  or  money  of  the  Several 
Persons  Hereafter  names  you  Cause  to  be  Levyed  the  Several  Sums  after  affixed  to  their 
names  Viz  Sergt  Abraham  Smith  1/6  William  Burritt  1/6  Benjamin  Davis  3/  Hezekiah 
Hine  3/  Ebenezer  Henman  8/  John  Humphrey  3/  Elijah  Humphrey  3/  Abijah  Hull  3/ 
Asahal  Johnson  3/  Ashal  Loveland  3/  Miah  Pool  3/  Elias  Durkins  8/  Thomas  Voce  1/6 
Stephen  Whitne  8/  Jesse  Wooster  3/  Turel  Whitman  3/  William  Bedels  8/  Elijah  Davis 
wants  Powder  Joseph  Short  wants  all  but  a  Gun  David  Orsbon  wants  all  but  a  Gun 
Benjamin  ThornlinBon  wants  a  Gun  and  powder  Samuel  Thomlinson  wants  all  but  a  Gun 
Edward  Smithe  wants  all  but  a  Gun  Nichols  Moss  wants  all  but  a  Gun  Jeremiah  Blake 
wants  all  but  a  Gun  David  French  wants  all  but  a  Gun  and  Sword  and  the  Same  being 
Disposed  of  paid  and  Delivered  unto  us  the  Subscriber  the  above  Sd  Sums  together  with 
one  Shilling  more  for  this  writ  also  to  Satisfy  your  own  fees  and  for  want  of  Such  money 
Goods  or  Chattels  of  any  of  Either  of  the  afore  Sd  Persons  Sum  or  Sums  you  are  hereby 
Commanded  to  take  the  Body  or  Bodys  of  any  and  Either  of  them  and  him  or  them  Com- 
mit unto  the  Keepers  of  the  Goal  in  New  heaven  within  the  Sd  Prison  who  is  hereby 
Commaned  to  Receive  the  Same  and  him  or  them  Keep  until  he  and  they  Shall  pay  the 
Full  Sum  or  Sums  above  affixed  to  their  names  and  also  your  fees  and  be  Released  in  Du 
form  of  Law  hear  of  Fail  not  and  Du  Return  make  within  60  Days  Dateed  at  Darby 


330 


llutnlit    iKidjrs    nf   Ihr    ftnrhg    iBmnttains 


BT 


HONORABLE  FRANK  R.  GOODING.  GOVERNOR  OF  IDAHO 


3DAHO    was    first    perma- 
nently  settled,   it   is   sup- 
posed, at  the  time  of  the 
location    of    the    trading 
post  at  Fort  Hall,  about 
twelve     miles     from     the 
present  city  of  Pocatello, 
in  1834.     A  territory  was  created  by 
act  of  March  3,  1863,  from  parts  of 
Dakota,    Nebraska    and    Washington 
Territories,  and  included  all  the  area 
within   the   present   states   of   Idaho 
and  Montana  and  a  large  portion  of 
the    state    of    Wyoming.      In     1863 
Idaho    was    reduced    to    its    present 
dimensions,  extending  from  the  Brit- 
ish possessions  on  the  North  to  Utah 
and  Nevada  on  the  South,  and  from 
Wyoming  and  Montana  on  the  East, 
to  Washington   and   Oregon   on   the 
West;  having  a  length  of  four  hun- 
dred and  ten  miles  and  a  width  vary- 
ing from  sixty  to  two  hundred  and 
fifty-seven  miles. 

The  name  "Idaho"  was  given  it  be- 
cause of  its  mountainous  character 
and  is  supposed  to  signify  "Shining 
Mountains,"  or,  as  it  is  anglicized, 
"Gem  of  the  Mountains."  It  was 
elevated  to  statehood  in  1890,  the 
present  population  being  estimated  at 
three  hundred  thousand  people.  It 
is  a  land  of  great  diversity.  In  all 
portions  of  the  state,  practically  in 
every  county  of  the  state,  mining  has 


been  pursued  with  profit  in  the  past 
and  is  still  the  leading  industry  of  the 
state,  although  profitable  mining  in  a 
large  way  is  now  confined  to  but  a 
few  counties.  In  Northern  Idaho, 
which  term  includes  the  five  north- 
ern counties  of  the  state,  the  people 
live  largely  by  means  of  following 
mining,  lumbering,  stock-raising  and 
the  raising  of  grain  and  fruit.  In 
central  Idaho,  which  includes  the 
three  counties  of  Ada,  Canyon  and 
Washington,  mining,  lumbering, 
stock  and  fruit  raising  are  the  sources 
of  revenue.  In  the  thirteen  southern 
counties  the  people  generally  follow 
mining  and  stock-raising. 

During  the  past  four  or  five  years 
immigration  into  the  state  has  been 
very  heavy.  These  newcomers  are 
largely  American  citizens  from  the 
middle  West  and  Eastern  states, 
although  in  some  portions  of  the  state 
where  large  irrigation  plants  have 
been  put  into  successful  operation, 
immigration  has  been  in  a  large  part 
from  the  coast  states  of  Oregon  and 
Washington.  The  increase  in  popu- 
lation has  been  caused  very  largely 
by  the  development  of  the  timber  and 
agricultural  resources  in  the  northern 
part  of  the  state  and  by  agricultural 
development  in  the  southern  part, 
brought  about  by  the  completion  of 
irrigation  propositions  which  has  put 


frnm   Simljn  fag  (imimtnr   (Snnbtng 


under  cultivation  almost  half  a  mil- 
lion acres  of  semi-arid  lands. 

Idaho  as  yet  is  not  confronted  with 
the  labor  problem  to  any  great  ex- 
tent. The  public  school  system  in 
the  state  is  a  very  excellent  one.  So 
far  there  has  been  no  interference 
with  the  forms  of  discipline  that  have 
been  in  vogue  in  the  schools  from  the 
beginning.  The  development  of  the 
state  seems  to  be  in  all  lines,  but  es- 
pecially in  the  way  of  making  use  of 
the  enormous  timber  resources  and 
in  the  putting  in  of  irrigation  plants 
which  are  of  great  value.  Lands 
hitherto  without  value  have  by  this 
means  been  made  of  use.  There  are  a 
number  of  propositions,  including 
two  great  government  reclamation 
propositions,  that  are  in  process  of 
development.  One  of  these  which 


will  make  valuable  about  two  hundred 
thousand  acres  of  hitherto  valueless 
lands,  will  be  completed  some  time 
within  the  next  few  months. 

The  greatest  need  of  the  state,  in 
my  opinion,  is  the  development  of  the 
railway  system.  Idaho,  from  its 
mountainous  character,  is  divided 
geographically  into  many  parts  that 
are  distinct  from  each  other  in  char- 
acter and  difficult  of  access  one  from 
the  other.  This  can  be  remedied  only 
by  the  extension  of  railway  lines 
within  the  state.  There  is  now  every 
indication  that  extensive  railroad 
building  will  be  witnessed  within  the 
state  within  the  next  few  years,  and  it 
is  anticipated  that  the  increase  in  pop- 
ulation by  the  taking  of  the  next  cen- 
sus will  be  much  greater  in  propor- 
tion than  during  the  past  five  or  six 
years. 


Ammran  (Ettriltiaium  in  %  (imfrr  Antilles 


BY 


GOVERNOR  OF  PORTO  Rico 


SHE  Island  of  Porto  Rico 
was    discovered    by    Co- 
lumbus   on    his    second 
voyage  to  America.     He 
landed    on    its    western 
shore       November       19, 
1493.     The    first    settle- 
ment was  made  in  1510  at  a  point  on 
the  mainland  south  of  the  harbor  of 
San  Juan.     The  original  name  of  the 


settlement  was  Caparra.  Its  desert- 
ed site  is  now  known  as  Pueblo  Vie  jo. 
In  1520  the  colonists  abandoned  it 
and  founded  the  present  city  of  San 
Juan,  which  disputes  with  San  Ger- 
man— in  the  southwestern  corner  of 
Porto  Rico — the  honor  of  being  the 
oldest  community  in  the  Western 
Hemisphere. 
In  1899  the  census  taken  by  the 


Amerirtm  <ftutUt;atum  in  Ity  (greater  Antilba 


United  States  Military  Government 
showed  the  number  of  the  inhabi- 
tants to  be  953,243.  The  island  has 
probably  more  than  one  million  peo- 
ple to-day.  The  population  is  en- 
gaged almost  exclusively  in  agricul- 
ture and  in  the  primary  manipulation 
of  agricultural  products.  The  extra- 
ordinary fertility  of  the  island  will, 
for  many  years  to  come,  cause  the 
attention  of  all  investors  to  be  de- 
voted rather  to  agriculture  than  to 
manufacture. 

Immigration  is  slight.  It  is  made 
up  chiefly  of  the  natives  of  the  Danish 
island  of  St.  Thomas  and  of  the  Brit- 
ish West  Indies.  The  immigrants 
usually  go  into  the  ranks  of  unskilled 
labor  and  form  a  desirable  element  in 
the  community,  being  for  the  most 
part  industrious  and  intelligent.  They 
are  to  be  found  in  greatest  abundance 
in  the  towns  on  the  seaboard. 

The  demand  for  labor  is  steadily 
increasing  and  the  payment  of  labor 
is  rising.  As  the  agricultural  re- 
sources of  the  island  are  developed 
year  by  year  the  island  will  be  able 
to  support  a  larger  population. 

Corporal  punishment  in  the  public 
schools  is  forbidden.  Such  a  prac- 
tice is  extremely  distasteful  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  island  who  are,  in- 
variably, gentle  in  their  treatment  of 
children. 

Under  our  laws  murder  in  the  first 
degree  is  punished  by  death. 

Porto  Rico  is  forging  ahead  in 
every  line.  Its  exportation  during 


the  present  fiscal  year  will  be  nearly 
three  times  the  value  of  its  exporta- 
tions  during  its  most  prosperous  year 
under  Spanish  government.  Increase 
in  prosperity,  with  the  resulting  in- 
crease in  insular  revenue,  has  enabled 
the  government  to  build  twice  as 
many  kilometers  of  roads  as  were 
built  during  the  four  centuries  of 
Spanish  occupation,  and  the  building 
of  new  roads  results  again  in  an  in- 
crease in  prosperity.  The  school 
attendance  is  about  twice  what  it  was 
in  Spanish  times.  Crime  has  dimin- 
ished. The  expert  knowledge  of 
public  and  private  sanitation  has  been 
spread  throughout  the  island.  The 
administration  of  justice  has  become 
swift,  certain  and  unstained.  The 
intercourse  between  the  island  and 
the  outer  world  has  enormously  in- 
creased. 

Still  we  need  more  roads  and  more 
schools.  In  a  mountainous  country 
like  this,  with  a  heavy  rainfall,  when 
we  build  a  road  we  must  build  a  good 
one,  and  we  must  keep  that  road  in 
good  condition  after  it  is  built ;  other- 
wise the  money  is  wasted.  The  build- 
ing and  maintenance  of  roads  in 
Porto  Rico  is  extremely  expensive, 
but  they  must  be  built  and  they  must 
be  well  maintained  so  that  the  crops 
of  the  mountain  valleys  can  be 
brought  easily  and  cheaply  to  the  sea- 
board. Moreover,  we  need  more 
schools.  We  have  built  schools  and 
have  increased  school  attendance,  but 
we  have  not  enough  schools  yet. 


PUBLIC   CARE   OF   THE   POOR  IN  EARLY  AMERICA 

Accurate  Transcript  from  Records  of  Watertown,  Massachusetts 
BY  M.  AUGUSTA  HOLMAN,  LEOMIXSTER,  MASSACHUSETTS 

At  a  meeting  at  Leift.  Beers,  March  3, 1671.  There  coming  a  complaint  to  us  ye  Selectmen  concern- 
ing ye  poverty  of  Edward  Sandersons  family  rt  that  they  hare  not  had  wherewith  to  maintalne  them- 
selves and  children  either  with  suply  of  provisions  or  employment  to  earne  any — And  considering  yt  it 
would  be  ye  charge  of  ye  towne  to  provide  for  ye  whole  Family  which  will  be  hard  to  doe  this  year,  and 
not  knowing  how  to  supply  them  with  provisions,  we  considering  if  we  should  supply  them,  and  could 
doe  it,  yet  it  would  not  tend  to  ye  good  of  ye  children  for  their  good  education  and  bringing  up,  soe  as  they 
may  be  useful  in  ye  common  weal,  and  themselves  to  live  comfortable  and  usefully  in  time  to  come,  We 
have  therefore  agreed  to  put  two  of  his  children  into  some  honest  fameleys  where  they  may  be  educated 
and  brought  up  In  ye  knowledge  of  God  &  sum  honest  calling  or  labor.  And  Therefore  we  doe  order  that 
Thomas  Fleg  (Flag)  and  John  Blgulah  (Bigelow)  shall  have  power  to  find  them  prentises,  with  sum  honest 
people  with  ye  consent  of  their  parents,  if  it  may  be  hade,  and  if  ye  parents  shall  refuse  then  to  use  ye 
help  of  the  magistrate. 


of     ify*     0>rrat 


BT 


HONORABLE  JOSEPH  TOOLE,  GOVERNOR  OF  MONTANA 


LTHOUGH  the  date  of  the 
erection  of  the  first 
building  in  what  is 
now  the  State  of  Mon- 
tana  goes  back  almost  a 
century — when  Eman- 
uel  Lisa  in  1809  or 
1810  built  what  became  known  as 
Lisa's  Fort  on  the  Yellowstone  river 
— it  was  half  a  century  later  that  the 
eyes  of  the  outside  world  were  direct- 
ed to  this  portion  of  the  wilderness 
lying  west  of  the  Mississippi. 

The  gold-hunters,  those  hardy  old 
pioneers  whose  restlessness  ever 
drove  them  nearer  the  setting  sun, 
lured  on  by  the  belief  that  the  moun- 
tains of  this  almost  unexplored  land 
held  splendid  reward,  pushed  their 
way  across  the  plains  and  soon  the 
magic  cry  "Gold!"  was  carried  back 
to  the  East,  whence  other  restless 
spirits  set  out  for  the  journey  to  the 
Rockies. 

In  the  latter  fifties  and  the  early 
sixties  the  mining  excitement  served 
to  bring  thousands  of  people  into 
what  is  now  Montana.  Southern 
Montana  was  the  scene  of  the  early 
excitement,  and  here,  in  the  hur- 
riedly-built town  of  Bannack,  was  set 
up  the  first  government,  when  the 
Territory  of  Montana  was  organized, 
in  the  year  1864.  Other  camps 
sprang  up  as  new  deposits  of  the 


precious  metals  were  discovered,  and 
the  infant  Territory  rapidly  grew  into 
a  lusty  youth. 

The  growth  of  Montana  continued 
as  the  mines  gave  up  their  hoards, 
the  ranges  became  alive  with  cattle 
and  sheep,  and  the  earth,  untilled  for 
centuries,  began  under  the  hand  of 
the  agriculturist  to  demonstrate  that 
it  gladly  yielded  abundant  harvest  to 
him  who  would  toil  for  it — and  at  last 
Congress  heard  the  appeal  of  the  peo- 
ple for  Statehood,  Montana  becoming 
one  of  the  States  of  the  Union  on  the 
eighth  of  November,  1889. 

To-day  the  population  of  the  State 
is  estimated  to  be  more  than  250,000, 
and  although  its  growth  is  not  mar- 
velously  rapid  it  is  healthy  and  steady. 
Its  mines  have  been  wondrously  pro- 
ductive— the  output  of  copper  alone 
in  the  last  year  being  forty  per  cent  of 
the  total  for  the  United  States.  It  is 
the  greatest  wool-growing  State  in  the 
Union,  its  total  of  sheep  for  1906  be- 
ing 4,304,333.  Its  herds  of  cattle  for 
the  same  year  contained  a  total  of 
823,721  head. 

And  despite  this  wonderful  show- 
ing, it  is  believed  to  be  well  within 
the  limits  of  truth  to  say  that  in  the 
years  to  come  Montana  will  find  its 
rank  among  the  greatest  agricultural 
States  of  the  nation.  It  has  millions 
of  acres  of  fertile  lands  that  require 
only  the  application  of  water  to  cause 

•34 


nf 


them  to  yield  immense  returns.  This 
result  is  gradually  being  attained  by 
the  establishment  of  irrigation  pro- 
jects under  Federal  and  State  encour- 
agement, and  the  next  ten  years  will 
undoubtedly  see  the  reclamation  of  a 
vast  area. 


Montana  has  no  vexed  problem  of 
capital  and  labor;  the  people  are  pa- 
triotic, public-spirited  and  progres- 
sive, and  they  bend  eagerly  to  their 
cherished  task  of  making  of  their 
commonwealth  one  of  the  grandest  in 
the  magnificent  sisterhood. 


in 


Nnrtljmt    Itortorlanin 


BT 


HONORABLE  E.  T.  SARL.ES.  GOVERNOR  OF  NORTH  DAKOTA 


DAKOTA  is  one 
of  two  states  created 
out  of  the  original  Ter- 
ritory  of  Dakota,  which 
was  organized  as  a 
territory  on  March  2, 
1 86 1.  The  employees 
of  various  fur  companies  were  the 
first  white  settlers  in  the  territory. 
As  early  as  1808  the  government  es- 
tablished a  military  fort  on  the  Mis- 
souri river  about  seven  miles  above 
the  point  where  Lewis  and  Clark  spent 
the  winter  in  1804  and  1805.  In  1811 
Lord  Selkirk  built  a  fort  at  Pembina 
on  the  Red  river  not  far  from  the  in- 
ternational boundary  line. 

North  Dakota  became  a  state  in 
1889.  Its  population  has  increased 
largely  in  the  past  two  years  until  to- 


day  it  has  in  the  neighborhood  of  half 
a  million  people.  The  occupation  of 
its  people  is  largely  agricultural  and 
pastoral.  It  has  received  many  im- 
migrants in  the  past  two  years,  large- 
ly of  the  Scandinavian  and  German 
types,  and  its  immigration  is  a  thrifty 
class,  which  is  engaged  altogether  in 
agricultural  pursuits. 

The  citizenship  of  North  Dakota 
is  sturdy,  patriotic  and  thrifty.  Its 
laws  are  wise,  liberal  and  beneficent 
and  abreast  of  the  times  in  all  partic- 
ulars. Its  public  servants  have  been 
patriotic  and  have  labored  incessantly 
for  the  advancement  of  the  state.  It 
offers  homes  to  thousands  of  addi- 
tional settlers  and  it  has  splendid  ad- 
vantages and  opportunities  for  the 
thrifty  homemaker. 


Jtfirat   Ammratt 


of  %  3Firat  Writer 

in  %  £fom  Wurlii  to  makr  iCilrraturr 

ifta  £ol*  i|htraiiit  ana  to  Earn  a  UttwlUjoofc  bg  ifiB 

frn  ^  2Hy*  3Ftrat  Attuprtran  Station  to  <E«at*  a  Ettrrarg  fiarkrt 

mas  "Wtelano,"  a  ®al*  of  fljgatrrg  j*  (Earwr  of  (Eljartw  Brorkoro  Vrmmt 

BT 

ELLIS  PAXSON  OBERHOL.TZER.  PH.  D. 

AUTHOR  OF  "ROBERT  MOBEIS,  PATRIOT  AND  FINANCIER"—  EDITOR  OF  THE  "AMERICAN  CRISIS  BIOGRAPHIES,"  AND- 

OTHER  WORKS—  THIS  RESUME  OF  THE  LIFE  OF  CHARLES  BHOCKDEN  BROWN,  THE  FIRST  AMERICAN  NOVELIST, 

Is  PRESENTED  BT  PERMISSION  OF  THE  AUTHOR  FROM  HIS  "LITERARY  HISTORY  OF  PHILADELPHIA," 

PUBLISHED  BY  GEORGE  W.  JACOBS  AND  COMPANY,  A  NOTABLE  CONTRIBUTION  TO 

AMERICAN  LITERATURE 


first  American  novelist 
— the  first  writer  of  fic- 
tion  to  achieve  eminence 
in  this  country,  and  the 
first  writer  of  whatever 
kind  who  had  the  daring 
to  make  literature  his 
sole  pursuit — was  Charles  Brockden 
Brown.  It  is  certain  that  none  be- 
fore him  in  this  country  had  done  so 
well;  none  produced  fiction  that  the 
public  read  so  eagerly  and  apprecia- 
tively. He  lived  by  his  pen,  a  hur- 
ried, fitful  and  brief  life,  it  is  true,  but 
starve  at  the  end  he  did  not.  He 
came  of  an  old  Chester  County,  Penn- 
sylvania, Quaker  family,  respectable 
but  not  eminent,  having  been  born  in 
Philadelphia  on  January  17,  1771. 
He  was  named  for  Charles  Brockden, 
the  well-known  conveyancer  and  agent 
for  the  Penn  family  in  Philadelphia 
who  married  his  father's  sister.  From 
this  writer  is  the  taste  for  triple 
names  among  American  authors 
sometimes  derived.  With  him  at 
least  the  multiplication  of  cognomens 
seemed  to  be  a  necessity,  for  he  clear- 
ly understood  that  the  odds  were  as 
unfavorable  to  the  Browns  as  they 
were  to  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes' 
hero  whom  fate  tried  to  conceal  under 
the  name  of  Smith.  Once  when  a 
friend  had  done  him  the  honor  of  giv- 
ing him  a  namesake,  Brown  expressed 
his  regret  that  the  infant  was  not  to 


have  a  greater  chance  for  the  distinc- 
tions of  life.  "It  has  ever  been  an 
irksome  and  unwelcome  sound  to  my 
ears,"  said  he.  "I  have  sometimes 
been  mortified  in  looking  over  the 
catalogue  of  heroes,  sages  and  saints 
to  find  not  a  single  Brown  among 
them.  This  indeed  may  be  said  of 
many  other  names  but  most  others 
are  of  rare  occurrence.  It  must  then 
be  a  strange  fatality  which  has  hither- 
to excluded  it  from  the  illustrious  and 
venerable  list." 

For  about  five  years  Charles  Brock- 
den Brown  attended  the  Quaker 
school  of  Robert  Proud,  the  historian, 
but,  frail  of  build,  confinement  and 
application  jaded  him.  He  was  de- 
signed for  the  law  but  the  prospect  of 
that  life  was  repellent.  He  loved  sol- 
itude, especially  rambles  into  the 
country.  The  talk  of  the  world  about 
him  wearied  him  with  its  frivolity. 
His  enthusiasm  was  for  thinking  and 
writing,  and  essays,  verse,  dialogues, 
fanciful  sketches  and  a  journal  were 
produced  while  he  was  still  at  school. 
He  was  the  leading  member  of  the  lit- 
tle Belles  Lettres  Club  of  nine  mem- 
bers, and  though  he  was  contributing 
to  the  "Columbian  Magazine,"  he  was 
painfully  impressed  with  the  hope- 
lessness of  earning  a  livelihood  from 
literary  pursuits.  His  parents,  his 
three  older  brothers,  Joseph,  James 
and  Armit,  and  his  friends  were  alt' 

•36 


American 


an&  ifta  Snnka 


disappointed  that  he  had  left  off  his 
law  studies,  and  until  his  first  literary 
success  was  achieved  in  "Wieland"  in 
1798,  he  was  at  times  plunged  in  the 
depths  of  despondency.  He  visited 
New  York,  and  was  there  the  guest 
of  Dr.  Elihu  Hubbard  Smith  whom 
he  had  come  to  know  as  a  medical 
student  in  Philadelphia.  Smith  in- 
troduced the  young  writer  to  a  group 
of  professional  and  literary  men  who 
received  him  cordially.  These  visits 
were  frequently  repeated.  For  a 
time  New  York  was  accounted  his 
home,  and  his  attachment  to  his 
friends  in  that  city  almost  cost  him 
his  life  during  the  fever  plague  of 
1798.  Throughout  this  time,  by  his 
own  account,  he  "mused  and  wrote 
cheerfully  in  spite  of  the  groans  of 
the  dying  and  the  rumbling  of  the 
hearses." 

In  Philadelphia  in  1793  Brown  had 
escaped  the  dangers  of  the  disease  by 
removing  with  his  family  to  a  place 
of  safety  in  the  country.  While  in 
New  York  he  had  spent  several  sum- 
mers at  Perth  Amboy  with  his  friend 
who  was  later  his  biographer,  the 
artist  and  dramatist,  William  Dunlap, 
"but  in  1798  he  tarried  in  the  city  with 
Dr.  Smith.  A  distinguished  Italian 
traveler,  Dr.  Scandella,  after  many 
adventures,  which  read  as  if  they 
were  drawn  from  one  of  Brown's 
novels,  was  seized  with  the  malady,  to 
he  taken  into  Smith's  home.  The 
Italian  soon  died.  Dr.  Smith  fol- 
lowed him  to  the  grave  and  Brown, 
who  was  a  nurse  for  both,  also  fell  a 
victim  to  "this  most  dreadful  and  re- 
lentless of  pestilences,"  but  by  good 
fortune  his  case  yielded  to  treatment, 
and  almost  immediately  after  this 
dread  experience  he  was  invigorated 
in  body  and  spirit  by  his  first  literary 
success. 

"Wieland"  was  published  in  New 
York,  although  its  scenes  are  laid  in 
Philadelphia  or  its  environs,  and  it 
met  with  instant  popularity,  so  that 
its  author  was  encouraged  to  wield 
his  pen  with  new  energy.  He  had 

•37 


five  novels  in  progress  at  the  same 
time.  Such  literary  activity  had  not 
been  seen  before  in  America.  Some 
were  being  written  while  others  were 
printing;  some  were  just  begun  while 
others  were  nearing  completion.  "Or- 
mond,"  which  closely  followed  "Wie- 
land," was  less  successful,  but  "Ar- 
thur Mervyn,"  the  yellow  fever  story 
which  appeared  in  two  parts,  was  a 
sweeping  popular  triumph.  The  first 
part  of  this  work  was  published  in 
Philadelphia  with  the  printer  Max- 
well. The  manuscript  was  delivered 
as  fast  as  it  was  written,  and  before 
Brown  had  yet  determined  his  plot. 
The  publisher,  however,  proved  to  be 
too  dilatory  for  the  eager  author,  who 
was  obliged  to  make  allowances  "for 
his  indigence  on  one  hand  and  his 
sanguine  and  promiseful  disposition 
on  the  other."  Brown's  quill  was 
busy  from  eight  in  the  morning  until 
eleven  at  night,  and  if  he  remembered 
the  names  of  his  characters  in  his  va- 
rious novels  as  each  progressed  under 
his  hand  and  he  moved  from  one  to 
another,  it  was  a  fortunate  circum- 
stance. 

"Edgar  Huntley,"  his  somnambu- 
listic story,  followed  "Arthur  Mer- 
vyn." Then  came  "Gara  Howard." 
Here  are  five  works  of  fiction,  all  of 
which  appeared  inside  of  three  years ; 
three  were  issued  in  one  year.  All 
were  written  before  their  author  was 
yet  thirty.  With  a  sixth  story,  "Jane 
Talbot,"  which  was  published  in  Lon- 
don in  1804,  appearing  soon  after- 
ward in  Philadelphia,  Brown's  career 
as  a  writer  of  fiction  ends.  Upon 
these  six  works  his  title  to  literary 
reputation  rests.  Yet  inside  the  cov- 
ers of  his  half-dozen  novels  is  to  be 
found  but  a  small  part  of  all  that  was 
written  by  this  remarkably  produc- 
tive author. 

While  his  stories  were  appearing, 
Brown  was  busy  with  his  New  York 
magazine.  Eight  of  his  friends  in 
that  city  had  pledged  themselves  for 
a  sufficient  amount  to  insure  its  suc- 
cess. He  called  it  "The  Monthly 


ICtterarg  ©rate  in 


Magazine  and  American  Review," 
and  the  first  number  appeared  in 
April,  1799.  He  contributed  almost 
the  entire  volume  of  what  was  pub- 
lished in  this  periodical  and  at  first 
had  from  it  enticing  prospects  of  for- 
tune. There  were  four  hundred  sub- 
scribers, which  it  was  computed 
would  repay  the  annual  cost  of  issue, 
or  $1,600.  "All  above  four  hundred 
will  be  clear  profit  to  me,"  he  wrote 
to  one  of  his  brothers,  and  one  thou- 
sand subscribers,  he  calculated,  would 
yield  him  a  net  annual  income  of 
$2,700.  His  hopes  were  not  realized, 
and  at  the  end  of  the  year,  1800,  the 
publication  ceased,  the  editor  return- 
ing to  his  home  in  Philadelphia. 

In  his  own  city  Charles  Brockden 
Brown  was  not  long  to  dwell  in  lit- 
erary idleness.  He  was  now  writing 
political  pamphlets.  He  made  an  ar- 
rangement with  John  Conrad,  a  pub- 
lisher in  Philadelphia,  for  a  new  mag- 
azine, "The  Literary  Magazine  and 
American  Register."  At  the  time  it 
was  founded,  in  October,  1803,  there 
was  no  other  monthly  publication  in 
America  and  the  way  looked  clear  be- 
fore it.  The  editor  in  his  salutatory 
said:  "I  cannot  expatiate  on  the  van- 
ity of  my  knowledge,  the  brilliancy  of 
my  wit,  the  versatility  of  my  talents. 
To  none  of  these  do  I  lay  any  claim." 
But  it  was  his  hope  "to  collect  into 
one  focal  spot  the  rays  of  a  great 
number  of  luminaries."  It  would  be 
his  province  "to  hold  the  mirror  up  so 
as  to  assemble  all  their  influences 
within  its  verge  and  reflect  them  on 
the  public  in  such  a  manner  as  to 
warm  and  enlighten." 

In  enlisting  the  co-operation  of 
other  writers,  Brown  had  no  great 
success.  In  one  number  nothing  was 
contributed  but  a  short  article ;  every- 
thing else  was  from  the  editor's  own 
hand.  There  was  no  gayety  in  this 
publication,  for  Brown  had  none. 
Nevertheless,  the  magazine  was  con- 
tinued for  nearly  five  years. 

In  1806  he  began  to  compile  for  the 
same  publishing  house  his  "American 


Register  or  General  Repository  of 
History,  Politics  and  Science,"  an 
annual  review  of  the  world's  happen- 
ings in  different  fields  which  was  is- 
sued for  five  years  (1806-1810  inclu- 
sive), a  large  volume  and  sometimes 
two  volumes  for  the  year.  It  was 
published  until  its  editor  was  obliged 
to  surrender  to  his  disease. 

Consumption  for  many  years  had 
been  his  arch  enemy.  He  had  trav- 
eled hither  and  thither  in  vain  in  the 
hope  of  strengthening  his  weak,  pale 
frame,  and  when  the  attack  from 
which  he  was  not  to  rise  came,  in 
November,  1809,  his  friends  were 
urging  him  to  undertake  a  journey  to- 
Europe,  though  it  was  against  his  in- 
clinations. In  that  year  he  wrote  to  a 
member  of  his  family :  "When  have  I 
known  that  lightness  and  vivacity  of 
mind  which  the  divine  flow  of  health 
even  in  calamity  produces  in  some 
men?  And  would  produce  in  me  no 
doubt;  at  least  when  not  soured  by 
misfortune?  Never,  scarcely  ever. 
Not  longer  than  an  half  hour  at  a 
time  since  I  have  called  myself  man." 

His  only  consolation  was  found  in 
his  books  which  for  him,  he  said,  had 
"great  eflicacy  in  beguiling  body  of  its 
pains  and  thoughts  of  their  melan- 
choly, in  relieving  head  and  heart  of 
their  aches."  He  died  on  February 
22,  1810,  at  his  home  in  Eleventh 
Street  near  Chestnut  when  only 
thirty-nine  years  of  age,  being  in- 
terred in  an  unmarked  spot  in  the 
Friends'  burial  ground  at  Fourth  and 
Arch  Streets. 

While  choice  of  his  fellows,  few 
more  fully  enjoyed  those  intimacies 
which  were  contracted.  Although  not 
adhering  closely  to  Quaker  tenets,  ta 
his  Quaker  friends  he  used  his  "thee" 
and  "thy"  as  one  to  the  manner  born. 
He  had  a  brief  period  of  domestic 
bliss,  for  while  in  New  York  he  met, 
wooed  and  won  for  a  wife  Elizabeth- 
Linn.  She  was  the  daughter  of  Dr. 
William  Linn  of  Shippensburg,  Pa., 
once  the  president  of  Rutgers  Col- 
lege, and  at  the  time  a  distinguished 


Jtrat  Atiurtratt 


an&  fit* 


Presbyterian  clergyman  in  New 
York.  The  young  novelist  and  Miss 
Linn  were  married  in  November, 
1804,  and  she  came  to  make  her  home 
in  Philadelphia  where  her  brother, 
Dr.  John  Blair  Linn,  also  a  minister, 
had  been  preaching  in  the  First  Pres- 
byterian Church  until  his  death  of 
consumption  in  the  preceding  Au- 
gust. He  had  been  Brown's  intimate 
friend  and  was  a  writer  of  verses,  one 
of  which,  an  epic  called  "Valerian," 
the  novelist  edited  and  published  with 
a  memoir. 

Although  Brown  was  to  have  little 
more  than  five  years  of  married  hap- 
piness, he  left  four  children,  three 
boys  and  an  infant  girl.  Two  were 
twins  of  whom  he  wrote  when  they 
were  born:  "I  was  always  terribly 
impressed  with  the  hardships  and 
anxieties  attending  the  care  of  in- 
fants and  was  at  the  moment  appalled 
by  the  prospect  of  a  double  portion  of 
care.  .  .  .  Now  after  two  months' 
experience  I  find,  and  their  mother 
finds,  that  the  two  healthy  and  lovely 
tabes  are  a  double  joy  instead  of  be- 
ing a  double  care." 

The  final  judgment  on  Brown's 
work  may  not  yet  have  been  uttered, 
but  it  is  not  difficult  now  to  assign  his 
novels  to  their  proper  place.  They 
must  be  considered  in  the  light  of  the 
time  in  which  they  were  written  when 
they  will  be  accounted  to  have  a  great 
deal  of  value  in  spite  of  crudities  and 
imperfections  that  are  obvious  to  all 
who  dip  but  a  little  way  into  them. 
They  are  the  work  of  a  writer  of  un- 
bridled imagination.  In  a  few  pages 
there  are  exciting  incidents  enough  to 
serve  a  novelist  of  this  day  for  an  en- 
tire volume.  Lust,  intrigue  and  mul- 
tiplied mystery  testify  to  a  fancy  as 
fecund  as  that  of  the  Sultana  who 
saved  her  head  by  relating  the  tales  of 
the  one  thousand  and  one  nights  in 
Arabia. 

Philadelphia  in  Brown's  hands  at 
once  became  a  king  of  Bagdad.  Mar- 
•velous  houses  with  winding  stairways 
and  dark  basements,  dead  men  who 

*y» 


come  to  life,  voices  in  closets,  lights 
that  strangely  disappear,  treasure 
found  and  lost  with  much  seduction, 
suicide  and  murder  make  up  a  record 
which  contains  suggestions  for  a  gen- 
eration of  story  writers.  If  the  plots 
could  be  rid  of  involution,  they  would 
be  enjoyed  by  the  bad  boys  of  our 
day.  The  reader  is  carried  headlong 
from  one  startling  situation  to 
another  until  he  is  mentally  fagged, 
although  compelled  to  read  on,  in  the 
end  viewing  with  wonder  the  singular 
flow  of  the  author's  imagination. 

An  impression  is  created  of  a  mind 
too  full  of  possibilities  of  strange 
complications  for  convenient  arrange- 
ment and  utterance.  Probability  is 
taxed  to  its  limits,  although  his 
friends  assert,  when  they  compare  his 
work  with  that  of  other  writers,  that 
these  bounds  are  never  passed.  The 
narrative  proceeds  in  short,  tense,  di- 
rect, high-strung  sentences,  striking 
with  the  force  and  regularity  of  a 
trip-hammer.  Of  charm  of  style  his 
readers  will  acquit  Charles  Brockden 
Brown.  Of  niceties  of  language  or 
care  in  the  arrangement  of  his  ideas 
there  is  almost  total  lack.  Of  humor 
or  epigram  there  is  none.  Dialect 
is  used  only  awkwardly,  and  the  char- 
acters talk  in  an  unchanging  mono- 
tone. Indeed,  dialogue  is  little  re- 
sorted to  by  Brown  in  his  story-tell- 
ing, and  there  are  pages  and  chapters 
of  statements  and  confessions  unre- 
lieved by  quotation  marks.  The  nar- 
rator, who  uses  the  first  person, 
changes  from  time  to  time,  and  only 
close  and  continued  attention  dis- 
closes the  identity  of  the  speaker. 
The  most  marked  defect  in  Brown's 
work,  however,  is  his  failure  to  make 
use  of  all  the  material  which  he  so 
lavishly  spreads  out  before  us  as  his 
story  proceeds. 

"Wieland"  errs  principally  through 
the  artificiality  of  the  devices  em- 
ployed to  create  the  tissue  of  mystery 
of  which  the  tale  consists.  Two  ideas 
are  utilized,  the  principle  of  "self- 
combustion"  by  which  the  elder  Wie- 


nf  tlf?  Utierarg  ©rate  in  Ammra 


land,  the  German  mystic  who  has  a 
temple  of  prayer  somewhere  on  the 
banks  of  the  Wissahickon  or  Schuyl- 
kill,  is  consumed;  and  ventriloquism, 
an  art  then  new,  by  which  a  man  for 
no  sufficient  motive  induces  the 
younger  Wieland  to  murder  his  wife 
and  children. 

The  great  defect  of  "Arthur  Mer- 
vyn,"  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  intro- 
duction of  episodes  that  are  forgotten 
by  the  author  in  the  later  develop- 
ment of  his  plot.  In  the  end  he  has 
two  interesting  heroines  whose  fate 
remains  to  be  explained.  They  are 
suddenly  abandoned  for  a  third.  It 
is  plain  that  the  author  changed  his 
plans  again  and  again  as  his  work 
progressed  under  his  hand.  These 
faults  arose  from  the  fact  that  the 
printer  literally  stood  at  his  shoulder 
while  he  wrote,  after  "Wieland"  had 
whetted  the  public  taste  for  his  sto- 
ries, and  the  manuscript  could  not  be 
revised.  Such  speed  was  fatal  to  art 
as  it  w'as  to  Brown  himself. 

The  facts  remain  that  "Wieland"  is 
an  absorbing  tale  of  mystery,  while 
"Arthur  Mervyn"  is  more ;  it  is  in  its 
first  part  an  historical  document  rank- 
ing with  Dr.  Rush's  and  Mathew 
Carey's  writings  as  a  truthful  delinea- 
tion of  the  peculiar  horrors  of  the  yel- 
low fever  plague  of  1793  in  Philadel- 
phia. Of  his  description  of  the  scene 
between  Welbeck  and  Mervyn,  when 
the  latter  burns  up  $20,000  in  notes, 
Brown  subsequently  wrote  to  his 
brother  that  "to  excite  and  baffle  curi- 
osity without  shocking  belief  is  the 
end  to  be  contemplated.  I  have  en- 
deavored to  wind  up  the  reader's  pas- 
sions to  the  highest  pitch  and  to  make 
the  catastrophe  in  the  highest  degree 


unexpected  and  momentous."  This 
in  short  was  the  guiding  principle  of 
Brown's  life  as  a  novel  writer,  and 
that  he  succeeded  in  spite  of  defects 
which  it  is  easy  to  see  and  criticise,  is 
his  title  to  a  national  and  international 
place  in  literature. 

It  is  impossible  to  find  a  measure  of 
the  circulation  of  his  books  or  of  the 
profit  that  accrued  to  him  as  their 
author.  However,  it  cannot  have 
been  large  for  he  wrote  to  his  brother 
Joseph  in  1800,  after  his  second  suc- 
cessful book  had  appeared:  "Seldom 
less  happy  than  at  present;  seldom 
has  my  prospect  been  a  gloomier  one. 
Yet  it  may  shine  when  least  ex- 
pected." 

Again  he  wrote  in  the  same  year: 
"Book-making  is  the  dullest  of  all 
trades  and  the  utmost  that  any  Amer- 
ican can  look  for  in  his  native  coun- 
try is  to  be  reimbursed  his  unavoida- 
ble expenses."  At  his  death,  his  wife 
conducted  a  boarding-house  to  sus- 
tain herself  and  her  children. 

Thus  the  novel  was  established  in 
America  by  an  undoubted  literary 
genius,  but  on  foundations  too  hastily 
and  too  carelessly  built.  His  own 
physical  wretchedness,  his  penury,  his 
temperament  that  caused  him  to  work 
with  unparalleled  rapidity — all  con- 
spire to  cast  discredit  upon  his  art 
and  make  his  achievement  seem 
vastly  smaller  than  it  might  have  been 
under  more  favorable  circumstances. 
But  blemishes  may  be  forgot  in  the 
presence  of  such  a  creative  faculty, 
and  though  the  reproach  be  fairly  his 
that  his  novels  are  not  read  to-day,  it 
is  no  conclusive  argument  against  an 
author  whose  place  has  long  been  se- 
cure in  our  gallery  of  literary  men. 


FBOM  THE  INTEBNATIONAL  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL  INSTITUTE  IN  BRUSSELS 


Since  the  invention  of  printing  to  1907, 
there  have  been  published  in  the  world 
13,063,000  books.  Of  these  29.43  per  cent 
are  legal  and  sociological  works,  20.46 
literary,  12.18  scientific,  11.44  historical 
and  geographical,  10  theological  and 
religious,  9  per  cent  bibliographical,  2.62 


artistic,  and  1.36  philosophical.  Of  the 
periodical  publications  of  the  present 
time  it  is  estimated  that  48  per  cent  are 
in  the  English  language,  23  in  German, 
ii  in  French,  6  per  cent  in  Spanish,  2  per 
cent  in  Italian,  and  10  per  cent  in  other 
languages. 


BRONZE    BAS-RELIEF 

BT  DR.   B.  TAIT  MC  KBXCIB  OF  PHILADELPHIA 
FOB  THB  FBAHKUH  IKK  CLUB 


in  Ammra 


anil  Jlrarttrra  nf  tarlfl 

Durtnra  aa  Ururalrii  in 

af  3nljn  B3tntl|rup,  Surn  in  Ififlfi  ^  Butrh. 

and   Jlurttana   (HauanUrh  ^int  regarding  tl|rir  JUjyairal  3110  J* 

Nrm  •SorUi  roaa  3fall  of  Sjia  flratara  ^  Vrntnning  of  Amrrirau  fflrbtrinr 


BY 

WALTER  R.  STEINER.  M.A.,  M.D. 

FORMERLY  HOUSE  MEDICAL  OFFICER  IN  TUB  JOUNS  HOPKINS  HOSPITAL  AT  BALTIMORE,  MARYLAND 

tion  here  recorded  was  originally 
read  before  the  Johns  Hopkins'  Hos- 
pital Historical  Society  and  present- 
ed in  the  Bulletin  of  that  institution. 
It  is  now  authoritatively  given,  with 
some  revisions,  for  the  public  at 
large. 

The  early  Americans  were  fortu- 
nate in  having  the  services  of  men  of 
the  character  and  ability  of  John 
Winthrop.  His  "qualities  of  human 
excellence  were  mingled  in  such 
happy  proportions,  that,  while  he 
always  wore  the  air  of  contentment, 
no  enterprise  in  which  he  engaged 
seemed  too  lofty  for  his  powers." 

He  was  born  in  Groton  Manor, 
England,  February  12,  1606,  and  was 
educated  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin, 
and  studied  law  at  the  Inner  Temple. 
He  entered  the  English  naval  service, 
sailing  with  George  Villiers,  the  Duke 
of  Buckingham,  and  perfected  his  ed- 
ucation by  visiting,  in  part,  at  least,  in 
the  public  service,  not  Holland  and 
France  only,  in  the  days  of  Prince 
Maurice  and  Richelieu,  but  Venice 
and  Constantinople. 

Traveling  in  Europe  "he  sought 
the  society  of  men  eminent  for  learn- 
ing. Returning  to  England  in  the 
bloom  of  life,  with  the  fairest  promise 
of  preferment,  he  preferred  to  follow 
his  father  to  the  New  World,  regard- 
ing 'diversities  of  countries  but  as  so 
many  inns,'  alike  conducting  'to  the 
journey's  end.'" 

The  New  World  was  full  of  his 
praises ;  Puritans  and  Quakers  and 
the  freemen  of  Rhode  Island  were 
alike  his  eulogists ;  the  Dutch  at  New 
York  had  confidence  in  his  integrity. 


^^^M^HE    experiences    of    John 

s  Winthrop,  junior,  one  of 

m  the  first  physicians  in 

A  •  L  America,  is  a  most  inter- 
^^^^Jr  esting  narrative.  When 
one  considers  that  a 
"doctor's"  patients  were 
scattered  in  a  wilderness,  through 
which  roamed  wild  beasts  and  wilder 
men,  it  is  indeed  remarkable  that  the 
pioneer  Americans  ever  recovered 
when  once  seized  with  disease. 

When  the  pioneer  Americans  were 
taken  sick  it  many  times  meant  a  dar- 
ing ride  through  the  forests,  with 
possible  encounters  with  the  Indians, 
and  it  might  be  a  day,  or  two  days, 
and  very  probably  a  week,  before  the 
messenger  returned  with  the  "pre- 
scription." 

While  Winthrop  was  one  of  the 
earliest  physicians  in  America  he  was 
not  the  earliest.  There  were  a  few 
physicians  in  early  Virginia.  Dr. 
Thomas  Wotten,  surgeon-general  of 
the  London  Company,  sailed  from 
England  for  Jamestown  on  December 
19,  1606.  Dr.  Walter  Russell  was- 
another  of  the  little  band  who  came  to 
Virginia.  In  the  early  annals  of  New 
York,  Hermain  Mynderts  Van  de 
Bogaerdet  arrived  as  a  surgeon  on 
the  ship  "Endragle"  in  1631,  and  Wil- 
liam Deeping  on  the  ship  "William  of 
London"  in  1663. 

It  is  through  Winthrop's  experi- 
ences, however,  that  one  gets  a  clear 
insight  into  the  beginning  of  medical 
practice  in  America,  with  an  inkling 
of  the  "popular"  diseases  of  the  times 
and  their  remedies.  The  investiga- 


pfgj0triatt0  in  Am^rira — Styrir 


long  life  of  this  pio- 
neer  American  physi- 
cian,  John  Winthrop, 
il  makes  a  unique  chapter. 
He  followed  his  father 
to  this  country  in  1631 
and  was  shortly  there- 
after made  an  assistant  in  the  Mas- 
sachusetts Colony.  A  year  later 
he  led  a  company  of  twelve  to  Aga- 
wam  (now  Ipswich),  where  a  settle- 
ment was  made.  In  about  a  year  he 
returned  to  England  and  received  a 
commission  to  be  governor  of  the 
river  Connecticut  for  one  year.  On 
coming  back  to  America  he  built  a 
fort  at  Saybrook,  Connecticut,  and  re- 
sided there  part  of  that  time.  Then, 
making  no  effort  to  have  the  commis- 
sion renewed,  he  returned  to  Ipswich 
and  became  one  of  the  prudential  men 
of  the  town.  Subsequently  he  moved 
to  Salem,  established  some  salt  works 
there,  made  another  trip  to  England, 
and  finally  receiving  Fisher's  Island 
as  a  grant  from  the  General  Court  of 
Massachusetts,  went  there  in  the  fall 
of  1646.  This  grant  was  subse- 
quently confirmed  by  both  Connect- 
icut and  New  York.  In  the  spring  of 
the  following  year  he  removed  to 
Pequot  (now  New  London),  but, 
after  a  residence  of  eight  years, 
moved  to  New  Haven.  From  here 
lie  was  called  to  dwell  in  Hartford  on 
t>eing  elected  governor  of  Connect- 
icut in  1657.  He  had  previously 
(September  9,  1647)  been  given  a 
commission  to  execute  justice  in  his 
town  (Pequot)  "according  to  our 
laws  and  the  rule  of  righteousness," 
and  in  May,  1651,  was  elected  an 
assistant  of  Connecticut.  He  served 
as  governor  one  year,  then  became 
deputy  governor  on  account  of  a  law 
which  prevented  his  re-election.  This 
law  being  repealed  the  next  year,  he 
served  continuously  as  governor  from 
1659  till  his  death  in  1676,  although 
in  1667,  1670  and  1675  ne  requested 
to  be  relieved  of  this  office. 

From  his  youth  he  was  devoted  to 
scientific  studies  and  was  an  omniv- 
orous reader  of  books.  Alchemy 


greatly  interested  him  and  among  his 
correspondents  were  numbered  Dr. 
Robert  Child,  Sir  Kenelm  Digby, 
George  Storkey  and  Jonathan  Brews- 
ter,  all  of  whom  had  like  ties.  He 
was  also  much  attached  to  astronomy 
and  with  his  telescope,  which  was 
"but  a  tube  of  3  foote  and  a  half  with 
L,  concave  eye-glasse,"  he  was  able  to 
see  five  satellites  of  Jupiter  and  make 
other  celestial  observations.  He  was 
distrustful  of  having  seen  five  satel- 
lites as  Galileo  and  others  had  only 
observed  four.  He  seemed  to  enjoy 
especially  the  association  with  scien- 
tific men.  In  1661,  when  he  went  to 
England  for  a  third  time,  he  arrived 
not  long  after  the  Royal  Society  for 
Improving  Useful  Knowledge  was 
organized.  It  was  first  organized  in 
1660  but  was  not  incorporated  until 
two  years  later.  On  December  II  of 
that  year  he  was  proposed  for  mem- 
bership by  William  Brereton,  after- 
wards Lord  Brereton,  and  was  admit- 
ted January  I,  1662.  During  his  stay 
in  England,  which  continued  till  the 
early  summer  of  1663^  he  took  an  act- 
ive part  in  the  society's  proceedings, 
read  a  number  of  papers  on  a  great 
variety  of  subjects,  and  exhibited 
many  curious  things.  Some  of  his 
papers  during  this  period  were  on 
strange  tides,  the  refining  of  gold,  the 
making  of  pitch,  tar  and  potashes,  the 
building  of  ships  in  North  America, 
and  the  brewing  of  beer  from  maize 
bread.  Among  the  things  he  exhib- 
ited were  a  self-feeding  lamp,  of  his 
own  invention,  malleable  mineral  lead, 
piece  of  a  rock  of  granite,  bluish 
grains  of  corn  grown  in  the  West  In- 
dies, and  the  tail  of  a  rattlesnake. 

He  came  naturally  by  his  liking  for 
medicine,  as  his  father  had  no  mean 
knowledge  of  this  science.  In  a  let- 
ter his  father  wrote,  on  the  occasion 
of  his  son's  illness  at  Ipswich,  he 
speaks  of  drugs  and  remedies  which 
show  him  to  be  well  acquainted  with 
them.  The  venerable  Cotton  says 
that  the  elder  Winthrop  had  been  a 
"Help  for  our  Bodies  by  Physick,  for 
our  Estates  by  Law."  This  bent 


243 


A  ®0rt0r'a 


Wttl|  Ijte  flattenta 


toward  medicine  existed  in  other 
members  of  the  family  also,  for  we 
learn  Winthrop's  brother  Henry's 
widow  "was  much  imployed  in  her 
surgurye  and  hath  very  good  suc- 
cesse,"  and  his  son  Wait  and  grand- 
son John  had  both  a  laudable  knowl- 
edge of  medicine  for  their  times. 

At  this  period  the  offices  of  clergy- 
man and  physician  were  frequently 
associated  in  one  individual — in- 
stances of  what  Cotton  Mather  has 
called  "the  Angelical  Conjunction," 
the  cure  of  body  combined  with  the 
cure  of  soul.  This  association  may 
largely  have  been  due  to  the  survival 
of  the  custom  of  the  dark  ages  when 
the  priests  were  considered  the  reposi- 
tories of  learning  and  held  both  of 
these  offices.  There  is,  however,  an 
additional  reason  in  the  fact  that  med- 
icine alone  was  not  very  profitable  at 
this  time,  so  we  find  some  turning  also 
to  divinity,  as  Giles  Firmin,  who  "pre- 
viously did  make  and  read  upon  the 
one  Anatomy  in  the  countrey  very 
well."  In  a  letter  still  preserved  he 
says:  "I  am  strongly  sett  upon  to 
studye  divinitie :  my  studies  else  must 
be  lost,  for  physick  is  but  a  meene 
help." 

"The  scarcity  of  physicians  in  the 
Colonies  and  Winthrop's  willingness 
to  give  advice  free  of  charge — so  far 
as  his  studies  enabled  him  to  do  so — 
caused  him  to  be  much  consulted." 
Connecticut,  Massachusetts  and 
Rhode  Island  were  the  territories  in 
which  his  patients  mostly  lived.  They 
were  frequently  sent  to  him,  generally 
at  Pequot  or  Hartford,  but  at  times 
lu  would  come  to  see  them  in  consul- 
tation with  the  village  doctor,  or 
otherwise,  when  they  were  too  sick  to 
be  moved.  Some  were  also  treated 
by  him  by  letter,  without  personal  in- 
spection. Cotton  Mather  says: 
"Wherever  he  came,  still  the  Dis- 
eased flocked  about  him.  as  if  the 
Healing  Angel  of  Bethesda  had  ap- 
peared in  the  place." 

From  his  papers,  which  consist 
mostly  of  letters  addressed  to  him,  I 
have  been  able  to  glean  something  re- 


lating to  his  career  as  a  physician. 
In  all  I  have  collected  over  one  hun- 
dred medical  references. 

His  first  patient  appears  to  have 
been  his  father,  who  in  some  way  had 
injured  his  finger.  On  April  u,  1628 
Winthrop  writes  his  father  that  he 
is  sending  some  yellow  and  black 
plasters  which  were  given  him  by  a 
woman  "that  is  very  skilful  and  much 
sought  unto  for  these  things."  Direc- 
tions for  their  use  accompany  them. 
At  the  end  of  four  days  his  father 
says :  "I  prayse  God  my  finger  is  well 
amended,  my  surgeon  did  his  parte 
well,  and  stayde  the  gangrene  and 
tooke  out  the  mortified  fleshe,  but  be- 
cause your  love  and  peines  should  not 
be  lost  I  have  betaken  myselfe  wholly 
to  your  plaister  wch  the  Surgeon  likes 
well  enough;  and  I  prayse  God  it 
goeth  well  forward."  Some  years 
later,  in  1637,  Winthrop's  wife  seems 
to  have  swallowed  some  pins.  We 
do  not  know  what  means  were  em- 
ployed to  relieve  her,  but  his  father 
writes  him  a  letter  expressing  great 
gratification  that  the  wife  had  been 
delivered  from  so  great  a  danger.  He 
adds :  "I  hope  it  will  teach  my  daugh- 
ter and  other  women  to  take  heed  of 
putting  pins  in  the  mouth  which  was 
never  seasonable  to  be  fed  with  such 
morsels." 

Besides  these  references  we  find 
many  others  which  show  the  esteem 
in  which  his  family  held  him  for  his 
medical  knowledge.  Winthrop's 
father-in-law,  Hugh  Peters,  writes 
from  Salem,  saying:  "My  head  is  not 
well,  nor  any  part  at  present,  for  I 
cannot  get  sleepe.  I  would  you 
should  send  mee  word  what  you  will 
doe  therein  but  rather  come  over" 
(from  Ipswich).  He  later  speaks  of 
his  old  malady  of  the  "spleene"  and 
says:  "I  never  had  hart  or  tyme  to 
attend  any  cure,  that  I  now  give  my 
life  gone ;  and  shall  not  live  my  parts 
I  feare."  How  little  did  he  then 
know  of  the  truth  he  was  telling,  for 
in  eleven  years  he  was  executed  as  a 
regicide,  at  Charing  Cross,  on  Octo- 
ber 16,  1660!  Winthrop's  brother- 


•43 


Jurat  ItygfitrimtH  in  Ammra — Sfyrir  (Etwtama 


in-law,  Samuel  Symonds,  was  a 
prominent  man  in  Ipswich,  and  finally 
became  deputy  governor.  In  1647 
he  states  that  his  wife's  indigestion 
is  better  and  adds:  "Good  wine  (as 
you  say)  is  the  best  cordiall  for  her." 
In  a  later  letter  he  mentions  his 
daughter  having  received  some 
physick  from  Winthrop  and  being 
benefited  bv  it. 

Eight  years  prior  to  this  last  com- 
munication, in  1641,  Winthrop's  aunt, 
Lucy  Downing,  from  London,  tells 
him  she  has  "experimented  the  cro- 
us  this  2  nights,  and  found  much 
though  not  a  totall  fredom  of  payne 
thereby."  Other  letters  follow  this 
cne  about  her  various  ailments.  One 
written  January  17,  1661,  possesses 
some  interest  and  causes  us  to  won- 
der what  she  really  had.  She  says: 
"I  was  taken  with  a  veri  sore  paine 
one  my  leaft  side  wich  at  betwickst 
my  short  ribs  and  my  buckell  boone; 
and  the  paine  being  so  sharpe,  it  was 
feared  to  have  been  plurisi,  but  wen 
the  dockter  came  he  said  it  was  not  a 
plurisi  but  he  judge  it  to  be  the  stonne 
in  the  kidney,  and  thereupon  did  apli 
mani  thing  both  inward  and  outward 
to  remove  the  paine;  the  extremiti 
there  of  did  put  me  into  a  veryfeaver- 
ish  condishion,  and  to  or  thre  fits  of  a 
fever,  and  then  i  was  pritti  well  re- 
covered; but  retern  by  a  little  could, 
but  I  relapsed  in  to  another  of  those 
fits,  and  then  i  tried  hot  brikes  to  my 
side,  and  bages  of  fried  oats,  and  up 
on  the  use  of  them  i  found  the  paine 
did  much  mittigate,  and  then  i  sent  to 
the  dockter,  and  he  sent  me  a  plaister 
wich  i  found,  the  same  night  i  laide 
it  on,  it  did  much  dispers  the  paine  all 
aboute  my  bodi,  and  the  neckst  morn- 
ing i  found  my  seulf  much  better 
than  formerli,  and  both  my  stomak 
and  by  weast  are  much  better  then  of 
aweake  before,  but  am  still  verri  ten- 
der, and  forst  to  kepe  my  chamber; 
but  i  have  veri  good  hopes  that  the 
p!aister  may  be  a  means  to  prevent 
such  extremity  for  the  futurr,  and  the 
dockter  now  thinkes  it  was  some 


other  trouble  and  not  the  stone."  She 
forbare  sending  for  Winthrop  as  she 
got  some  ease  and  hopes  of  recovery. 
'It  is  well  to  state  that  she  employed 
an  amanuensis,  so  we  must  not  blame 
the  old  lady  for  this  spelling.  Two 
years  before  Winthrop's  death  she 
was  still  living,  although  well  on  in 
years.  Sh^  then  mentions  her  in- 
creasing deafness,  states  that  she  had 
consulted  two  doctors  for  it  and  that 
they  both  agreed  "the  more  she  did 
tamper  with  her  ears  the  worse  it 
might  be  for  her."  She  is  "not  will- 
ing consequently  to  a  further  hazerd 
of  her  ears  and  her  mony  allso  for 
nothing." 

Winthrop's  niece,  Hannah  Gallup, 
writes  to  him  on  two  occasions.  At 
one  time  she  wishes  a  litle  phisicke 
and  some  directions  for  a  "disease 
much  like  the  fluxe."  In  the  other 
letter  he  is  thanked  for  the  "Physik 
and  other  kindnesses."  Stephen  and 
Samuel,  Winthrop's  brothers,  also, 
occasionally  write  to  him  about  mat- 
ters medical.  The  former,  who 
served  in  Cromwell's  army  and  Par- 
liament, informs  Winthrop,  August  2, 
1653,  that  he  has  been  "this  two  years 
extremely  troubled  wth  the  Zeatica, 
and  am  just  now  goeing  to  the  Bath 
to  see  if  yt  may  remedy  it.  My  much 
lying  in  ye  wet  feilds  uppon  the 
ground  hath  brought  it  uppon  me,  as 
it  hath  uppon  many  others." 

Wait,  Winthrop's  younger  son, 
frequently  writes  to  him  on  medical 
topics  and  often  he  gets  his  advice  as 
to  treatment.  In  1671,  he  wishes 
some  directions  for  "convultion  fitts 
in  children,  they  being  often  troubled 
with  them  here  (Boston)  ;  also  for 
Mrs.  Mary  Maning  for  her  old  dis- 
temper, which  you  have  given  her 
something  for  formerly."  On  other 
occasions  Wait  buys  various  medi- 
cines in  Boston  for  his  father  such 
as  opium,  jalap,  "vitriolum  album," 
ivory,  and  aloes.  Once  Wait  wishes 
his  father  to  send  some  black  powder 
to  him  "if  ther  be  opertunity,  and  you 
have  any  quantitye  made.  I  am 


A  inrtnr'H 


Witt?  Ifte 


almost  out,  and  have  not  convenyence 
to  make  any  presently." 

But  aside  from  attending  to  his 
family's  ailments  he  had  many  pro- 
fessional obligations  to  perform  as 
the  most  prominent  men  of  the  colo- 
nies, as  we  shall  see,  consulted  him 
frequently  in  cases  of  sickness.  His 
duty  to  a  natient  caused  him  to  fore- 
go, at  one  time,  the  pleasure  of  meet- 
ing Francis  Lovelace,  the  governor  of 
New  York,  at  Milford.  He  was 
obliged  to  express  his  regrets  for  "he 
was  ingaged  to  a  deare  friend  not 
long  before,  who  was  at  the  very 
Agony  of  death  (as  was  feared  by  all 
then  present  there)  not  to  be  absent 
till  an  apparent  recovery,  wch  then 
was  doubtfull,  but  now  (god  be 
praised)  is  in  a  good  measure 
attained,  but  there  were  reasons  to 
think  it  might  not  have  beene  so,  if  I 
had  been  fro  home." 

Elder  Goodwin  of  Cambridge, 
Hartford,  Hadley  and  Farmington 
thanks  him  for  attending  his  wife  and 
child,  and  declares  success  crowned 
his  endeavors  in  regard  to  the  treat- 
ment of  the  former  and  wishes  as 
"the  water  she  used  is  all  spent,"  that 
"the  ingreedients  and  direction  how 
to  use  it"  be  sent  them  ;  "for  we  are 
very  loath  to  breake  ofe  the  use  of 
such  meanes  as  God  hath  been  pleased 
to  make  so  usfull  to  us  in  this  case." 
"His  daughter  was  afflicted  with  the 
palsy  and  did  not  seem  to  be  benefit- 
ted  by  the  treatment."  In  a  subse- 
quent letter  we  learn  that  the  water 
was  for  Mrs.  Goodwin  "to  wash  her 
leg  with  all"  and  more  powder  was 
desired  to  make  it  up  "for  she  fynd- 
eth  more  releife  and  ease  of  her  greife 
by  that  meanes  than  by  any  other  she 
hath  formerly  had  the  use  of."  The 
daughter  does  not  seem  to  have  im- 
proved. 

John  Higginson,  then  assistant  to 
Henry  Whitfield,  the  pastor  at  Guil- 
ford,  Connecticut,  writes  a  most  earn- 
est letter  to  Winthrop,  at  Pequot,  in 
1654  or  1655,  begging  him  to  come 
and  see  his  wife.  Higginson  does 


not  say  what  her  sickness  was  but 
declares  "  the  case  is  such  as  cannot 
be  judged  without  ocular  inspection." 
He  calls  it  "a  very  sad  affliction,  she 
being  in  a  very  dangerous  case  as  Mr. 
Rosseter  (the  village  doctor)  and  all 
our  neighbors  here  doe  apprehend." 
He  hopes  that  Winthrop's  "counsell 
and  help,  together  with  Mr.  Rosseter" 
may  be  the  means  of  preserving  her 
life,  "if  so  it  pleas  the  Lord." 

John  Mason,  rendered  famous  by 
the  Pequot  War  and  subsequently 
major-general,  commander-in-chief 
of  the  military  forces  of  Connecticut 
and  for  eight  years  deputy  governor, 
writes  several  letters  expressing 
appreciation  for  physick  and  services 
rendered  to  his  wife  who  "as  yet  re- 
maineth  ill,  yet  sometimes  a  little  re- 
viveing,  with  the  addition  of  some- 
what more  strength." 

Thomas  Mayhew,  governor  of 
Martha's  Vineyard  and  Nantucket, 
as  well  as  preacher  to  the  Indians 
there,  though  bowed  down  by  over 
three  score  and  ten  years,  cannot  re- 
frain from  rendering  his  thanks  for 
Winthrop's  "readiness  in  sending  that 
powder  for  my  grandchild  together 
with  advice."  I  will  speak  of  this 
atorain  in  referring  to  Winthrop's  sov- 
ereign remedy  Rubila.  Mayhew, 
agreeing  with  Higginson  as  to  the 
value  of  ocular  inspection,  wishes  to 
know  if  Winthrop  is  willing  "shee 
should  com  to  Conectacute,  where 
shee  may  be  neare  vow,  and  also  the 
sight  of  hir  may  much  more  informe 
your  judgment  touching  her  disease." 
Subsequently  Mayhew  mentions  an 
attack  he  had  of  what  may  have  been 
appendicitis.  He  states  the  "paine  I 
had  seised  one  me  in  the  morning  be- 
tyme,  upon  the  right  syde;  the  paine 
was  not  so  broade  as  the  palme  of 
my  hand.  It  was  like  to  take  me  of 
the  stage,  but  it  went  away  in  my 
sleepe  that  night;  when  I  awoke,  I 
was  altogether  free  of  that  paine  and 
of  other  sore  paine  which  came  uppon 
me  in  useing  menese  by  a  glystr  to 
free  my  sellfe  of  that."  His  last  let- 


MS 


Jfftr0t 


in  Am?rira  — 


ter,  written  less  than  a  year  before 
Winthrop's  death,  tells  us  that  one  of 
his  grand-daughters  had  used  the 
physick  sent  with  success  but  the  lit- 
tle ones'  had  not  taken  any  and  we 
wonder  if  Rubila  was  not  the  remedy 
employed. 

Captain  John  Underbill,  of  Long 
Isiand,  heretical,  eccentric  and  illit- 
erate yet  firmly  convinced  that  God 
has  made  Winthrop  "an  instrument 
of  the  gud  of  mani  diseased,"  desires 
relief  for  his  wife  "whom  dayli  con- 
tinnuse  in  gret  payne,  resefing  last 
yere  a  payne  in  her  back  with  alift  of 
a  wayti  stone  and  dayli  increses  her 
payne,  and  desense  in  to  her  left  hip, 
so  that  shee  can  not  torn  her  in  bed, 
no  gooe  up  rit  in  the  daye."  And 
again  he  wishes  Winthrop  to  help  "a 
gud  godli  woman,  and  diere  frend 
of  my  wife"  whose  distemper  "is  as  a 
shoutting  agew,  pricking  in  her  left 
side,  asending  into  her  temples,  and 
tieth,  bed  and  jase,  and  takese  her 
sometimes  too  dayse  together  and 
base  had  it  niere  12  months,  with  such 
extremiti  as  shee  can  not  rest  nigh 
[t]  nor  daye,  and  takes  her  at  aell 
sesones,  night  and  daye,  shiftting  his 
course  as  an  ago."  He  also  hopes 
Winthrop  will  send  his  wife  a  "littil 
whit  vitterall." 

Roger  Williams,  the  ardent  Quaker 
and  founder  of  Rhode  Island,  was 
long  one  of  Winthrop's  correspond- 
ents. In  1649  ne  writes  about  his 
daughter,  aged  seventeen,  who  had 
"taken  much  physick  and  bene  let 
blood  but  yet  no  change,  she  is  ad- 
vised by  some  to  the  Bay :  I  pray  ad- 
vize me  to  whom  you  judge  fittest  to 
addresse  unto  of  tho  Bayes  Physi- 
tians."  At  another  time  he  speaks  of 
his  son  troubled  "with  a  spice  of  an 
epilepsie;"  "We  used  some  reme- 
dies," he  says,  "but  it  hath  pleased 
God  by  his  taking  of  tobacco  per- 
fectly (as  we  hope)  to  cure  him." 
Mention  of  Williams  will  again  be 
made  when  we  discuss  Rubila. 

Winthrop's  "loveing  freind." 
George  Hethcote,  from  far  off  Bar- 


badoes  asks  for  something  in  1669  "to 
stop  the  groweth  of  consumption." 
His  mother  had  previously  told  him 
he  had  it,  but  he  put,  unwisely  in  this 
case,  more  confidence  in  his  doctor, 
who  informed  him  to  the  contrary. 
He  goes  on  to  add  "I  am  much  troub- 
led with  a  thin  sharp  salt  youmer  that 
settles  uppon  me  longes  and  causes 
me  to  spitt  much  and  sume  time 
cough  but  seldom — that  powder  I  had 
of  the  for  the  spittinge  did  me  much 
good."  He  wishes,  consequently 
help  in  medicine  and  diet  so  that  "the 
cause  and  ground  of  the  consumption 
may  be  taken  away  if  the  Lord  see 
good."  Possibly  also  about,  this  time 
John  Tinker  appealed  to  Winthrop  on 
behalf  of  his  servant,  who  was  in- 
jured "by  reason  of  a  little  stike  run 
into  his  head  through  the  hole  of  his 
eare."  "We  know  not  what  to  do," 
he  declares,  "I  intreat  your  worshipps 
advice." 

Samuel  Gorton  of  Rhode  Island, 
"turbulent  in  disposition,"  and  so 
constituted  that  "every  community 
wherein  he  cast  his  lot  was  anxious 
to  get  rid  of  him,"  but  now  tamed  by 
his  four  score  and  two  years,  writes 
to  Winthrop  on  August  n,  1674,  of 
his  "sore  infirmitie  and  distemper 
which  hath  held  him  now  almost  a 
whole  moneth  of  dayes."  A  month 
later,  with  a  heart  full  of  thanksgiv- 
ing, he  pours  forth  his  rejoicings  to 
Winthrop  in  a  letter  which  takes  up 
twenty-five  octavo  printed  pages. 
The  "cordiall  and  soveraighne  pow- 
ders" Winthrop  had  sent  had  so  done 
their  work  he  finds  his  body  "to  be 
little  differing  from  that  which  it 
was,  before  the  distemper  seized" 
upon  him.  Also  another  "infirmitie" 
which  was  a  "benummednesse  or  like 
the  crampe"  is  taken  away.  He  won- 
ders consequently  "that  a  thing  so 
little  in  quantity,  so  little  in  sent,  so 
little  in  taste,  and  so  little  to  sence  in 
operation,  should  beget  and  bring 
forth  such  effects." 

Edward  Wigglesworth,  a  minister 
of  the  gospel,  thinking  he  strained 

346 


A  i0rt0r'B 


Hill?  8jis  $fott*ttt0 


himself  when  being  hot  he  "tooke  a 
lift"  on  a  cold  day  in  the  winter,  de- 
sires medical  aid.  He  states  some 
months  after  the  accident  "when  I 
looked  upyards  being  ready  to  fall 
backwards,  and  when  I  looked  down- 
ward, to  fall  forward.  And  in  my 
legs  and  feet  benummedness,  as  if 
they  were  asleep  by  lying  double  un- 
der mee."  Thinking  it  was  the 
scurvy  which  he  previously  had,  he 
neglected  to  use  any  means.  As  he 
grew  worse  the  following  autumn  he 
used  artificial  baths,  sixteen  in  all, 
and  in  the  spring  following  "oiles, 
ointments  plaisters"  but  all  accom- 
plished nothing.  Finally  a  weakness 
affected  his  whole  body  so  that  he 
could  "hardly  move  his  neck  a  little." 
He  greatly  desired  Wlnthrop  to  come 
to  New  Haven  to  see  him. 

Two  early  governors  of  Connect- 
icut— Edward  Hopkins  and  John 
Haynes — also  need  his  services.  Hop- 
kins appeals  to  him  to  see  if  he  can 
help  his  wife's  condition.  She  was 
insane.  Some  "water"  seems  to  have 
been  sent  which  was  given  as  direct- 
ed, but  no  "altracion  in  her"  was  per- 
ceived. Haynes  has  occasion  many 
times  to  ask  Winthrop's  assistance  on 
behalf  of  his  wife.  In  1649,  ne 
writes  that  his  wife  is  yet  in  the  land 
of  the  living  but  falls  into  her  violent 
fits  when  she  tries  to  sit  up.  Some 
months  later  we  hear  that  she  "is  yett 
alive,  but  this  month  or  more  was  sel- 
dom free  from  her  most  violent  fitts." 
Shortly  thereafter  he  wishes  to  send 
her  down  to  Winthrop  at  Pequot  but 
could  not.  He  wants  to  know  if  the 
medicine  which  has  been  prescribed 
may  be  safelv  given  her.  Later  he 
speaks  of  a  "little  alteracion  of  her 
fitts  appearing,  att  times"  and  says 
he  wants  to  send  her  down  to  Win- 
throp during  the  winter.  If  she 
could  not  come  he  would  like  to  know 
if  anything  could  be  administered 
safely  to  her  at  such  a  distance.  A 
little  later  he  states  she  has  "pain  all 
over  her,  especially  her  right  side." 
She  has  also  a  "short  cough,  breaths 


shorte,  stuffed  at  the  stomache,  but 
rayses  not  ought."  In  a  footnote  he 
adds  "my  wife  has  paine  alsoe  on  her 
left  side,  although  the  most  is  one  the 
right  side,  wher  the  incision  was." 
How  much  would  we  give  to  inter- 
pret what  the  operation  was  for! 
The  remedies  employed  must  have 
been  somewhat  effectual  for  we  read 
her  "violent  fitts  are  but  seldomm,  her 
cough  is  abated,  and  herself  able  to 
sitt  upp  in  a  chaire  at  night  for  three 
or  fower  howres."  She  fears,  how- 
ever, that  the  supply  of  the  powder 
which  is  to  prevent  her  fits  will  soon 
be  done  and  craves  a  further  supply 
of  the  same.  A  month  later  she  con- 
tinues to  improve  and  new  and  fresh 
supplies  of  medicines  are  again  asked 
for,  as  the  preventing  "phisicke  is  all 
spent  as  is  all  the  rest  almost,  both 
drinke  and  powders."  She  was  also 
troubled  with  fainting  fits  and  Haynes 
wishes  to  know  "whether  she  might 
not  take  of  red  cowes  milk  as  for- 
merly she  did  of  goates  milke."  "A 
scare  paine  on  her  backe"  as  well  as 
other  aches  and  ailments  demand 
Winthrop's  attention  on  other  occa- 
sions. We  imagine  he  must  have 
grown  weary  sometimes  in  hearing 
and  reading  the  long  calendar  of  her 
complaints. 

In  New  Haven  Colony,  Winthrop 
had  as  patients  the  families  of  a  bril- 
liant group  of  men — Eaton,  Daven- 
port and  Leete.  Theophilus  Eaton, 
the  first  governor  of  that  colony,  was 
a  pure  and  noble  character.  He  was 
also  a  long-suffering  man  by  reason 
of  his  second  wife,  who  "seems  to 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  venting  a 
very  ugly  temper  in  the  most  outrag- 
eous language  to  the  whole  family, 
from  her  husband  down  to  Anthony 
'the  neager.'  For  she  slapped  the 
face  of  old  Mrs.  Eaton'  while  the 
family  were  at  dinner  until  the  gov- 
ernor was  compelled  to  hold  her 
hands;  she  pinched  Mary,  the  gov- 
ernor's daughter  by  his  first  marriage, 
until  she  was  black  and  blue  and 
knocked  her  head  against  the  dresser 


Jtrat  pfgatriana  in  Amerira— Qfynr 


which  made  here  nose  bleed  much; 
she  slandered  Mary,  falsely  impeach- 
ing her  character,  and  in  all  points 
she  seems  to  have  been  the  type  of  the 
vulgar  step-mother." 

In  Eaton's  first  letter  he  wishes 
Winthrop  to  come  to  New  Haven 
from  Pequot  and  sends  a  horse  to 
him  so  that  he  could  "advise,  on 
arrival,  for  recovery  of  Davenport's 
health."  Again,  thinking  to  send  his 
daughter  Hopkins  in  the  "ffleete,"  he 
desires  Winthrop's  opinion  as  to  the 
danger  of  a  winter  voyage.  He  later 
states:  "my  wife  with  thankefulnes 
acknowledgeth  the  good  she  hath 
found  by  following  your  directions, 
but  doth  much  desire  your  presence 
here,  as  soone  as  the  season,  and  your 
occasions  will  permit,  both  in  refer- 
ence to  my  daughter  Hopkins,  and 
my  daughter  Hannah,  who  hath  bin 
exercised  these  4  or  5  dayes  with 
vapours  rising  (as  we  conceive)  out 
of  her  stomack  into  her  head,  hin- 
dering both  her  sleepe  and  appetite 
to  meate,  and  apt  to  put  her  into 
fainting  ffitts,  whether  from  winde  or 
the  mother  or  from  what  other  cause 
I  cannot  informe. "Hearkening  unto 
this  request,  Winthrop  went  down  to 
New  Haven  and  prescribed  some 
remedies.  We  read  that  "daughter 
Hopkins  tooke  the  first  potion  of 
purging  physick  he  left  and  hath 
kept  her  bed  since  and  my  wife  is  in 
some  doubt  whether  she  should  give 
her  any  more  of  it  till  she  have  your 
advise."  In  1655,  Eaton  informs 
Winthrop  of  daughter  Eaton's  death 
and  wishes  him  to  come,  if  his  family 
could  spare  him,  to  see  her  husband, 
who  complained  chiefly  of  a  cold,  a 
cough  and  a  "paine  in  the  reight 
side."  Samuel  Eaton  was  the  son 
here  mentioned.  After  Governor 
Haynes'  death,  he  married  his  widow, 
of  whose  ailment  we  have  previously 
spoken.  The  last  information  we 
have  of  the  family  ir,  when  we  are 
told  "daughter  Hopkins  hath  taken 


some  of  her  physick  and  it  wrought 
kindly." 

William  Leete,  also  a  governor  of 
that  colony  and  later  of  Connecticut, 
for  some  reason  or  other,  did  not  de- 
sire to  employ  Rossiter  (the  village 
doctor).  He  consequently,  much  to 
Rossiter's  disgust  no  doubt,  consulted 
Winthrop  on  every  necessary  occa- 
sion. At  one  time  he  writes  "my 
wife  entreats  some  more  of  your 
phisick,  although  she  feareth  it  to 
have  very  contrary  operations  in  Mr. 
Rossiter's  stomack" — an  instance 
that  professional  jealousy  existed  in 
those  days. 

Leete's  family  caused  him  much 
concern.  In  1658  he  writes  "our 
youngest  childe,  about  9  weekes  old, 
liaveing  ever  since  it  was  3  or  4  dayes 
old,  hath  appeared  full  of  red  spots 
or  pimples,  somewhat  like  to  measles, 
and  seemed  allwayes  to  be  bigg,  and 
to  hang  over  on  the  eye  browes  and 
lids;  but  now  of  late  the  eye  lidds 
have  swelled  and  look  very  red, 
burneing  exceedingly,  and  now  at 
last  they  are  so  sweld  up  that  the 
sight  is  utterly  closed  in,  that  he  could 
not  see  nor  for  severall  dayes,  nor  yet 
doth,  and  the  verges  of  the  lids,  where 
they  close,  have  a  white  seame,  like 
the  white  heads  of  wheales,  it  is 
somewhat  extraordinary,  such  as 
none  of  our  woemen  can  tell  that 
they  have  ever  scene  the  like." 
This  child,  Peregrine  by  name,  was 
doubtless  the  cause  of  many  an 
anxious  moment  to  his  parents. 
Leete  later  writes  of  "his  starting, 
and  sometimes  almost  strangling 
ffitts,  like  convulsions,  which  have 
more  frequently  afflicted  the  infant  of 
late  than  formerly."  We  are  apt  to 
conceive  it  probable  he  says  to  pro- 
ceed from  more  than  ordinary  painful 
breeding  teeth.  His  eyes  seem  to  be 
somewhat  better  from  the  use  of  a 
"glasse  of  eye  watter"  which  was 
also  used  on  other  of  the  children  so 
that  "a  little  further  recruit"  of  the 
same  was  desired.  Peregrine  did  not, 
however,  monopolize  all  the  family 

248 


A  inrtnr'0  (Enmapnntenr? 


itB  HattnttB 


troubles,  for  his  sister,  Graciana,  was 
a  weakly,  puny  thing  and  gathered 
strength  but  very  little. 

Winthrop's  treatment  seems  to  have 
caused  an  improvement  for  shortly 
thereafter  she  began  "to  slide  a  chaire 
before  her  and  walke  after  it,  after  her 
ffeeble  manner."  She  caused  trouble, 
however,  in  the  taking  of  her  medi- 
•cine  and  Leete  asks  for  directions  "to 
make  her  willing  and  apt  to  take  it; 
for  though  it  seemes  very  pleasant  of 
itselfe,  yet  is  she  grown  marvailous 
awkward  and  averse  from  takeing  it 
in  beer.  Wherefore  I  would  entreat 
you  to  prescribe  to  us  the  varyety  of 
wayes  in  which  it  may  be  given  soe 
effectually ;  wee  doubt  els  it  may  doe 
much  lesse  good,  being  given  by  force 
onely."  Andrews'  "starting  fits"  as 
well  as  a  "distemper  which  my  son 
William's  wife  can  best  explain"  de- 
mand other  letters  to  Winthrop. 
Leete  also  writes  about  a  weak  back 
which  afflicted  a  neighbor's  child. 

But  John  Davenport,  the  first  pas- 
tor at  New  Haven,  appears  to  have 
required  Winthrop's  services  most. 
In  all  seventeen  letters  are  to  be 
found  containing  medical  references, 
most  of  them  are  about  his  wife's 
prolonged  illness,  buc  some  concern 
himself.  In  1653  he  wishes  to  go  to 
Pequot  to  confer  with  Winthrop  over 
the  state  of  his  body.  "My  wife."  he 
adds,  "inclineth  to  our  travayling 
with  you  to  Boston,  if  you  judge  that 
a  place  and  time  fitt  for  me  to  enter 
into  any  course  of  physick." 

Four  years  later  Brother  Kerry- 
man's  eye  caused  Davenport  much 
anxiety*  and  he  wrote  much  to  Win- 
throp about  it.  He  says  the  medi- 
cines sent  gave  some  benefit  "for 
it  opened  the  liddes  gradually  by 
litle  and  litle,  and  gave  him  ease. 
But,  upon  the  opening  of  his  eye- 
liddes,  they  find  that  in  the  eyes, 
where  the  sight  was,  Is  a  mattery  sub- 
stance which  brother  Peck  thinckes 
flowed  out  of  it  (perad venture  it  is 
the  chrystaline  humor)  ;  he  saith  it 
is  ragged,  or  like  white  ragges  un- 


dissolved,  which  yet  he  thincks  may 
be  easily  dissolved ;  and  from  the  ball 
of  the  eye  groweth  a  carnous  sub- 
stance, which  covereth  the  neather 
eye  lid  all  over,  and  at  the  end  of  it,  in 
the  corner  of  the  eye,  by  his  nose,  is  a 
tumor  of  a  pretty  bignes.  Hereby, 
his  eye  seems  to  be  as  2  eyes,  to  them 
that  looke  upon  it;  yet  sister  Herry- 
man  saith  she  can  see  his  eye  under 
that  excrescence.  The  excrescence  is 
red,  and  so  is  his  eye.  On  the  5th 
day  last  he  tooke  the  powder,  which 
worked  very  well,  bui  most  upwards, 
which,  sister  thinckes,  increased  the 
swelling  about  his  eye.  Brother 
Peck  thinckes  that  his  eye  hath  no 
sense  [in]  it,  nor  can  they  yet  say 
whether  the  sight  is  wholly  lost,  or 
not,  till  that  white  mattery  substance 
be  taken  away  which  is  before  it." 
Herryman  intended,  until  Winthrop's 
further  directions  came,  "to  put  a  lit- 
tle sugar  candie  into  it  for  the  pres- 
ent, which,  he  saith,  may  doe  some 
good,  and  no  hurt." 

Before  this  letter  was  sealed  sis- 
ter Herryman  came  into  Daven- 
port's study  with  the  good  news 
that  her  husband  "could  stirre  his 
eye  yesterday  a  litle,  and  this  day 
more,  and  that  the  excrescence  from 
the  ball  of  his  eye  (which  she  likeneth 
to  a  wheate  straw,  and  toucheth  the 
underlid),  lookes  a  litle  paler  then  it 
did,  that  the  eye  lid  growes  more  ply- 
able,  and  he  can  open  it  a  litle  him- 
selfe.  That  tumor  by  the  side  of  his 
nose,  she  saith,  is  about  the  bignes  of 
a  little  pea.  The  white  that  covers 
the  black  and  darke  colour  of  his  eye 
is  as  bigg  as  a  penny,  and  in  the  mid- 
dest  of  that  is  that  ragged  matter  I 
wrote  of  before.  Brother  Herryman 
thinckes  that  he  pricked  his  eye  with 
a  bodkin  and  that  might  cause  this 
ragged  thing  about  his  eye.  Sister 
Herryman  and  he  boath  thinck  that 
what  you  sent  workes  well;  for  he 
findes  that  he  can  stirr  his  eye,  which 
before  was  as  a  thing  dead  and  other 
good  effects.  He  is  alsoe  at  ease." 

From  the  account  we  have  of  her 


•49 


in  Awmra — Qttpir 


Davenport's  wife  must  have  been  an 
intensely  neurasthenic  woman.  In 
1658  he  states  that  she  "hath  bene, 
diverse  times,  this  sumer,  and  stil  is, 
valetudinarious,  faint,  thirsty,  of  litle 
appetite,  and  indisposed,  sundry 
times,  yet  goes  about  and  is  between 
times  better  and  cheerful,  yet  ordi- 
narily, in  the  mornings,  shee  feeles  a 
paine  in  the  bottom  of  her  back.;> 
Later  he  speaks  of  her  being  "weake 
in  her  spirits  and  weake  stomached." 
For  her  various  com^aints  Winthrop 
dosed  her  with  Rubila  (as  I  will  men- 
tion later),  "pilles"  and  other  un- 
known medicines  without  marked 
beneficial  effect.  The  last  note  we 
have  of  her  is  in  1667  when  Daven- 
port, finding  her  refractory  in  taking 
her  remedies,  writes  in  the  depth  of 
his  despair  to  Winthrop,  saying  "my 
wife  tooke  but  halfe  of  one  of  the  pa- 
pers, but  could  not  beare  the  taste  of 
it,  and  is  discouraged  from  taking 
any  more.  I  perceive  that  some 
speech  from  yourselfe  would  best  sat- 
isfie  her,  but  if  God's  providence 
puttes  a  bar  in  the  way,  we  are  called 
to  submit  thereunto." 

Davenport,  himself  seems  to  have 
had  a  somewhat  similar  malady  for 
which  he  was  treated  by  Winthrop. 
After  a  course  of  treatment  "by  the 
mercy  of  God,"  he  declares,  "my  body 
is  about  to  returne  to  its  former  state, 
the  paine  being  much  abated.  I  am 
now  content  to  let  nature  acte  of  it- 
selfe  in  hope  that  by  God's  blessing 
upon  suitable  diet,  I  shall  be  well 
againe,  in  due  time." 

In  addition  to  all  these  above 
named  patients  mention  should  also 
be  made  of  a  probable  one,  "Mrs. 
John  Megs"  of  Guilford.  In  1673, 
Joseph  Eliot,  Higginson's  successor 
at  Guilford,  writes  "John  Megs"  a 
letter  of  introduction  to  Winthrop. 
In  it  he  asks  aid  for  Meg's  wife,  who 
has  "a  gentle  beginning  of  fits  of 
flatus  hypocondriacus  yt  stir  upon 
griefe  yet  without  violence  for  the 
present." 

The  best  known  remedy  Winthrop 


put  up  and  dispensed  was  one  of 
his  own  concoction,  Rubila,  whose 
method  of  making  was  handed  down 
to  his  son  Wait  and  grandson  John. 
It  is  to  the  latter  that  Increase 
Mather  wrote  on  June  23,  1718,  de- 
siring a  considerable  equantity  of 
Rubila  sent  to  Madam  Winthrop,  his 
mother,  "for  the  relief  of  such  as  the 
Lord  shall  please  to  bless  it  for  yir 
health."  But  its  composition  was  un- 
known from  then  on  till  Dr.  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes  deciphered  a  manu- 
script collection  of  the  medical  cases 
treated  by  Governor  Winthrop  from 
1657-1669  and  came  across  the  fol- 
lowing prescription.  It  was  written, 
as  most  of  them,  in  symbols  which 
Holmes  thus  interpreted: 

"Four  grains  of  (diaphoretic)  an- 
timony with  twenty  grains  of  nitre 
with  a  little  salt  of  tin  making  rubila."" 
Perhaps,  Holmes  states,  something 
was  added  to  redden  the  powder  as  he 
constantly  speaks  of  rubifying  or 
viridating  his  prescriptions,  a  very 
common  practice  of  prescribing  when 
their  powders  look  a  little  too  much 
like  plain  sugar. 

Unfortunately  it  would  seem  from 
letters  subsequently  published  that 
something  was  purposely  omitted. 
Winthrop  himself  sends  some  of  the 
powder  to  his  son  Wait,  and  remarks 
that  it  not  ground  enough,  and  Wait, 
on  other  occasions,  speaks  of  some,  of 
his  own  manufacture,  which  was  not 
enough  ground,  half  ground,  or 
grossly  beaten.  He  says  also  "it  is 
best  to  make  it  before  the  weather  be 
hot"  and  at  another  time,  "the  dog 
dayes  will  not  be  so  good  to  medle 
with  rubila  in,  so  it  must  be  deferred 
at  present." 

This  remedy  appears  to  have  been 
a  cure-all.  It  was  given  as  an  anti- 
dote in  case  of  fevers,  as  a  preventive 
against  fits,  for  "sweild  legs,"  for 
colds,  for  colics,  for  agues — in  fact 
for  any  ailment.  In  a  letter  to  his 
brother,  Fitz  John,  Wait  states  that 
he  knows  "no  better  antidote  in  feav- 
ers  then  the  black  powder,  niter, 


A  inrtnr'a 


ta 


snakeweed,  lignum  vita,  white  cor- 
diall  powder,  unicorn's  horn,  all  of 
which  you  know  the  use  of." 

"Mix  snakeweed  and  lig.  vitae  with 
niter  to  take  in  the  morning;  mix 
fewer  graines  apeice  of  corall,  oculi 
cancrorum,  and  ivory,  to  be  taken  at 
any  time;  thre  or  4  grainens  of  uni- 
corne's  horn  mixt  with  the  black 
powder  at  night;  but  remember  that 
rubila  be  taken  at  the  beginning  of 
any  illness."  Again,  discussing  Fitz 
John's  distemper,  he  says  that  Rubila 
if  taken  "at  the  very  beginning  of  it, 
must  needs  abate  mach  of  the  ma- 
ligntye  of  it,  and  so  render  it  lesse 
dangerous." 

Many  in  different  parts  of  New 
England  kept  a  store  of  Rubila  con- 
stantly in  the  house,  from  which  the 
town  was  supplied  whenever  neces- 
sity arose.  When  the  powder  was 
exhausted  more  was  written  for.  In 
1653,  Deacon  Child  of  Watertown 
writes  "my  wife  would  entreate  you 
send  to  her  a  parcell  of  your  physick, 
divided  into  portions  for  young  and 
ould.  She  hath  had  many  occasions 
to  make  use  thereof,,  to  the  help  of 
many."  Nearly  a  year  later  he  says 
his  wife  is  very  ill  and  "often  wisheth 
she  had  a  ption  of  yor  phisick  by  wch 
she  and  other  have  found  good,  and  is 
psuaded  should  doe  again  had  she  off 
it."  Davenport  and  wife  are,  also, 
among  those  who  received  bountiful 
supplies  of  Rubila  on  several  occa- 
sions for  themselves,  their  sick  neigh- 
bors, and  friends.  It  was  once  de- 
sired by  Mrs.  Davenport  for  the  good 
of  the  people  that  needed  it,  yet  she 
says,  "she  had  rather  have  bene  with- 
out it,  then  you  should  get  hurt  by 
sitting  up  too  late."  This  seems  to 
imply  that  Winthrop  might  have 
spent  some  time  in  the  making  of  it 
or  that  he  chose  the  night  season  as 
he  could  then  prepaic  it  in  secrecy, 
without  any  interruption.  Later 
Davenport's  supply  is  wholly  spent 
so  that  though  some  have  desired  it 
they  turned  away  empty.  Roger 
Williams  of  Rhode  Island  "sick  of  a 


cold  and  feaver"  asks  that  this  pow- 
der might  be  sent  witn  directions.  If 
the  ingredients  be  costly,  he  will 
thankfully  account.  He  then  adds 
"I  have  books  that  prescribe  powders 
but  yours  is  probatum  in  this  Coun- 
try." Again  he  asks  for  more  as  his 
wife  wants  some  for  Mrs.  Week's 
daughter  of  Warrick. 

Though  Winthrop  died  in  1676, 
yet  John  Allyn  of  Hartford,  long 
secretary  of  Connecticut,  had  not  for- 
gotten the  benefits  he  had  derived 
from  taking  this  powder  and  writes 
in  1 68 1  to  the  governor's  son,  Wait, 
for  "a  small  portion  of  rubila  to  ly  by 
if  your  store  would  permit  it."  John 
Winthrop,  junior,  had  previously 
been  the  family  physician.  At  one 
time  Winthrop  writes  to  his  son  Wait, 
"Tell  Mr.  Allyn  his  wife  hath  a  ter- 
tian ague  wc'i  began  the  day  he  went 
hence,  and  we  hope  the  worst  of  it  is 
over.  I  was  wth  hir  this  morning, 
and  hir  fit  was  shorter  and  more  mod- 
erate then  former."  Thinking,  per- 
haps, that  too  little  would  be  sent  he 
then  says :  "I  used  to  take  8  grains  at 
a  time."  Richard  Wharton  of  Bos- 
ton, also,  desired  some  for  his  cold 
"which  he  could  not  vet  shake  off  and 
thought  that  a  full  supply  of  it  would 
have  saved  him  a  great  deal  of  blood 
wch  he  had  been  forced  to  part  with." 
And  Governor  Haynes  when  John 
Winthrop  was  alive  writes,  too,  for 
working  physick  or  powder  which 
benefitted  his  wife  as  "it  wrought 
very  kindly  alwaies  both  causing 
vomiting  and  purdginge."  Subse- 
quently the  usual  dose  was  not  effec- 
tual for  we  learn  twice  it  hath  not 
wrought  at  all. 

The  powder  seems  to  have  been 
rather  nauseous  in  its  taste  and  many 
objected  to  take  it.  It  may  have 
been  the  powder  William  Leete  asks 
directions  about  for  Graciana  his 
daughter  as  "she  is  grown  marvailous 
awkward  and  averse  from  taking  it  in 
beer."  Thomas  Mayhew  wants  some 
more  for  his  daughter,  we  learn,  as 
she  is  now  willing  (probably  aft*r 


Jfftrat  pfjjBtrtattja  in  Ammra — Styrir  Ghtainma 


much  urgings  and  inducements)  to 
take  it.  With  Winthrop's  great- 
grandson,  however,  no  trifling  was 
permitted.  We  read  in  a  pathetic 
letter  to  his  son  which  Wait  has  left 
us:  "Poor  little  Tome  taken  yester- 
day with  great  pain  in  his  stomach, 
belly,  and  side,  like  a  plurettick 
feaver;  your  mother  and  most  of  the 
house  up  with  him  all  night.  He 
took  rubila  this  morning,  and  hope  he 
is  better."  This  might  mean  though 
that  little  Tome  resisted  the  taking 
of  this  nauseous  drug  till  the  morning 
when,  worn  out  and  tamed,  he  took 
his  medicine,  as  he  ought,  like  a  little 
man. 

When  Mr.  Stone  was  sick  Daven- 
port endeavored  to  persuade  him  to 
take  this  powder  but  did  not  find  him 
"inclinable,  though  he  was  burthened 
in  his  stomach."  In  the  same  letter 
Davenport  states  that  Governor  New- 
man took  once  Rubila,  "but  finding 
himself  sundrie  times  ready  to  faint 
away,  hath  not  been  willing  to  take  it 
againe,  nor  his  wife  that  he  should, 
though  we  persuaded  and  encouraged 
him  thereunto."  Small  wonder,  then, 
is  it  that  Wait  Winthrop  states  "for 
feverishness  and  restlessness"  he  has 
found  "nothing  help  like  rubila  when 
there  has  been  strength  to  bare  it." 

The  dose  generally  was  one  to  two 
grains,  but  this  amount  was  at  times 
exceeded  for  John  Allyn;  we  saw, 
used  to  take  eight  grains  at  a  time 
and  Mrs.  Davenport  took  once  "6 
graines  of  rubila."  On  one  occasion 
it  was  advised  to  be  given  in  a  "pill 
don  up  with  bread."  For  "Ashbyes 
extreemely  sweld  leggs"  Wait  Win- 
throp writes  "if  he  would  be  persuad- 
ed to  take  rubila  in  such  a  proportion 
as  would  not  work  with  him  tho  the 
fever  be  not  over  and  to  take  it  every 
day  for  som  time,  it  wold  insensibly 
and  by  degrees  take  away  both  the 
swelling  and  every  evill  symptom ;  he 
may  begin  with  a  grain,  or  halfe  a 
grain,  and  so  increase  halfe  a  grain 
every  day  till  it  begins  to  make  him  a 


little  quamish,  and  then  the  next  time 
decrease  halfe  a  grain  or  a  grain, 
and  then  keep  to  that  proportion." 
This  dose  would  be  rather  a  "cordiall 
for  him  than  weaken  him."  It  may 
make  him  costive  and  to  overcome 
this,  a  "spoonful  or  two  of  molasses 
alone,  or  mixt  with  a  spoonful  of  oyle, 
would  be  as  good  as  anything." 

With  such  a  demand  for  this  pow- 
der we  are  not  surprised  that  Wait  is 
obliged,  on  several  occasions,  to  send 
for  large  supplies  of  some  of  its  in- 
gredients. At  one  time  he  asks  for 
"fifty  pounds  of  nitre  and  twenty 
pounds  of  good  tartar  free  from 
dust." 

Besides  Rubila,  Winthrop  pre- 
scribed niter  ("which  he  ordered  in 
doses  of  twenty  to  thirty  grains  to 
adults  and  three  grains  to  infants") 
iron,  sulphur,  calomel,  rhubarb,  guai- 
acum,  jalap,  horse  radish,  the  ano- 
dyne mithradate  (a  shot-gun  pre- 
scription), coral  in  powder  form,  am- 
ber and  electuary  of  millipedese.  He 
also  used  elecampane,  elder,  worm- 
wood and  anise,  as  well  as  unicorn's 
horn.  In  1658  Davenport  sends  him 
"his  owne  unicornes  home"  which 
Mrs.  Davenport  had  kept  safe  for 
him  since  he  sent  it  to  Mrs.  Eaton. 
Another  remedy  he  probably  used 
was  one  later  in  his  son's  pharma- 
copoeia. It  was  known  as  oculi  can- 
crorum  and  was  sent  him  by  Sir 
Kenelm  Digby,  who  thus  describes 
its  preparation. 

"Beate  to  subtile  powder  one  ounce 
of  crabbes  eyes  (in  latin  called  Oculi 
Cancrorum),  then  putt  upon  it  in  a 
high  glasse  (because  of  the  ebulli- 
tion) foure  ounces  of  strong  wine- 
vinegar.  It  will  instantlv  boyle  up 
extremely;  let  it  stand  till  all  be 
quiett;  then  straine  it  through  a  fine 
linon,  and  of  this  liquor  (wch  will 
then  tast  like  dead  beere ;  without  anv 
sharpenesse)  give  two  spoonefulls  att 
a  time  to  drinke,  three  times  a  day; 
and  you  shall  see  a  strange  effect  in  a 
weeke  or  two." 

25* 


A  Sartnr'B 


tH 


Although  Winthrop  treated  agues 
yet  I  hope  he  did  not  employ  the  fol- 
lowing remedy,  also  sent  him  by 
Digby  who  claims  to  have  had  "in- 
fallible successe"  with  it: 

"Pare  the  patients  nayles  when  the 
fitt  is  coming  on ;  and  put  the  .par- 
ings into  a  litle  bagge  of  fine  linon 
or  sarsenet;  and  tye  that  about  a 
•live  eeles  neck,  in  a  tubbe  of  water. 


The  eele  will  dye,  and  the  patient  will 
recover.  And  if  a  dog  or  hog  eate 
that  eele,  they  will  also  dye." 

Winthrop's  life,  which  was  thus 
devoted  so  largely  to  the  public  weal 
in  his  capacities  as  statesman  and 
physician,  was  brought  to  a  close  on 
April  5,  1676,  but  the  good  which  he 
wrought  is  not  forgotten  and  will  be 
ever  cherished,  even  by  future  gene- 
rations. 


WAIT  WINTHROP  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP  IN  1673. 

HONORED  SR, — I  received  yours  by  Mr  Roswell,  and  haue  heard  noeting  from  Con- 
necticot  since,  till  Mr  Steele  and  Mr  Barnad  came  last  weeke  and  brought  newes  of  yr 
health,  which,  a  day  or  two  before  they  came,  was  otherwise  reported  heere,  that  you 
weare  sick  againe ;  but  when  I  had  inquired  into  it,  I  found  noe  ground  for  it  (God  be 
thanked).  Mr.  Usher  did  fully  understand  my  proposition  about  the  reserve  for  three 
years,  which  you  doubt  of  in  your  letter.  Here  is  little  newes.  Thay  are  all  well  at  Salem  and 
Wenham.  I  was  there  about  a  weeke  since.  There  was  a  sad  accident  fell  out  at  Wenham 
about  a  fortnight  since.  Mr  Higenson  went  from  Salem  to  preach  there  on  the  Sabbath  day; 
and  after  the  evening  exercise,  he  being  with  severall  of  this  towne  at  my  sisters  house,  in  the 
parler,  there  being  a  thunder  shower,  the  lightening  brake  (as  I  suppose,  haveing  veiwed 
the  place,  the  house  being  somthing  damnified)  on  the  top  of  the  chimny,  and  balls  of  fire 
came  downe  into  both  the  lower  roomes,  and  the  chamber  over  the  parler,  which  killed 
one  Goodman  Goldsmith,  as  he  sat  by  the  chimny  in  the  parler,  talking  with  Mr  Higgen- 
son  and  others,  and  through  Gods  mercy  hurt  noebody  els;  only,  the  mans  dog.  which  laye 
under  the  chayre  which  he  sat  in,  was  killed  alsoe.  My  sister,  with  all  the  children,  weare 
in  the  outward  kitchen,  as  providence  ordered  it.  Here  came  one  Jones,  of  Charlestowne, 
in  from  Irland,  the  last  night,  but  brings  not  newes  that  I  yet  here  of,  but  that  severall  of 
the  New  England  ships  bound  for  England  are  taken  and  noe  newes  that  any  are  arived. 
I  enquired  of  Mr  Nicoles  about  his  being  cured,  who  tells  a  strang  story  about  the  maner 
of  it;  but  all  that  was  done  was  that  his  mother  tooke  the  juice  of  the  elder  leaves  and 
dressed  his  wounds,  or  sores,  which  he  had  in  many  parts  of  his  body,  and  gave  him  the 
distilled  water  to  drink,  about  a  gill  at  a  time  every  morning,  or  halfe  a  gill,  I  am  not  cer- 
taine  which,  and  he  was  well  in  a  fortnight  or  3  weekes,  who  before  dispaired,  not  only  of 
being  cured,  but  of  life,  alsoe.  I  am  apt  to  believe  that  a  little  quantytye  of  the  juice  be- 
ing drunk  would  be  more  effectuall  then  the  distilled  water.  I  have  not  els  to  ad  but  my 
duty  to  yourselfe  and  love  to  my  sisters  and  remaine 


Your  obedient  son 


Boston,  June  gth,  1673. 


WAIT  WINTHEOP. 


LETTERS  OF  ONE  OF  AMERICA'S  FIRST  PHYSICIANS 


(DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP  TO  HIS  FATHER  IN  1628. 
To  the  wor  his  very  loving  father,  John  Winthrop,  Esq. ,  in  Groton. 

SIR, — My  duty  remembered  unto  you,  I  am  very  sorry  to  heare  that  your  hande  con- 
tinueth  so  ill,  but  I  nope,  by  Gods  providence,  you  shall  finde  helpe  by  those  things  I  have 
sent  you,  which  I  receyved  from  a  woman  that  is  very  skilfull,  &  much  sought  unto  for 
these  thinges.  She  is  sister  to  Mr.  Waterhouse  the  linnen  draper  in  Cheap  side,  by  whose 
meanes,  I  was  brought  to  her.  She  told  me,  if  you  were  at  London  she  made  noe  doubt 
but  to  cure  it  quicly,  but  because  you  cannot  come  up  she  therefore  gave  me  these  plaisters 
to  send  to  you,  &  said  that  if  it  were  not  gangreened  she  would  warrant  them  by  Gods 
helpe  to  doe  you  present  good.  The  use  of  them  is  as  followeth.  Take  the  yellow plaister, 
as  much  as  will  cover  your  sore  finger  all  over  to  the  next  joynt  below  the  sore,  and  on  the 
rest  of  your  finger  wheron  this  plaister  doth  not  lye,  lay  as  muche  of  the  blacke  plaister 
as  will  cover  it  all  over,  this  must  be  done  twice  a  day,  morning  &  evening,  till  it  beginneth 
to  grow  well,  then  once  a  day.  The  other  blacke  plaister  you  must  lay  all  over  your  hand, 
&  must  not  wash  it,  nor  lay  any  other  thing  to  it.  This  will  draw  out  the  thorne,  if  any  be 
in,  &  heale  it  both.  She  will  take  nothing  for  it,  &  therefore  I  doe  the  rather  credit  hir, 
for  she  doth  it  only  for  freinds,  &c.  I  pray  you  therefore  use  it,  &  leave  of  any  other 
course  of  surgery.  I  wish  you  were  here  at  London  where  she  might  dresse  it  her  selfe. 
For  newes  I  cannot  write  so  good  as  the  last ;  this  bearer  will  fully  satisfye  you  of  all  pro- 
ceedings, which  every  day  alter  &  change,  some  like  to  be  good,  by  &  by  crosse  againe. 

For  my  voyage  to  new  England  I  doe  not  resolve  (especially  following  my  uncle 
Downings  advice)  except  I  misse  of  the  Straights,  but  I  will  stay  till  you  have  sold  the 
land  though  I  misse  of  both:  thus  with  my  duty  remembered  againe  to  your  selfe,  with  my 
grandmother  &  mother,  &  my  love  to  my  brothers  &  sisters  &  the  rest  of  our  freinds,  I 
commend  you  to  Gods  protection  &  rest 

Your  obedeint  Son 

London:  April  n,  1628.  JOHN  WINTHROP. 


JOHN  WINTHROP,  ESQ.,  TO  HIS  SON  IN  1637. 
To  his  very  loving  Son,  Mr.  John  Winthrop,  at  Ipswich,  d'd. 

MY  GOOD  SON, — I  received  your  letter,  and  heartily  rejoice  and  bless  the  Lord  for 
his  merciful  providence  towards  us  all,  in  delivering  your  wife  from  so  great  a  danger. 
The  Lord  make  us  truly  thankful.  And  I  hope  it  will  teach  my  daughter  and  other  women 
to  take  heed  of  putting  pins  in  the  mouth,  which  was  never  seasonable  to  be  fed  with  such 
morsels.  I  can  write  you  no  news,  only  we  had  letters  from  Conectacott,  when  they  were 
shut  up  with  snow  above  a  month  since,  and  we  at  Boston  were  almost  ready  to  break  up 
for  want  of  wood,  but  that  it  pleased  the  Lord  to  open  the  bay,  (which  was  so  frozen  that 
men  went  over  it  in  all  places,)  and  mitigate  the  rigor  of  the  season ;  blessed  be  his  name. 
On  Friday  was  fortnight,  a  pinnace  was  cast  away  upon  Long  Island  by  Natascott,  and 
Mr.  Babbe  and  others,  who  were  in  her,  came  home  upon  the  ice.  We  have  had  one  man 
frozen  to  death,  and  some  have  lost  their  fingers  and  toes.  Seven  men  were  carried  out  to 
sea  in  a  little,  rotten  skiff,  and  kept  there  twenty-four  hours,  without  food  or  fire,  and  at 
last  gat  to  Pullen  Point. 

We  have  appointed  the  general  court  the  12  of  the  i  month.  We  shall  expect  you 
here  before  the  court  of  assistants.  So,  with  all  hearty  salutations  from  myself  and  your 
mother  to  yourself  and  wife,  and  little  Betty,  and  all  our  good  friends  with  you,  I  com- 
mend you  to  the  blessing  of  the  Lord  and  rest 

Your  loving  father,  Jo:  W. 

I  send  you  herein  the  warrant  for  Ipswich  and  Newbury.  Commend  me  to  your 
brother  and  sister  Dudley. 

"Xlth,  22,  1637. 


TRANSCRIBED    FROM     ORIGINALS    BY    MRS.    ABBIE    FOSDICK  RANSOM 


LETTERS  OF  ONE  OF  AMERICA'S  FIRST  PHYSICIANS 


LUCY  DOWNING  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP  IN  1640. 
To  her  most  honored  nephew,  John  Winthrop,  Esq.,  this  present,  Boston. 

SIR,  —  Wee  now  expect  you  stay  for  6  boyes,  you  are  gone  so  longe.  Indeed  wee 
want  your  company  very  sensible.  My  lady  Susan,  I  hear,  is  now  deliuered,  therefore,  in 
poynt  of  good  manners,  your  wife  may  now  presume  to  be  eased  of  her  loade  also.  If 
occasion  be  for  your  longer  stay,  I  pray,  Sir,  let  Georg  know  I  expect  him  with  this  bear, 
Msr.  Ruke,  or  the  next  conuenience;  allso  my  husband  desiers  to  know  if  you  will  part 
with  some  hay  that  you  have  ;  we  are  in  much  want  ells.  I  pray  your  spediest  answeer. 

I  have  experimented  the  crocus  this  2  nights,  and  found  much,  though  not  a  totall 
fredom  of  payne  theereby.  I  pray  let  me  know  if  I  may  safely  aply  it  to  the  mould  of 
my  head. 

I  thank  you  much  for  your  advise  and  I  pray  to  my  brother  also  give  my  many 
thanks,  and  to  all  my  servis  and  best  wishes,  is 

Yours, 

Jan.  29,  or  Tuesday.  (1640-1.)  L.  D. 

All  our  newes  is  out  of  Eng.  I  hope  you  haue  it  before  vs.  Wee  have  put  his  Grace 
of  Canterbury  fast  in  the  Tower  ;  and  if  our  St.  Peter  keeps  the  keyes,  his  grace  is  like  to 
coolie  his  shins,  ere  he  gets  in,  this  could  weather;  for  we  speak  only  of  his  confusion  and 
unpardonable  sins. 


HUGH  PETER  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP. 

GOOD  SON, — My  truest  love  unto  you  and  all  yours  in  Jesus  Christ  our  dearest  Lord. 
These  may  certifye  you  that  I  doe  long  for  your  company  as  much  as  the  teeming  earth 
for  the  rising  sun.  Let  not  your  wife  bee  ouerdeiected,  for  my  part  I  am  as  deep  in  my 
obstructions  as  at  Rotterdam.  I  pray  speake  to  your  wife  that  Mat :  Lake  and  my  mayd  hope 
may  bee  with  her,  and  then  I  believe  shee  shall  have  two  tolerable  servants.  My  head  is 
not  well,  nor  any  part  at  present  for  I  cannot  get  sleepe.  I  would  you  should  send  me 
word  what  you  will  doe  therin,  but  rather  come  over.  Oh  how  my  heart  is  with  you.  Yon 
doe  not  know  how  much  I  need  friends  and  helps. 

Tell  my  dear  friend  your  sister  Symonds  that  I  am  as  low  as  ever,  &  wish  I  knew 
how  to  see  her.  Thus  in  much  hast  &  perplexity  I  take  leave  &  am  yours  ever, 

Salem  ult.  Sept.  Hu.  Pm». 


HUGH  PETER  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP  IN  1649. 
ffor  John  Winthrop,  Jun.,  Esq.,  with  a  (t)oken  in  paper. 

DKF.RE  SIR.— I  feare  you  are  angry  because  you  doe  not  heare  from  mee,  nor  I  from 
you.  I  have  by  Mr.  Gott  ordered  you  what  I  have  in  New  England  (a  line  effaced)  word 
I  ever  loved  you  and  yours,  and  am  truly  sensible  of  all  your  cares.  Nothing  under 
heaven  hath  more  troubled  mee  then  that  you  had  not  my  company  into  New  England 
with  you.  I  have  sent  you  by  this  bearer  a  loade  stone  which  I  pray  keepe  for  mee  if  I 
come,  if  not  it  is  yours.  Oh  that  I  were  (a  line  effaced)  my  old  malady  &  the  spleene,  & 
never  had  hart  or  tyme  to  attend  any  cure,  that  now  I  give  my  life  gone :  &  shall  out  live 
my  parts  I  feare.  My  hart  is  with  my  God  &  desire  after  him  in  whom  I  am 

Yours  ever 

30  of  April  49.  Hu:  P«TKR. 


LETTERS  OF  ONE  OF  AMERICA'S  FIRST   PHYSICIANS 


GOVERNOR  JOHN  HAYNES  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP  IN  1653. 
To  his  much  honoured  ffrind,  Jno.  Winthrop,  Esq.  att.  his  house  in  Pequott,  these  bee  d'd. 

SIR, — I  received  the  powder  you  last  sent,  together  with  your  kind  token,  a  fatt 
gpate,  for  which  I  retorne  harty  thankes.  Thus  it  pleases  you  still  to  lade  mee  with  your 
kindness,  myselfe  too  short  and  awanting  for  requitall.  If  this  Irish  woman  is  come  upp 
to  you  (yourselfe  befor  being  supplied)  I  pray  you  let  her  by  the  first  opportunity  bee  con- 
veied  to  us,  for  I  did  soe  order  it,  hoping  to  have  pleasured,  not  to  burthen  you.  Mr. 
Eaton  writt  lately  to  Captaine  Cullicke  that  the  English  have  had  another  fight  at  sea  with 
the  Hollander  (besides  what  we  had  formerly)  &  have  obteined  another  glorious  victory 
over  them.  Thus  it  pleases  God  to  goe  out  with  our  Nation  to  vindicate  our  iust  quarrel. 
Your  youngest  sonne,  (Mr.  Waite)  hath  bine  somewhat  ill  of  late  complaininge  of  a  paine 
in  his  belly,  &  withall  lookes  somewhat  heavy  eyed,  not  soe  ready  to  stir  upp  and  downe 
as  formerly,  yett  keepes  not  his  bedd,  but  rises  dayly,  &  seemes  for  the  most  parte  to  have 
a  pretty  good  stomache  to  his  meate ;  only  wee  judge  it  best,  for  the  while,  that  hee  keepe 
his  chamber.  We  gave  him  wormseed  (as  supposing  it  might  bee  wormes,  by  reason  this 
time  of  yeare  for  fruite,  &  youth  will  hardly  be  restreined  wher  ther  is  plenty),  1  thinke, 
uppon  it  Mr.  Ffitch  said  hee  voided  some  wormes,  but  in  regard  the  paine  in  his  belly  fol- 
lowed him  still  at  times,  we  gave  him  Cardis,  (?)  &  that,  wee  hope,  did  him  somme  good. 
This  daye  wee  thinke  to  give  him  two  graines  and  a  haulfe  of  your  powder,  in  case  he  still 
remains  ill.  Wee  conceive  yourselfe  would  doe  the  like  if  you  were  present,  &  somme  of 
us  have  bine  ill  much  in  like  manner,  &  these  thinges  were  present  helpe  to  them  (the 
Lord  blessinge  the  meanes)  which  caused  us  thus  to  act.  Mr.  Ffitch  would  doe  nothing 
without  my  advice  &  concurrence  with  him,  and  my  skill  is  little  or  nothinge,  only  I  did 
as  for  my  owne,  &  would  in  truth  (in  your  absence)  take  the  like  naturall  care,  if  in  my 
power  to  doe  ought  that  ways.  I  hope  there  is  not  the  least  danndger,  yett  I  could  not  but 
acquaint  you  with  it,  because  it  may  please  God  to  direct  you  to  advise  for  the  best,  &  to 
send  something  usefull  for  him  in  that  case. 

My  wife  continues  much  as  formerly;  she  took  the  yellow  powder  twise,  &  only 
vomited  it  up  againe,  &  it  wrought  noe  other  or  more ;  alsoe,  since  J.  Gallop  was  heere, 
she  tooke  the  working  powder,  2  graines,  but  it  wrought  not  at  all,  insomuch  that  she  at 
times  is  sicke  at  her  stomache;  yet  her  appetite  better  than  formerly. 

I  have  not  further  to  imparte  att  present,  only  our  respects  to  yourselfe  &  Mrs. 
Winthrop,  with  our  consideration  to  Mrs.  Lake,  (and)  Mr.  Blinmah,  rest 

Your  assured  loving  ffrind, 
Hartfd.  this  i4th  of  the  6th  mo:  1653  Jo:  HAYNES: 

Your  sonne  became  ill  uppon  Thursday  last  weeke,  &  soe  hath  continewed  at  times 
ever  since. 


SAMUEL  SYMONDS  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP,  IN  1647. 
To  his  very  loving  brother,  John  Winthrop,  of  Salem,  Esq.,  this  Salem. 

GOOD  BROTHER, — Having  this  opportunity,  I  thought  good  to  let  you  understand 
God's  providence  towards  us :  my  daughter  Epps,  upon  the  22th  of  this  instant,  was 
delivered  of  a  sonne ;  &  thanks  be  to  God,  both  mother  and  sonne  are  comfortably  well. 
We  would  gladly  know  what  day  you  will  agree  upon  to  bring  my  sister,  that  accordingly 
we  may  send  you  a  horse  to  the  water  side.  I  thank  God  my  wife  hath  bene  better  in 
respect  of  the  paine  in  the  stomach  this  weeke  than  formerly ;  good  wine  (as  you  say)  is 
the  best  cordial  for  her. 

I  ha^e  endeavoured  this  day  to  sett  that  businesse  Cosen  Downing  wrote  me  about, 
on  foote,  here.  I  wish  earnestly  it  may  be  attended,  &c  My  wife  desireth  thanks  to  be 
returned  to  my  sister  for  her  token.  Thus  with  our  love  to  you  both  &  yours,  &  to  my 
Cosen  Downing  &  his,  I  rest 

Your  ever  loving  brother 

Ipswich,  24th  i2th  1647.  SAMUEL  SYMONDS. 


ONE    OF    THE    FIRST    PHYSICIANS    IN    AMERICA 

Born  in  1606—  Educated  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin— Studied  Law  at  the  Inner  Temple- 
Entered  the  English  Naval  Service  and  sailed  in  an  Expedition  with  the  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham—Immigrated to  the  New  World,  became  a  leading  Chemist  and  was  elected 
Governor  of  his  Colony— Portrait  from  Oil  Painting  at  State  Capitol  at  Hartford 


LETTERS  OF  ONE  OF  AMERICA'S  FIRST  PHYSICIANS 

SAMUEL  SYMONDS  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  W1NTHROP  IN  1658. 

To  the  rigt  Worsbipfull  John  Winthrop,  Esqr.,  Deputy  Governour,  this  present. 

Connecticott. 

1  IKAKK,  BROTHER, — I  gladly  imbraced  this  oportumty  to  salute  you  with  these  few 
lines.  My  cosens  (all  three)  were  in  health,  &  as  merry  as  very  good  cheere  &  Ipswich 
f rends  could  make  them,  on  sixt  day  last;  witness  my  wife,  sister  Lake;  Sam:  M:  R: 
Mris  Rogers,  3  of  her  sonnes,  besides  her  sonne  Hubbard  &  his,  my  sonue  Epps  &  his,  &c. 
We  see  nothing  but  matter  of  hopefulness  &  incouragment  concerning  my  cosens  new  con- 
dicion.  He  carrieth  himself  soe  that  he  gaineth  more  love  &  respect,  amongst  such  as 
know  him. 

We  hope  they  will  live  comfortably  together,  &  that  both  you  &  we  shall  have  cause 
to  bless  God  in  their  behalf.  We  desire  my  cosens  to  be  with  vs  this  winter  as  much  as 
they  can.  My  wife  spoke  to  her.  We  think  she  may  affourd  vs  her  company  now  better 
than  afterward.  My  daughter  M:  desires  to  be  excused  in  not  returning  an  answer  to  your 
loving  letter  at  this  tyme.  She  hath  received  your  phizich  for  which  she  humbly  thanks 
you.  Neither  she  nor  her  sister  R:  have  had  them  since  you  were  here.  They  did  follow 
your  direccions.  Thus  presenting  our  love  &  kinde  respects  to  yourself,  my  sister,  &  all 
my  cosens,  I  commend  you,  to  the  direccion  &  proteccion  of  our  blessed  Saviour  &  we  rest, 

Your  loving  brother, 

SAMUEL  SYMONDS. 

My  wife  desires  to  be  remembered  to  my  cosen  Waite&  would  entreat  him  to  studdy 
hard :  but  above  all  to  feare  God  &  keep  his  commands. 

Argilla,  gbr  2Qth  1658. 


STEPHEN  WINTHROP  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP  IN  1653. 

To  my  honored  brother,  Jo:  Winthrop,  Esqr.,  these  present,  att  Pequod  or  elsewhere  in 

New  England. 

DEARE  &  HONORED  BROTHER, — I  received  yrs,  &  thanck  you  most  kindly  for  it.  It 
was  much  refreshing  to  me,  though  it  repeated  a  great  matter  of  sadness  to  me,  even  the 
losse  of  my  deare  brother,  wth  whom  I  was  brought  upp  so  constantly;  but  I  know  the 
Lord  sitts  in  heaven,  &  doth  whatever  he  will,  &  we  must  submit  to  his  pleasure.  I  should 
have  writte  unto  you  before,  but  yt  I  knew  not  when  the  shippswent.  Jo:  Tinker  promised 
to  call  on  me  but  failed  me.  I  have  sent  a  letter  of  attorny  over  to  you.  I  am  bould  to 
put  in  your  name  yt  the  others  may  the  better  take  yor. advice,  though  I  should  not  put 
the  trouble  of  the  busness  upp  you.  Truly  I  doe  valew  what  I  have  there ,  for,  could  I  be 
assured  of  my  health,  I  thinck  I  should  come  away  imediately,  for  I  have  no  health  heare, 
&  I  have  been  this  two  years  extreamly  troubled  wth  the  zeatica,  &  I  am  just  now  goeing 
to  the  bath  to  see  if  yt  may  remedy  it.  My  much  lying  in  ye  wet  feilds  uppon  the  grownd 
hath  brought  it  uppon  me,  as  it  has  uppon  many  others.  It  makes  my  life  very  uncom- 
fortable. For  newes  wht  should  I  write  to  you  ?  Every  passinger  will  be  able  to  tell  you 
the  latest.  At  present  the  warres  betweene  the  Dutch  &  we  contynue,  though  we  have 
twice  this  somere  beaten  theire  maine  fleet,  consisting  off  120  of  theire  best  men  of  warre; 
and  at  last  blocked  them  upp  in  theire  harbors  for  severall  weekes,  though  we  heare  b. 
reports  they  are  gott  out  againe,  &  we  expect  a  new  engagement. 

The  Dutch  embassidors  are  yet  heere ;  but  there  is  no  likelihood  af  any  agreemt. 
We  demand  three  causionary  townes  of  them,  ye  Brill,  Flushing,  &  Middleborowe,  & 
400,000!  sattisfaccon.  They  are  not  yet  lowe  enough  to  give  it,  and  so  ye  case  stands.  Or 
own  state  is  not  setled ;  or  doubtes  &  feares  many.  All  the  comfort  is,  ye  Lord  is  able  to 
doe  his  ovvne  worke  and  finnish  it.  Mine  and  my  wife  humble  respects  to  you  &  or  good 
sister,  &  love  to  all  or  nephewes  and  necces  I  pray  present;  &  be  confident 

I  am,  sir, 

Yor  most  affectionat  brother  &  servant, 

Kensington,  2  Augt.  '53,  S.  WINTHROP. 

Just  now  a  messinger  is  come  from  ye  fleet,  &  brings  letters  yt  say  ye  two  fleets 
have  been  eingaged  three  dayes,  &  now  the  Dut(c)h  are  flying  &  or  persueing,  &  y  t  already 
we  have  taken  &  sunck  fortye  of  there  best  men  of  warre.  This  is  thought  will  putt  an 
end  to  theire  warre  &  make  them  submitt. 


LETTERS  OF  ONE  OF  AMERICA'S  FIRST  PHYSICIANS 


LUCY  DOWNING  TO  (DR.)  JOHN  WINTHROP  IN  1674. 
For  her  much  honerd  nephew,  Jhon  Winthrop,  esq.,  thes.  New  Eng. 

DEAR  CHILD, — In  my  other  leter  I  have  bin  so  larg  as  prevents  a  scale,  yet  not  satis- 
fied my  self:  as  to  my  bodily  distempers,  which  is  a  great  weakness  in  my  back,  which  was 
first  ocasioned  by  a  grat  fall  of  my  hors  in  new  Eng.  behinde  Collonel  Read,  and  the  2  last 
years  I  was  in  Hatly,  I  had  in  each  of  them,  2  daungerous  falls,  one  up  staires  and  one 
down  staires,  which  did  much  bruise  that  tender  parte  againe,  and  had  not  a  devine  hand 
bin  under  had  bin  present  death,  and  still  allthought  I  have  not  usuallie  I  have  not  much 
payn  there,  yet  am  much  disabled  in  my  legds  for  goeing,  especially  in  could  weather  or 
any  could  taken,  yet  I  constantly  wear  some  plaster  upon  it.  And  my  hearing  hath  much 
declined  this  3  years  last,  for  the  help  of  which  I  did  advise  with  a  Cambrigh  docter,  a 
very  able  experunced  doter  before  I  came  to  Londan,  and  he  tould  me  I  must  expect  my  age 
to  be  a  great  meanes  thereof ;  and  that  he  feared  that  the  more  I  did  tamper  with  my  eares 
the  wors  it  might  be  for  me;  and  soe  a  dockter  I  did  advise  with  hear  tould  me  the  like; 
and  my  ould  acquaintance  in  Londan  being  all  gone  I  am  not  willing  to  a  further  hazerd 
of  my  eares  and  my  mony  allso  tor  nothing.  And  in  Sep.  last  I  was  taken  with  a  great 
giddiness  in  my  head,  and  a  great  noise  in  my  ears,  and  sickness  in  my  stomach,  and  a 
generall  distemper  all  over  me,  soe  as  I  was  forced  presently  into  my  bed ;  it  would  take 
me  a  moment  without  any  warning,  and  then  I  should  presently  sleep  and  then  for  a  day 
or  2  after  tacke  onelie  mace  alle  whould  down  with  me.  But  I  thank  God  I  have  not  had 
any  of  that  distemper  this  year,  now  of  the  noise  in  my  ears,  which  I  suppose  may  be  be- 
cause I  now  keepe  my  ears  warmer;  and  since  I  have  had  that  freedom  I  thanck  God  my 
stomach  is  much  better.  And  in  respect  your  sister  Peters  is  now  forced  for  her  present 
profit  to  confine  herself  to  a  small  part  of  her  hous,  and  I  am  necessitated  by  my  weakness 
to  keep  a  servant  to  help  me,  I  found  it  more  to  my  profit ;  since  I  must  give  7  pound  a 
year  for  my  chamber  and  furnish  it  myself,  and  find  myself  cooles  and  candilles  and  was- 
ing,  and  to  pay  for  our  boards  with  her  besides,  for  now  allthought  I  may  feare  the  harder, 
yet  I  can  take  my  owne  time,  for  want  of  which  I  formerly  sufferd,  and  now  I  an  less 
troublesome  to  her.  But  I  am  now  att  ten  pound  a  year  for  my  chamber  and  3  pound  for 
my  servants  wages,  and  have  to  extend  the  other  tene  pound  a  year  to  acomadat  for  our 
meat  and  drinck;  and  fof  my  clothing  and  all  other  necessaries  I  am  much  to  sake,  and 
more  your  brother  Georg  will  not  hear  of  for  me ;  and  that  it  is  onely  couetousness  that 
maks  me  aske  more.  He  last  sumer  bought  another  town  near  Hatly,  called  Clappum, 
cost  him  13  or  14  thousand  pound,  and  I  really  believe  one  of  us  2  are  couetons.  Cooles 
have  ben  this  winter  at  fiftie  shill  and  3  pound  a  chaldron,  and  wheat  at  ten  shills  a  bush, 
and  all  other  things  sutible  thereunto.  The  good  Lord  helpe  me  to  live  by  fayth,  and  not 
by  sence,  whilst  he  pleas  to  afforde  me  a  life  in  this  world.  And  th:s  is  the  onlie  cause  of 
my  soe  much  urgentie  in  the  former  leter  for  supply  from  what  I  have  there,  if  it  may  soe 
be.  If  my  nephew  Winthrop  comes  into  the  Bay  this  summer  I  pray  show  him  this  leter, 
with  my  servis  to  him  and  his:  and  I  am  very  sory  for  his  loss:  and  tell  him  I  find  a  deed 
of  Groton  for  my  life,  wherin  himself  and  his  brother  Adam  Winthrop  are  feffees  in  trust 
for  me,  and  after  me  to  my  son  Georg,  but  whilst  I  live  it  inables  me  to  charge  what  por- 
tions apon  it  I  pleas,  to  be  payd  therout  after  my  death  unto  any  of  our  younger  children. 
In  witness  therof  is  my  husbands  hand  and  seale  the  23  of  June  1644.  and  sealed, 
delivered,  and  acknowlegd  befor  me,  John  Winthrop,  D.  G.,  and  I  suppose  my  brother  was 
that  year  deputie  Governer.  And  my  nephew  Adam  tould  me  it  was  enroulled  at  Boston. 
And  if  soe,  heare  I  know  it  can  doe  me,  nor  mine,  noe  good.  I  took  advise  of  a  frind  that 
tells  me  the  coutrary,  but  I  would  know  of  my  nephew  if  by  that  privilegd  for  my  child- 
ren, I  being  in  want,  I  can  make  any  advantage  of  it  for  myself  whilst  I  live,  and  after  me 
for  my  daughter  Peters,  whoe  never  yet  had  any  portion,  and  to  her  I  amsuer  it  will  not  be 
offensive  to  my  son  Georg.  whilst  the  principall  remains  to  him,  it  being  his  patrimonie. 
I  pray,  daughter,  let  none  see  this,  but  my  nephew  Winthrop  and  your  self,  and  to  that 
purpose  I  will  seale  it  and  superscrib  it  to  him  to  prevent  mistake. 

Your  very  loveing  mother, 
Apr.  the  17  74  Gardner  laine.  L.  D. 


FIRST    STEAMSHIP    TO    CROSS    ATLANTIC    OCEAN 

The  "Savannah, "under  courageous  Captain  Moses  Rogers,  a  pioneer  steam 
navigator,  sailed  from  Savannah,  Georgia,  on  May  22,  1819,  and  arrived  in 
Liverpool,  England,  on  June  2oth,  making  the  run  in  29  days  and  n  hours— 
From  corrected  drawing  by  C.  B.  Hudson,  made  under  the  direction  of  Captain 
J.  W.  Collins,  of  the  United  States  Commission  of  Fish  and  Fisheries  in  i8£g 
and  officially  incorporated  in  the  Report  of  the  National  Museum  in  1890 


to  Olroaa 


£rrullrrtinns 

iif  iflru  mini  JJariiripatrfc 

in  tlir   JFiret   Jfutilr   Atirmpta  tu 

Jntrrret   (Capital   in   tl|f   JJiiasibilitirH   nf 

<I~  mmmuuratimi  brtmrru  tin*  (Cnntinrnta  by  Strain  ,-*  (Opening 

the  (batiMuau1;.  nf  thr  Wnrlfo    «*    ffiiahirir  tUnjagra    **    Hunuuiuim  nf  (£nmmrrrr 


BY 

C.    SEYMOUR    BDLLOCK 

AfTiiou  OF  "TiiK  MIKACI.K  or  TIIK  FIRST  STEAMBOAT" 


1XCE  the  beginning  of 
time,  men  have  labored 
over  the  mysteries  of 
navigation  by  land  and 
sea  and  air.  The  great 
problem  of  availing  our- 
selves of  the  power  that 
is  manifest  in  man  and  in  nature  goes 
back  to  creation  itself  and  will  be  the 
strongest  element  of  life  until  the  end 
of  the  ages.  The  little  giant  that 
now.  in  hauling  the  freights  upon  our 
railroads  does  the  work  of  more 
than  250,ooo,ocK)  horses,  had  in  the 
far-off  days  been  made  to  open  and 
close  the  doors  of  Greek  temples,  to 
pump  water,  to  turn  wheels,  to  help 
in  mines,  to  propel  automobiles,  and 
to  provide  a  way  for  moving  heavy 
artillery  into  the  line  of  battle.  When 
men  brought  the  dawn  of  a  better  day 
in  which  this  marvelous  power  should 
willingly  >erve  the  many  instead  of 
the  few.  the  populace  scorned  its  pro- 
moters and  it>  possibilities. 

\\hile  to-day  we  are  riding  the 
ocean  in  luxurious  palaces  it  is  well 
to  remember  that  patient  men  gave 
their  lives  to  persuade  us  to  accept 
the  gift  that  has  brought  the  world 
into  one  common  family.  Those  who 
are  enjoying  its  privileges  to  the  full- 
est possibility  are  the  very  ones  who 
too  frequently  repudiate  the  original 
idea. 

When  Junius  Smith  conceived 
trans-oceanic  navigation  by  steam  as 
a  business  proposition  the  good  cap- 
tains of  trade  remarked  that  "tin 
tablislunent  of  steam  communication 
with  the  moon  is  quite  as  feasible." 

361 


and  one  business  authority  repeated: 
"Earth  has  its  bubbles  as  the  water 
hath,  and  this  is  one  of  them." 


|      FIRST     PROMOTER    OF     TRANS-OCEANIC 
STEAM     NAVIGATION 

Junius  Smith,  whose  scheme  of  organizing  capital  to 
ply  steamships  between  the  continents  was  consid- 
ered chimerical  and  disdained  by  both  American 
and  European  capitalists  —  Portrait  from  an  Oil 
Painting  in  possession  of  his  niece,  Mrs.  William 
Lay,  Chicago,  Illinois— Reproduced  by  permission 


3ftr0t 


tn 


"We  use  nor  Helm  nor  Helmsman.     Our 

tall  ships 
Have  Souls,  and  plow  with  Reason  up  the 

deeps ; 
All  cities,  Countries  know,  and  where  they 

list, 
Through  billows  glide,  veiled  in  obscuring 

Mist; 
Nor  fear  they  Rocks,  nor  Dangers  on  the 

way." 


3N    these    words    from    the 
"Odyssey,"    as    found    in 
Ogilby's  edition,  one  finds 
the  story  foretold  of  the 
steam  engine  as  employed 
upon     the     sea.       How 
strange    and    hardly    pos- 
sible it  seems  that  the  whole  story  of 
steam  in   ocean   navigation,   when   it 
had  become  reality,  not  prophecy,  may 
be   culled   from   the  memory  of  one 
man's   life.     I   was  talking  not  long 
ago    with    a    man    who    remembered 
the  sailing  of  the  "Savannah"  under 
courageous    Captain    Moses    Rogers, 
who   in    1819   went   from   Savannah, 
Georgia,  to  Liverpool,  England,  and 
thence  to  St.  Petersburg,  Russia,  and 
back    to    Savannah — the    first    steam 
voyage  across  the  Atlantic  Ocean.     A 
few  days  ago  I  looked  upon  the  "log" 
of  that  famous  trip,  with  the  silver 
tea-kettle  that  was  presented  by  Lord 
Lydenhurst   to   the    intrepid   captain, 
which  may  now  be  seen  in  the  Na- 
tional Museum  at  Washington. 

The  "Savannah"  was  of  about 
three  hundred  tans  burden,  clipper 
built  and  full  ship-rigged.  She  was 
propelled  by  one  inclined  engine,  not 
unlike  those  now  in  use,  with  a  cylin- 
der forty  inches  in  diameter  and  a  pis- 
ton stroke  of  six  feet.  The  boiler 
carried  a  steam  pressure  of  only 
twenty  pounds.  Her  paddles  were 
of  wrought  iron  with  only  one  flange 
and  were  entirely  uncovered,  though 
it  is  probable  that  a  canvas  wheel- 
house  was  made  to  cover  them  soon 
after  the  voyage  begun.  These 
wheels  were  so  attached  to  the  shaft 
that  their  removal  and  shipment  on 
deck  could  be  accomplished  in  fifteen 
or  twenty  minutes.  There  were  two 


fine  cabins  for  passengers,  both  hand- 
somely furnished,  and  the  thirty-two 
berths  were  in  state-rooms  that  were 
provided  with  all  the  comforts  and 
conveniences  then  demanded.  But 
the  "Savannah"  was  not  properly  a 
steam-ship.  She  was  an  "auxiliary 
clipper"  and  used  her  engine  only  a 
part  of  the  time.  On  the  voyage  to 
Liverpool  the  engine  was  used  for 
eighty  hours,  and  on  the  thirty-three 
days'  run  to  Petersburg  the  engine 
was  used  for  about  two  hundred  and 
thirty-nine  hours  or  nearly  ten  days. 

After  returning  home  the  "Savan- 
nah" was  once  more  turned  into  a 
sailing  vessel  and  put  upon  the  old  run 
between  New  York  and  the  city  for 
which  she  had  been  named.  On  the 
fifth  of  November,  1821,  while  under 
the  command  of  Captain  Holdridge, 
she  was  driven  onto  Great  South 
Beach,  opposite  Moriches,  on  the 
south  shore  of  Long  Island,  and  be- 
came a  total  loss.  Her  machinery, 
which  had  been  removed,  was  bought 
by  James  Allaire  who  exhibited  the 
cylinder  at  the  fair  in  the  Crystal  Pal- 
ace, New  York,  in  1856. 

The  "Savannah"  was  not  built  for 
a  steamship  and  entries  in  the  "log" 
record  the  many  times  when  the 
wheels  were  "shipped"  and  the  boat 
depended  upon  its  sails.  This  has  led 
our  British  cousins  to  claim  for  them- 
selves the  honors  of  having  first  intro- 
duced steam  navigation  on  the  high 
seas.  They  quote  the  record  of  the 
"Royal  William,"  built  at  Cape  Blanc 
near  Quebec,  in  1831  to  run  to  Hali- 
fax, in  sailing  from  Quebec  in  1833, 
"under  steam  for  the  port  of  Lon- 
don," as  a  refutation  of  all  our  claims. 

During  my  college  days  at  Evan- 
ston,  Illinois,  I  met  and  frequently 
talked  with  James  Goudie,  builder  of 
the  "Royal  William."  He  told  me  of 
those  earliest  attempts  to  master  the 
terrors  of  the  deep.  I  here  state  em- 
phatically that  nothing  more  came  out 
of  the  voyage  of  the  British  "Royal 
William"  than  had  come  from  the 
achievement  of  the  American  "Sa- 
vannah" fourteen  years  earlier. 

,62 


rtf 


Ungag?    ArmHH    tljr 


SJLM^..*mm«,  *n^4  Af~. 
-?-faf»&i)p*~»»~  <  >^r    /. 


-   ^y  r. 

— >  */>.^'  -«    •'*  //'-• 
' 


PAGE  FROM  LOG  OF  FIRST  STEAMBOAT  TO  CROSS  ATLANTIC  OCEAN* 


The  first  entry  is  as  follows : 

A  Journal  of  a  voyage  from  New  York 
towards  Savannah  on  board  steamship 
Savannah :  Moses  Rogers,  Master. 

On  the  fifth  page  this  is  changed  to 
read: 

A  Harbor  Journal  on  board  steam-ship 
Savannah,  Moses  Rogers,  Master. 

Later  on  we  read : 

A  Journal  of  a  voyage  from  Savannah 
towards  Liverpool  on  board  steam-ship 
Savannah,  Moses  Rogers,  Master. 

The  first  entry  describing  the  voy- 
age may  be  found,  with  the  caption  of 
the  first  page,  in  the  fac-simile  here- 
with. The  second  entry  is  as  fol- 
lows : 

Remarks  on  board  Monday  March  29th, 
1819.  These  24  hours  begins  with  fresh 
breezes  and  clear.  At  4  P.  M.  the  Hilands 
of  Neversink  bore  N.  b.  W.  6  Leagues  dis- 
tant from  which  I  take  my  departure.  At 
10  P.  M.  took  in  Topgallant  sails.  At  6 
A.  M.  set  Topgallant  sails.  At  8  A.  M. 
Tacked  ship  to  Westward.  At  n  A.  M. 
took  in  the  Mizon  and  Fore  Top  Gallant 
Sails.  At  n  A.  M.  got  the  Steam  up  and 
it  came  on  to  blow  fresh  air  we  took  the 
wheels  in  on  the  deck  in  30  minutes.  At 
Meridian  fresh  breezes  and  Cloudy.  Lat. 
by  Obs.  39  19. 

a63 


During  the  next  two  days  the  ves- 
sel encountered  heavy  gales  and 
strong  breeze  but  on  Saturday  there 
is  the  entry: 

These  24  hours  begins  balm  and  pleas- 
ant. Used  wheels  middle  of  the  day. 

On  the  eleventh  of  May  we  find 
this  entry: 

These  24  hours  begins  with  light  breezes 
at  N.  W.  and  pleasant.  .  .  .  President 
of  the  United  States  James  Monroe  and 
suit  came  on  board  the  ship  at  7  A.  M.  to 
go  to  Tybe  light.  .  .  .  At  8  A.  M.  got 
the  Steam  up. 

After  a  pleasant  excursion,  the 
first  at  sea  on  an  ocean-going  steam- 
ship, the  party  returned  to  the  city 
in  the  evening.  The  next  day  the 
first  casualty  at  sea  is  entered  in  the 
words : 

Daniel  Claypit  cut  his  left  thum  off.  the 
Doctor  done  it  up  and  then  bled  James 
Monroe. 

It  was  expected  that  the  steamship 
would  sail  for  Liverpool  on  the  iQth 
and  as  we  have  shown  elsewhere,  it 
was  so  advertised.  Doubtless  the 
cause  for  delay  is  to  be  found  in  the 
following  entry : 


nf    Jftrat    Bngage    Armas 


CAPTAIN  OF  FIRST  OCEAN  STEAMSHIP 
Moses  Rogers,  master  cf  first  steamboat  to  cross 
Atlantic  —  From  crayon  portrait  when  Captain 
Rogers  was  about  21  years  of  age  —  Artist  unknown 

May  igth  John  Western  coming  on 
board  from  the  shore  fell  off  the  Plank 
and  was  Drounded.  he  was  a  native  of 
Massachusetts.  Town  of  Gray.  At  01  A.  M. 
caught  John  Western  with  a  boat-hook  and 
jury  was  held  over  an  braught  in  accer- 
dental  Deth  took  himm  on  Ship  and  put 
him  in  a  Coffin. 

On  the  twenty-second.  Captain 
Rogers  "got  steam  up  and  at  9  A.  M. 
started"  on  the  trans-Atlantic  voy- 
age. There  is  not  much  of  interest 
in  the  entries  until  we  come  to  the 
record  of  June  second,  when  we  learn 
that  he : 

Stopped  the  Wheels  to  clean  the  clink- 
ers out  of  the  furnice.  a  heavy  sea,  at  6 
P.  M.  started  Wheels  again;  at  2.  A.  M. 
took  in  the  Wheels. 

Land  was  sighted  June  sixteenth, 
and  the  next  day  the  "Savannah"  be- 
ing then  off  the  coast  of  Ireland,  was 
boarded  by  the  King's  Cutter,  "Kite," 
Lieutenant  John  Bowie. 

Unfortunately,  the  log-book  here 
as  elsewhere,  because  of  its  brevity, 
is  far  from  satisfactory.  However, 
in  this  case  we  have  far  fuller  account 
of  the  amusing  incident  in  connection 
with  this  boarding  of  the  "Savannah" 
by  the  King's  cutter.  In  a  letter  to 
the  Xew  London.  Connecticut,  Ga- 
zette, Stephen  Rogers,  the  engineer. 
says  that  the  "Savannah"  was  taken 
to  be  a  ship  on  fire  and  that: 


The  admiral  dispatched  one  of  the 
King's  cutters  to  her  relief.  Rnt  great  was 
their  wonder  at  their  inability,  with  all 
sails  set  in  a  fast  vessel,  to  come  up  with 
a  ship  under  bare  poles.  .  .  .  After 
several  shots  were  fired  from  the  cutter, 
the  engine  was  stopped,  and  the  surprise 
of  her  crew  at  the  mistake  they  had  made, 
as  well  as  their  curiosity  to  see  the  singu- 
lar Yankee  craft,  can  be  easily  imagined. 
They  asked  permission  to  go  aboard,  and 
were  much  gratified  by  the  inspection  of 
this  naval  novelty. 

Two  days  later,  June  20,  they : 

Shipped  the  wheels  and  furled  the  sails 
and  run  into  the  River  Murcer.  and  at  6 
P.  M.  come  to  anchor  off  Liverpool  with 
the  small  bower  anchor. 

A  stay  of  twenty-five  days  was 
made  at  Liverpool  during  which  time 
the  vessel  was  not  only  a  center  of 
curiosity  but  an  object  of  much  sus- 
picion. The  newspapers  of  the  day 
suggested  that  "this  steam  operation 
may  in  some  manner  be  connected 
with  the  ambitious  views  of  the 
United  States."  One  journal,  recall- 
ing the  fact  that  Jerome  Bonaparte 
had  offered  a  large  reward  to  any  one 
who  succeeded  in  rescuing  his  brother 
Xapoleon  from  St.  Helena,  offered 
the  surmise  that  the  "Savannah"  per- 
haps had  this  undertaking  in  view. 

Moses  Rogers  in  his  log  says : 

Naval  officers,  noblemen,  and  merchants 
from  London  came  down  to  visit  her.  and 
were  curious  to  ascertain  her  speed  desti- 
nation and  other  particulars. 

Later  on  we  find  the  record  of  a 
case  of  mutiny  among  the  crew.  The 
entry  for  June  nineteenth  is  as  fol- 
lows: 

These  24  hours  begins  with  fresh 
breezes  and  rain.  Captain  Rogers  told 
Mr.  Blackman  to  go  on  shore  after  Janu-s 
Bruce  and  John  Smith  to  get  them  on 
board.  They  would  not  come:  the  watch- 
man put  them  in  a  boat,  John  Smith  tried 
to  nock  Mr.  Blackmail  overboard  Struck 
him  several  times,  he  Swore  he  would 
take  Mr.  Blackmail's  life  but  Mr.  Black- 
mail got  him  on  board  and  he  denied  his 
duty  and  then  he  was  put  in  Irons.  Mid- 
dle and  latter  part  fresh  gales  at  S.  W.  and 
rains. 

The  next  day's  entry  shows: 
John  Smith  still  in  Irons. 

264 


Slug    nf 


Itogagr    ArrnBH    Ihr 


The   following  day   we  find: 

At  5  A.  M.  took  tin-  Irons  off  John 
Smith  he  wait  to  duty. 

<  >n  the  twenty-third  July  the  "Sa- 
vannah" sailed  for  St.  Petersburg, 
'Vetting  under  way  with  steam"  and 
"a  large  ikvt  of  \  \>sd>  in  company." 
Copenhagen  and  Stockholm  were 
"touched"  on  the  way  and  at  the  lat- 
ter place  she  was  visited  by  the  royal 
family.  This  visit  is  recorded  as  fol- 
lows: 

His  royal  Highness  Oscar  Prince  of 
Sweden  and  Norway  come  on  hoard. 

While  here  the  "Savannah"  was 
also  visited  by  "Mr.  Huse  (Christo- 
pher Hughes)  the  American  Minister 
and  Lady  and  all  the  Furran  Miners- 
tens  and  their  Laydes"  and  when  she 
sailed  she  had  on  board  as  a  passen- 
ger Sir  Thomas  Graham,  Lord  Lyne- 
dock.  of  England.  She  left  Stock- 
holm on  the  fifth  of  September  and  on 
the  ninth  she  reached  Cronstadt,  hav- 
ing used  steam  for  the  entire  trip. 

t'pon  the  invitation  of  our  ambas- 
sador at  the  court  of,  St.  Petersburg, 
when  the  vessel  arrived  there,  a  few 
days  later,  there  was  a  visit  by  the 
Russian  Lord  High  Admiral.  Marcus 
de  Travys.  and  other  distinguished 
naval  and  military  officers  who  tested 
her  superior  qualities  by  a  trip  back 
to  Cr  mstadt  and  return  to  St.  Peters- 
burg. 

The  "Savannah"  lingered  at  St. 
Petersburg  until  the  tenth  of  October. 
when  she  again  sailed  out  under 
.'.train  and  this  time  with  her  bow 
toward  home.  Captain  Rogers  car- 
ried away  with  him  as  a  suhstantia1 
leminder  of  the  success  of  his  voyage 
a  ma.ssive  silver.  -old-lined  tea-ket- 
tle. upon  which  the  donor  had  en- 
graved the  following  inscription: 


to  Captain   Mosrs  Rogers  of  the 
Strain-ship  Savannah 
the    first     Steam     Vessel     that    had 
the    \tlantic). 


by   Sir  Thomas   Graham.  Lord   Lynedock, 
?  passenger  from  Stockholm  to  St.  Peters- 
burg. 
September  15.  1819. 

Stephen  Rogers  was  also  the  recip- 
ient of  many  valuable  gifts  and 
among  them  was  a  beautiful  gold 
snuff-box  from  the  Emperor  of  Rus- 
sia. 

The  "Savannah"  arrived  at  her 
home  port  on  the  thirtieth  of  Novem- 
ber. The  log  is  continued  for  about 
two  weeks  afterward  and  then 
abruptly  comes  to  an  end.  The  last 
entry  but  one  is  so  characteristic  of 
the  man  who  dared  to  do  what  no 
one  else  had  ever  before  attempted, 
even  after  it  had  been  foretold  by  the 
man  who  first  brought  together  for 
propulsion  a  steam  engine  and  a 
wheel,  that  we  use  it  or  the  closing 
words  of  a  sketch  necessarily  brief: 

Frank  Smith  damd  and  swore  at  the 
Captain  and  struck  at  the  Captain  and 
struck  him  two  or  three  times  and  then 
Smith  was  put  in  Irons. 


CAPTAIN  MOSES  ROGERS  AT  AGE  40  YEARS 

As  courageous  Captain  Rogers  steamed  into  the 
port,  the  people  along  the  shore  believed  his  craft 
to  be  some  weird  monster  and  were  awe  stricken 


265 


Harr 


of  l^team  Navrigatum 


of  £arlg  &tramboat0  tn  Ammran  Watrra 


STEAM    PACKET    "CHANCELLOR    LIVINGSTON  "-1817 

Built  from  plans  drawn  by  Fulton  for  a  corporation  that  held  a  monopoly  of  the  waters  of 
New  York  state  for  the  use  of  steam  propelled  vessels-Photographed  from  a  rare  old  pnnt 


"LEXINGTON"— DESTROYED    BY    FIRE    ON    RUN    FROM    NEW    YORK    IN    1840 
There  were  about  one   hundred  and    fifty  passengers  and  only    four  were  saved— Illustration 
is   from   rare  lithograph    circulated    during    the    excitement    created  by  news  of  the  disaster 


THE    "OLIVER    ELLSWORTH"    BUILT    IN    ISM-ESCORT    AT     OPENING    OF    ERIE    CANAL 
This  was  one  of  the  first  steamboats  to  have  a  large  iron  boiler— It  exploded  in  1827,  causing  much 
excitement— The  legislature  was  in  session  in  Connecticut,  and  the  post-rider  leaped  from  his 
lathered  horse  and  broke  into  the  assembly  hall  shouting:  "The  llllver  Ollsworth  biled  her  buster!" 


FIRST  STEAMSHIP  TO  SAIL  ON  THE  OCEAN 
"Phoenix'"  left  New  York.  June  8,  1809—  Arrived 
at  Philadelphia  on  the  i7th— From  Oil  Painting 
in  the  Stevens  Castle  at  Hoboken,  New  Jersey 


ESCORT  TO  LAFAYETTE  IN  AMERICA 
"Chief  Justice  Marshall"  in  Great  Naval  Parade 
on  the  Hudson  and  received  an  ovation  from  the 
throng— Lost  in  terrific  gale  on  April  28,  1835 


MAIL  CARRIER  BEATEN  BY  RAILROADS 
"  Traveller ''—Built  in  1845— Owned  by  Commodore 
Vanderbilt  and  famed  for  her  fast  postal  service 


FINEST  DAY  BOAT  FROM  NEW  YORK  IN  1832 
"Splendid"  —  One  of  first  "  floating  palaces  " 
on  Long  Island  Sound  -  Noted  for  speed  and  size 


OLDEST  STEAMBOAT'S  LONG  SERVICE 
"Norwich  " — Built  in  1836  and  remaining  in  active 
commission  until  its  destruction  last  year 


DICKENS'  "RUNAWAY  BATH  HOUSE" 
"New  York"— Built  in  1836  and  described  by  the 
Distinguished  Tourist  in  his  "American  Notes" 


ONE  OF  FIRST  BOATS  TO  USE  GAS  LIGHTS 
"  Atlantic  "—Built  in  1846  and  went  down  with  fifty 
passengers  in  northwest  gale  six  months  later 


COMPETED  WITH  STAGE  AND  POSTBOY 
"New  Haven"— Built  in  18)5— One  of  the  early 
mail  carriers  in  days  of  keenest  rivalry 


FITTED    OUT    TO    FILIBUSTER    IN    CUBA 
''Cleopatra  ''—One  of  fastest  steamboats  In  fierce 

Apprehended     by 

sail  fo 


traffic     war     of     18^6   — 
Government  when  about  to 


the 
r  the  West  Indies 


FIRST  BOAT  BUILT  ON  SUBSCRIPTION 
"  Water  Witch  " — In  1832  there  was  a  general  up- 
rising against  the  "  steamboat  monopoly "  and 
the  people  organized  to  "  break  tbe  trust  " 


PASSING  THROUGH  HELL  GATE  IN  1825 
41  Providence"— Old  Lithograph  showing  steamboat 
leaving  New  York  for  her  run  down  to  Rhode  Island 


HELD  WORLD  RECORD  DURING  HER  DAY 
"  Oregon  "—  Built  In  1845— George  Law's  favorite 
river  racer  —  Wrecked  in  a  collision  in  1865 


STEAMBOAT  LEAVING  NEW  YORK  IN  1824 
''Little  Providence"— First  single  beam  boat  on  Long 
Island  Sound  to  have  a  visible  "  walking  beam " 


FROM  BOSTON  TO  PORTS  IN  MAINE 
"  Boston  "  — Built  in  1831,  and  became  a  favorite 
for  excursionists  —  From  a  rare  print  of  1840 


BUILT  FOR  EMPEROR  OF  RUSSIA  IN  1818 
"  Emperor  Alexander  "—Built  to  go  to  St.  Peters- 
burg but  never  attempted  trip  across  the  ocean 


ONE  OP  THE  EARLY  RATE  WARRIORS 
"  Belle  "—Built  in  1837  and  entered  in  tbe  keen 
competition  that  reduced  passage  rates  to  minimum 


Jftrsi   S>i?am01jtp    tn    (Ern^a 


FIRST    STEAMSHIP    IN    THE    WORLD    BUILT    FOR    TRANS-OCEANIC    SERVICE 

The  "British  Queen"  sailed  from  Portsmouth,  England,  July  12,  1839,  and  arrived  at  New 
York,  July  28,  1839— time— fourteen  and  one-half  days— Built  by  Junius  Smith  after  much  diffi- 
culty in  securing  capital  for  the  "chimerical  and  foolhardy"  project — From  rare  aqua- tint  of  1838 


The  real  genesis  of  steam  naviga- 
tion so  far  as  it  pertains  to  the  ocean, 
must  be  set  down  for  the  year  1838 
when  Junius  Smith  succeeded  in  in- 
teresting English  capital  in  a  project 
for  building  a  line  of  steamships  for 
ocean  service. 

The  pioneer  ocean  steamship  pro- 
moter, Junius  Smith,  was  born  at 
Plymouth,  Connecticut,  October  2, 
1780,  and  studied  law  at  Yale. 
While  on  a  voyage  from  Liverpool  to 
New  York,  where  he  then  had  his 
home,  he  thought  of  the  immense  ben- 
efits to  be  gotten  from  the  use  of 
steam  upon  ocean  vessels.  John 
Fitch  had  foreseen  it.  Others  had 
thought  of  it,  but  with  Junius  Smith 


it  became  more  than  thought.  He 
was  the  son  of  General  David  Smith 
who  was  born  in  Lebanon,  near  Nor- 
wich, Connecticut,  December  2,  1747 
(O.  S.),  and  his  mother  was  Ruth 
Hitchcock  Smith,  of  Suffield,  who 
was  born  March  4,  1750  (O.  S.)-  He 
died  at  Astoria,  New  York,  January 
23,  1853,  and  shortly  after  his  death 
there  was  brought  to  light  a  letter  that 
he  had  written  to  Cyrus  W.  Field 
relative  to  the  laying  of  the  Atlantic 
cable  and  setting  out  in  detail  his 
earliest  experiences  in  trying  to  inter- 
est men  of  means  in  the  question  of 
steamships  for  the  ocean.  None  of 
the  New  York  merchants  would  have 
anything  to  do  with  the  chimerical 


tuning    0f    ilj* 


scheme  and  in  1833  he  turned  to  one 
of  the  directors  of  the  London  and 
Kdinborough  Steam  Navigation  Com- 
pany whose  vessels  were  the  largest 
then  afloat.  He  received  no  encour- 
agement from  this  quarter — the  prop- 
osition of  trans-oceanic  steam  com- 
merce seemed  too  visionary  for  those 
practical  men.  Smith  then  tried  to 
charter  a  ship  to  open  a  line  under  his 
own  name  but  no  one  could  be  found 
who  cared  to  risk  a  boat  for  such  a 
foolhardy  undertaking.  In  1835  he 
published  a  prospectusof  a  joint-stock 
"Steam  Navigation  Company"  but  no 
one  would  buy  a  share. 

Those  who  did  not  ridicule  and  op- 
pose every  step  of  the  undertaking 
stood  suspiciously  aloof  and  refused 
to  give  countenance  or  support  to  the 
project.  When  an  audience  was 
sought  with  the  Duke  of  Wellington, 
he  replied  through  his  field-marshal : 

"The  Duke  of  Wellington  presents  his 
compliments  to  Mr.  Smith.  The  Duke  has 
no  leisure  to  receive  the  visits  of  gentle- 
men who  have  schemes  in  contemplation 


for  the  alteration  of  the  public  establish- 
ments." 


To  show  the  intellectual  grasp  that 
this  pioneer,  who  advocated  doing 
away  with  masts  and  spars  entirely 
for  steamships,  one  has  only  to  read 
his  letters  in  1838  to  Professor  Ben- 
jamin Silliman,  of  Yale,  who  opposed 
his  views  and  almost  implied  that  he 
was  crazy.  One  letter  reads  as  fol- 
lows : 


"The  United  States  of  America,  stretch- 
ing around  half  a  continent  with  a  sea- 
coast  scopped  into  numberless  bays,  har- 
bours and  inlets,  with  a  government  bear- 
ing rule  over  a  people  almost  too  inde- 
pendent to  submit  to  any,  urged  on  by  am- 
bition, vain  of  their  acquirements  and 
proud  of  their  country,  is  nevertheless 
slumbering  in  dangerous  security.  To 
such  a  people  the  power  of  steam,  as  a 
means  of  national  defence,  is  of  incalcula- 
ble value.  But  do  they  perceive  it,  or  will 
they  slumber  on  until  their  cities,  towns 
and  villages  are  battered  about  their  ears? 
Do  they  think  that  the  golden  images  of 
successful  avarice  set  up  in  every  part  of 
the  country  are  no  temptation  to  the  dar- 


SECOND    STEAMSHIP    TO    REACH    AMERICA    FROM    THE    OLD    WORLD 

The  "  Great  Western  "  sailed  from  Bristol,  England,  April  8,  1838,  and  arrived  in  New  York 
April  23,  1838— fifteen  days  later- Cannons  from  forts  and  warships  boomed  as  she  sailed  into 
gateway  of  the  New  ^  orld's  astonished  metropolis — Prom  an  oil  painting  by  Wallers  in  1838 


FIRST    STEAMSHIP    OP    CUNARD    LINE    FROM    LIVERPOOL    TO    BOSTON 
The  "Britannia"  made  her  first  trip  in  1840.     It  was  on  this  ship  that  Dickens  experienced  the 
storm  at  sea  described  in  his  "American  Notes,"  speaking  of  the  many  perils  of  the  new  science 


"BRITANNIA"    ICE    BOUND    IN    BOSTON    HARBOR    IN    1844 

From  rare  print  in  collection  of  Mr.  Elisha  T.  Jenks  of  Middleborough,  Massachusetts,  showing 
steamship  making  her  way  through  ice  canal  cut  by  citizens  of   Boston  who  came  to  her  rescue 


of    ihip    VtarliTB    (Enmtturr* 


ing  buccaneer?  and  do  they  not  perceive 
that  unless  the  means  of  protection  corre- 
spond with  the  growth  of  the  thing  to  be 
protected,  the  probability  is  that  all  may  be 
lost?" 

Nothing  daunted,  Smith  steadily 
kept  at  the  matter  until  he  had  the  ear 
of  someone  unafraid  of  new  things 
and  a  company  was  organized  of  men 
who  dared  to  follow  where  someone 
more  daring  had  opened  the  way. 
Contracts  were  let  and  the  building  of 
boats  really  begun.  But  before  the 
first  boat  was  ready  for  delivery  an 
opposition  company  had  sprung  up 
and  a  date  of  sailing  was  announced. 
Not  to  be  cheated  out  of  the  reward 
of  their  labors  the  original  company 
organized  by  Smith  chartered  the 
"Sirius"  which  was  running  between 
London,  England,  and  Cork,  Ireland. 

The  "Sirius"  was  one  hundred  and 
seventy-eight  feet  long,  twenty-five 
and  a  half  feet  wide,  and  eighteen 
and  a  quarter  feet  deep.  She  meas- 
ured seven  hundred  and  three  tons. 
On  the  scales  one  "Sirius"  would 
have  more  than  balanced  four  "Cler- 
monts"  and  in  a  tug-of-war  the  Eng- 
lish boat  would  have  been  more  than 
a  match  for  thirty  boats  of  the  Fulton 
make,  but  judged  by  the  standards  of 
to-day,  what  an  insignificant  thing 
was  the  "Sirius."  She  was  built  by 
Menzies,  of  Leith,  and  engined  by 
Wingate  &  Company  of  Whiteinch, 
near  Glasgow,  Scotland.  Her  pad- 
dle-wheels were  twenty-four  feet  in 
diameter,  and  were  turned  by  a 
side-lever  engine  with  a  five-foot 
cylinder  and  a  six-foot  stroke.  It  is 
an  error  to  say  that  the  "Sirius" 
steamed  from  London  to  New  York 
in  eighteen  and  a  half  days.  She  re- 
coaled  at  Cork  and  sailed  thence  on 
April  14,  1838,  and  was  eighteen 
days  on  the  trip.  She  came  into  New 
York  at  ten  o'clock  at  night,  April  22, 
1838,  having  been  caught  on  a  mud- 
bank  as  she  came  into  the  harbor 
where  she  was  held  till  the  rising  of 
the  tide. 

She  had  been  moored  to  the  wharf 
only  a  few  hours  before  the  whole 

•73 


town  had  heard  of  the  arrival  of  "a 
wonderful  thing  that  streamed  across 
the  ocean  and  tied  up  to  Jones's 
Wharf."  The  sailors  of  the  water- 
front lighted  great  bonfires  and  min- 
gled with  the  crowds  that  gathered 
to  stand  and  stare  at  the  prodigy,  and 
the  next  day  the  papers  were  full  of 
the  strange  thing.  No  vessel  before 
had  ever  dared  to  depend  on  steam 
alone  for  crossing  the  awful  sea  and 
this  venturesome  craft  had  used  up  all 
her  fuel  before  she  reached  Sandy 
Hook  so  that  it  had  been  necessary  to 
burn  all  her  extra  spars  and  forty- 
three  barrels  of  rosin  that  she  might 
enter  the  upper  bay  under  her  own 
steam. 

In  the  Marine  News  there  was 
an  announcement  of  the  arrival  of  the 
"Sirius"  and  an  advertisement  of  her 
return  trip,  under  a  cut  of  the  "Sa- 
vannah," the  only  ocean-going  ship 
with  steam  equipment  of  which  there 
was  a  picture  to  be  found  anywhere. 
This  advertisement  read: 


This  vessel  has  superior  accommodation, 
and  is  fitted  with  separate  cabins  for  the 
accommodation  of  families  to  whom  everv 
possible  attention  will  be  given.  Cabin, 
$140.00,  including  provisions,  wine,  etc. 
Second  Cabin,  $80.00,  including  provisions, 
wine,  etc. 


The  "Sirius,"  whose  crew  mutinied 
when  she  was  a  few  days  out  and  de- 
clared it  utter  madness  to  go  farther 
on  so  small  a  craft,  was  commanded 
by  Lieutenant  Roberts,  of  the  Royal 
Navy,  who  was  afterward  lost  with 
the  "President" — the  first  steamship 
to  sail  through  he  mists  that  hide  the 
shores  of  the  uncharted  sea,  whose 
trackless  waters  give  back  no  tidings 
of  the  ships  they  bear.  On  the  return 
voyage  the  "Sirins,"  whose  boiler  had 
its  safety  limit  for  steam  set  at  fifteen 
pounds  four  hundred  and  fifty  tons 
of  coal  for  the  entire  trip.  Yester- 
day I  was  reading  that  to  generate 
steam  for  the  turbines  of  the  new 
sixty-eight  thousand  horse-power  Cu- 
narders,  one  thousand  tons  of  coal 


in 


will  be  consumed  every  twenty-four 
hours. 

Among  the  passengers,  on  this  dar- 
ing trip  across  the  ocean  from  New 
York,  was  James  Gordon  Bennett,  the 
founder  of  the  New  York  Herald, 
who  often  told  with  great  relish  of  his 
experiences  on  board  the  first  steam- 
boat to  sail  from  New  York  to  Fal- 
mouth,  a  voyage  that  consumed  eight- 
een full  days. 

But  the  honors  of  the  "Sirius"  were 
not  long  unchallenged.  Four  days 
after  she  had  sailed  from  Cork,  the 
"Great  Western"  steamed  out  from 
Bristol,  England,  carrying  six  hun- 
dred and  sixty  tons  of  coal  and  hav- 
ing on  board  seven  passengers.  The 
two  boats  followed  practically  the 
same  course,  but  the  "Great  Western" 
was  the  superior  boat  in  every  way 
and  outsailed  her  rival.  In  spite  of 
the  longer  distance  that  she  had  to 
travel,  the  "Great  Western"  arrived 
in  New  York  but  a  few  hours  after 
the  "Sirius."  At  three  o'clock  on  the 
afternoon  of  April  23,  1838,  the 
booming  of  cannon  on  board  the  men- 
of-war  in  the  harbor  and  in  the  forts 
that  guard  its  approach,  announced 
the  arrival  of  the  second  steamboat 
from  the  Old  World. 

The  "Great  Western"  at  once 
caught  the  fancy  of  the  public.  She 
was  two  hundred  and  thirty-six  feet 
long;  the  "Sirius"  was  one  hundred 
and  seventy-eight  feet.  The  latest 
arrival  was  a  one  thousand,  three 
hundred  and  forty  ton  boat ;  the  other 
measured  only  seven  hundred  tons. 
The  best  speed  of  the  "Sirius"  was 
one  hundred  and  sixty  knots  a  day 
but  the  "Great  Western"  had  sailed 
two  hundred  and  forty  knots.  The 
keel  of  the  "Great  Western"  was  laid 
in  1836  but  not  a  penny  of  American 
money  found  its  way  into  the  enter- 
prise. 

Can  it  be  that  an  unfounded  fear  of 
the  deep  has  kept  back  American  in- 
terest in  steamships  even  till  to-day 
so  that  after  building  the  fastest  and 
best  sailing  vessels  that  the  world  ever 
knew  we  have  suffered  our  shipping 


interests  to  pass  into  other  hands? 
Must  we  wait  until  some  nation  with 
a  merchant  marine  to  supplement  its 
navy  threatens  us  with  war  before  we 
shall  awaken  to  the  fact  that  we  have 
been  playing  "penny  wise  and  pound 
foolish"  in  our  niggardly  treatment  of 
this  most  important  feature  in  the  de- 
fence of  a  nation?  With  such  an  ex- 
tent of  impregnable  sea-coast  it  is  im- 
possible to  offer  resistance  to  the  ap- 
proach of  a  hostile  fleet  unless  there 
shall  be  swift  merchant  ships  to  co- 
operate with  the  more  ponderous 
men-of-war. 

In  the  beginning  of  oceanic  steam 
service,  the  two  voyages  that  I  have 
described  inaugurated  an  era  of  trans- 
portation that  has  ever  been  changing 
for  the  better.  First  came  the  change 
from  sails  to  wooden  paddle-wheels 
for  speed;  then  from  wood  to  iron 
hulls  for  strength,  in  1843 ;  next  from 
the  paddle-wheels  to  the  screw,  for 
economy,  in  1856;  then  from  simple 
to  compound  engines  to  save  fuel,  in 
1856;  next  from  iron  to  steel  hulls  to 
gain  stiffness  and  save  weight,  in 
1879 ;  then  from  the  single  to  the  twin 
and  triple  screw  for  safety  and  speed, 
in  1889;  and  finally,  to  the  turbine. 

After  her  return  to  England  the 
"Sirius"  was  again  put  on  the  route 
between  London  and  Cork,  as  she 
was  thought  to  be  too  small  for  the 
trans-Atlantic  service,  where  she  was 
eventually  lost,  but  the  "Great  West- 
ern" continued  to  sail  between  the 
Old  and  the  New  World  for  a  num- 
ber of  years  and  was  finally  sold 
to  the  Royal  Mail  Line  in  1847  anc* 
was  broken  up  in  1856. 

The  "Great  Western"  made  seventy 
trips  across  the  Atlantic  during  her 
stay  on  the  New  York-Bristol  Line, 
averaging  fifteen  and  a  half  days  for 
the  westward  passage  and  thirteen 
and  a  half  days  for  the  eastward  run. 
The  quickest  trip  was  made  in  1842 
when  the  passage  from  New  York 
was  accomplished  in  twelve  days  and 
seven  hours.  This  was  most  remark- 
able sailing  and  stood  as  the  record 
for  some  time  but  we  must  not  forget 

»74 


GREATEST    OCEAN    GREYHOUND    OP    1844— "THE    GREAT    BRITAIN" 

To  forge  her  main  shaft  the  world  was  given  a  new  Invention— She  went  ashore  off  coast  of  Ire- 
land without  suffering  serious  injury,  and  many  years  later  was  engaged  In  Australian  trade— 
This  ship  was  the  marvel  of  her  time— From  an  old  print  taken  after  the  alterations  in  1851 


that  the  clipper  "Dreadnaught"  had 
made  a  trip  from  New  York  to 
Queenstown  in  nine  days  and  seven- 
teen hours  and  as  late  as  1846  the 
clipper  "Tornado"  of  the  Morgan 
Line  beat  the  Cunard  steamer  across 
from  Liverpool,  arriving  in  New 
York  before  the  steam-propelled  craft 
arrived  in  Boston.  It  was  not  an  un- 
common thing  then  to  find  a  sailing 
ship  advertised  under  a  guarantee  to 
reach  the  destination  before  the 
steamship  or  forfeit  the  money  paid 
for  passage. 

The  speed  of  the  old  "Sirius"  was 
about  six  knots  an  hour  and  the 
"Great  Western"  was  somewhat 
faster.  But  who  at  that  day  ever 
dreamed  that  any  future  ship  would 
make  a  trip  from  New  York  to 
Queenstown  under  an  average  hourly 
speed  of  23.58  knots  an  hour,  the  best 
time  of  the  modern  "Kaiser  Wilhelm 
II,"  or  cover  six  hundred  and  one 
knots  in  twenty-four  hours,  an  aver- 
age of  24.19  knots  an  hour,  the  best 


time  of  the  fleet  "Deutschland"  which 
stands  as  the  fastest  day's  run  ever 
made  by  any  ship?  The  contract 
speed  of  the  new  Cunarders  is  to 
be  25.50  knots  an  hour  and  if  it  shall 
ever  prove  practical  to  build  a  boat 
that  can  make  thirty  knots  an  hour — 
and  in  view  of  what  has  been  accom- 
plished in  less  than  seventy  years 
who  shall  say  it  is  not  among  the 
really  probable  things — it  will  be  pos- 
sible to  eat  one's  dinner  in  New  York 
city  on  Saturday  noon  and  the  mid- 
day meal  in  Queenstown  the  next 
Wednesday. 

When  the  "Sirius"  was  withdrawn 
from  the  trans-Atlantic  service  her 
place  was  taken  by  the  "British 
Queen,"  which  was  built  by  Gerding 
and  Young  of  London  and  was  to 
have  been  called  "Victoria,"  but  upon 
the  accession  of  England's  most  glori- 
ous queen  the  new  boat  was  given  a 
new  name.  Her  keel  was  laid  April 
i,  1837,  and  the  contract  for  the  en- 
gines let  to  a  firm  that  gave  every 


•75 


tn 


promise  of  meeting  all  the  demands. 
After  receiving  £6,000  sterling  this 
firm  failed  and  as  no  other  firm  could 
be  found  that  would  agree  to  take  up 
the  work  where  they  left  it,  a  new 
contract  was  made  with  Napier  and 
Company.  This  caused  a  delay  of 
nearly  a  year  and  was  the  reason  for 
the  chartering  and  dispatching  of  the 
"Sirius." 

The  "British  Queen,"  which  had 
cost  £90,000,  exclusive  of  the  machin- 
ery which  cost  £24,000,  was  two  hun- 
dred and  seventy-five  feet  long,  thirty- 
seven  and  a  half  feet  wide  and  twenty- 
seven  feet  deep.  Her  paddle-wheels 
were  thirty  feet  in  diameter,  made  of 
iron  and  the  strongest  oak.  She 
sailed  from  London  on  July  n,  1839, 
the  passengers  embarking  at  Ports- 
mouth on  the  twelfth  and  was  under 
steam  at  twelve-thirty  noon.  At  two 
o'clock  Sunday  morning,  July  twenty- 
eighth,  she  was  at  Sandy  Hook,  thus 
making  the  passage  in  fourteen  and  a 
half  days.  On  August  first,  at  two 
o'clock,  she  started  back  for  the  re- 
turn trip  and  on  August  fourteenth 
she  took  her  English  pilot  aboard, 
thus  making  the  run  from  pilot  to 
pilot — New  York  to  Portsmouth — in 
thirteen  and  a  half  days. 

The  same  company  that  had  sent 
out  the  "Sirius"  and  built  the  "British 
Queen"  now  added  the  ill-fated 
"President"  which  first  sailed  from 
the  Mersey,  June  17,  1840.  The 
"British  Queen"  was  advertised  as 
sailing  from  London  and  the  "Presi- 
dent" from  Liverpool.  After  two  or 
three  successful  trips  this  beautiful 
craft  sailed  out  from  New  York 
Harbor  March  n,  1841,  and  was 
rever  heard  from  again,  save  that  she 
had  been  sighted  by  a  passing  vessel 
a  few  days  after  sailing  and  an  entrv 
on  the  log  of  the  brig  "Poultney," 
sailing  from  New  York  to  Smyrna, 
stating  that  she  had  passed  "a  large 
piece  of  wreckage,  sixty  feet  long 
and  thirty  to  forty  feet  wide,  that 
looked  like  the  broadside  of  a  steam- 
boat, the  main-channel  having  four 
dead-eyes,  with  turned  mouldings 


and  long  iron  straps.  Her  hulk  was 
black  with  a  broad  white  streak  and 
large,  painted  ports.  There  was  a 
bight  of  hawser  over  a  piece  of  wood 
apparently  a  part  of  the  guards." 
Those  who  knew  the  boat  read  in  this 
description  of  floating  wreckage  her 
probable  fate  and  whatever  of  hope 
might  have  lingered  in  any  breast 
was  dispelled  when  Captain  Jensen, 
sailing  from  the  Cape  Verde  Islands 
in  the  schooner  "Moniko,"  brought  in 
an  account  of  the  finding  of  the  stern- 
boat  of  the  ill-starred  craft  and  the 
picking  up  at  sea  of  several  casks 
bearing  the  name  "President,"  which 
name  was  also  found  on  several  other 
casks  that  had  drifted  ashore  on  St. 
Nicholas,  one  of  the  Cape  Verde 
group. 

The  loss  of  the  "President"  and  the 
subsidy  granted  the  new  Cunard  Line 
brought  about  the  financial  collapse 
of  the  British  and  American  Steam 
Navigation  Company  and  the  remain- 
ing boat,  the  "British  Queen,"  was 
sold  to  the  Belgian  government,  and 
ultimately  found  her  way  into  the 
hands  of  the  Oriental  Company  and 
ran  between  Falmouth  and  Alexan- 
dria. Her  best  time  was  made  on  the 
voyage  that  began  April  5,  1842,  when 
she  crossed  from  New  York  to  Ports- 
mouth in  12.85  days. 

The  first  boat  of  the  Cunard  Line 
was  the  "Britannia"  which  sailed 
from  Liverpool  for  Boston  on  July  4, 
1840.  A  stop  was  to  be  made  at  Hal- 
ifax and  for  this  service  the  English 
government  paid  a  substantial  sub- 
sidy. Four  vessels  were  built  for  the 
company,  having  an  aggregate  ton- 
nage of  4,600  tons  and  a  speed  of  less 
than  eight  knots  an  hour.  The  "Bri- 
tannia" was  two  hundred  and  seven 
feet  long,  thirty-four  and  a  half  feet 
wide  and  twenty-two  and  a  half 
feet  deep.  Her  paddle-wheels  were 
twenty-eight  and  a  half  feet  in  diame- 
ter and  were  turned  by  the  common- 
type  "side-lever  engine"  which  was 
first  given  a  standard  form  by  Mauds- 
ley  &  Company  of  London,  about 


•76 


FIRST    AMERICAN    STEAMSHIP    TO    CARRY    MAIL    TO    FRANCE 

The  "  Franklin  "  subsidized  by  the  Government  in  1849  at  $150,000  per  annum  to  carry  mall  be- 
tween New  York  and  Havre  on  fortnightly  service— Average  time  twelve  days  ten  hours— Lost 
off  Montauk  Point,  Long  Island,  July  17,  1854,  during  tempestuous  voyage— From  an  old  print 


It  is  the  "Britannia"  that  our  cousin 
"Boz"  describes  in  his  American 
Notes.  No  such  description  of  a  ship 
in  a  storm  ever  came  from  any  other 
pen: 


It  is  the  third  morning.  I  am  awakened 
out  of  my  sleep  by  a  dismal  shriek  from 
my  wife,  who  demands  to  know  whether 
there's  any  danger.  I  rouse  myself,  and 
look  out  of  bed.  The  water-jug  is  plung- 
ing and  leaping  like  a  lively  dolphin;  all 
the  smaller  articles  are  afloat,  except  my 
shoes,  which  are  stranded  on  a  carpet-bag 
high  and  dry,  like  a  couple  of  coal-barges 
Suddenly  I  see  them  spring  into  the  air, 
and  behold  the  looking-glass,  which  is 
nailed  to  the  wall,  sticking  fast  upon  the 
ceiling.  At  the  same  time,  the  door  en- 
tirely disappears,  and  a  new  one  is  opened 
in  the  floor.  Then  I  begin  to  comprehend 
that  the  state-room  is  standing  on  its  head. 

Before  it  is  possible  to  make  any  ar- 
rangement at  all  compatible  with  this  novel 
state  of  things,  the  ship  rights.  Before  one 
can  say  "Thank  Heaven!"  she  wrongs 
again.  Before  one  can  cry,  "She  is 
wrong!"  she  seems  to  have  started  for- 
ward, and  to  be  a  creature  actively  run- 
ning of  its  own  accord,  with  broken  knees 
and  failing  legs,  through  every  variety  of 
hole  and  pitfall,  and  stumbling  constantly. 

•77 


Before  one  can  so  much  as  wonder,  she 
takes  a  high  leap  into  the  air.  Before  she 
has  well  done  that,  she  takes  a  deep  dive 
into  the  water.  Before  she  has  gained  the 
surface,  she  throws  a  somerset  The  in- 
stant she  is  on  her  legs,  she  rushes  back- 
ward. And  so  she  goes  on,  staggering, 
heaving,  wrestling,  leaping,  diving,  jump- 
ing, pitching,  throbbing,  rolling,  and  rock- 
ing, and  going  through  all  these  move- 
ments, sometimes  by  turns,  and  sometimes 
all  together,  until  one  feels  disposed  to 
roar  for  mercy. 


Such  was  the  comedy  side  of  his 
experience.  In  a  letter  to  his  friend 
and  biographer  Dickens  shows  the 
more  serious  side.  To  him  he  wrote : 


Of  course  you  will  not  see  in  the  papers 
any  true  account  of  our  voyage,  for  they 
keep  the  dangers  of  the  passage,  when 
there  are  any,  very  quiet  I  observe  so 
many  perils  peculiar  to  steamers  that  I  am 
still  undecided  whether  we  shall  not  return 
by  one  of  the  New  York  liners.  On  the 
night  of  the  storm  I  was  wondering  within 
myself  where  we  should  all  be  if  the  chim- 
ney were  blown  overboard,  in  which  case, 
it  needs  no  great  observation  to  discover, 
that  the  vessel  must  be  instantly  on  fire 


from  stern  to  stern.  When  I  went  on  deck 
the  next  day,  I  saw  that  it  was  held  by  a 
perfect  forest  of  ropes,  which  had  been 
rigged  in  the  night.  Hewitt  told  me,  when 
we  were  ashore,  not  before,  that  they  had 
men  lashed,  hoisted  up  and  swinging  there, 
all  through  the  gale,  getting  those  stays 
about  it  This  is  not  agreeable  is  it? 


This  reminds  me  of  a  good  old 
Scotch  captain  who  has  recently  cast 
anchor  in  the  Harbor  that  is  never 
ruffled  by  the  winds  of  storm.  On 
one  of  his  roughest  voyages  this  old 
sea-salt  had  under  his  care  a  very 
reverend  gentlemen  of  the  "Estab- 
lished Kirke"  and  a  party  of  young- 
sters who  were  not  at  all  reverent. 
During  the  worst  of  the  bad  weather 
the  former  had  shown  himself  to  be 
decidedly  nervous  and  on  one  occa- 
sion had  so  bothered  the  captain  and 
the  crew  when  they  were  tightening 
some  ropes  that  the  captain  in  self-de- 
fence had  given  him  the  dead  end  of 
a  rope  and  told  him  to  hang  onto  it  as 
if  his  very  life  was  at  stake.  When 
the  crew  had  finished  their  task  the 
reverend  gentleman  was  relieved  of 
his  duty  with  the  thanks  of  the  cap- 
tain and  an  aside  to  the  crew  that  it 
had  kept  the  "Sky  Pilot"  out  of  the 
way  for  half  an  hour  anyway.  As 
the  fury  of  the  gale  increased  the  cap- 
tain had  occasion  to  pass  through  the 
cabin  where  the  "reverend"  sat  in 
prayer  and  the  irreverent  sat  at  a 
game  of  cards.  The  clergyman  ap- 
pealed to  the  captain  for  an  assurance 
that  the  ship  was  still  safe.  "Pre- 
sairve  us,  mon,"  he  replied  disgust- 
edly, "but  I  do  believe  you're  mair 
afeard  to  go  strecht  to  heaven  than 
these  young  cubs  be  to  go  strecht  to 
hell." 

Fear  of  travel  by  steamboat  was  not 
simply  among  the  "laity."  The 
learned  Dr.  Lardner,  however  wrong- 
ly he  may  be  accused  of  declaring 
that  a  steamboat  could  never  cross  the 
ocean,  was  at  this  time  doing  all  in  his 
power,  both  with  tongue  and  pen,  to 
dissuade  men  from  embarking  in  so 
foolish  an  undertaking  as  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  line  of  steamships  to 


regularly  ply  between  the  two  worlds. 
On  every  hand  it  was  pointed  out  that 
the  objections  "could  only  be  regard- 
ed as  neutralizing  to  a  certain  extent 
the  benefit,  if  any,  of  the  scheme." 
The  London  Civil  Engineer  and 
Architect's  Journal  said : 


Another  formidable  objection  to  Atlan- 
tic steam-voyaging  arises  from  the  over- 
whelming force  of  the  Atlantic  storms. 
The  shock  of  masses  of  water  roused  into 
a  most  violent  commotion  by  the  accumu- 
lated momentum  of  every  wave  in  the 
whole  three  thousand  miles  of  foaming 
waters  is  nearly  irresistible,  and  is  pro- 
ductive of  the  most  injurious  effects  to 
vessels  of  large  dimensions  impelled  by 
immense  steam-power.  We  ourselves  hap- 
pened to  see  the  "Liverpool"  in  dock  after 
exposure  to  one  of  these  Atlantic  storms, 
and  she  was  really  little  better  than  a 
wreck.  .  .  .  The  "British  Queen"  it  is 
well  known  has  been  injured  on  several 
occasions  and  the  frames  of  the  engines  of 
the  "Great  Western"  have  been  all  broken 
by  the  working  of  the  ship. 


The   whole   matter   was   dismissed 
with  the  words: 


The  establishment  of  steam-communi- 
cation with  the  moon  is  quite  as  feasible — 
"Earth  has  its  bubbles  as  the  water  hath, 
And  this  is  of  them." 


However,  the  companies  that  had 
been  organized  went  steadily  forward 
and  ordered  new  and  larger  ships. 

In  1842,  came  Brunei's  "Great 
Britain"  which  was  described  in 
the  prints  of  the  day  as  a  "huge 
leviathan."  Her  engine  developed 
1,500  horse-power,  or  three  and  three- 
quarters  times  more  than  that  of  the 
"Great  Western."  To  forge  her  main 
shaft  the  world  was  given  a  new  in- 
vention—  the  Naysmith  steam-ham- 
mer. The  hull  was  of  iron  and  the 
whole  ship  was  an  embodiment  of  the 
best  skill  in  designing  and  workman- 
ship of  that  time.  On  Tuesday,  Sep- 
tember 22,  1846,  the  "Great  Britain" 
left  Liverpool  for  New  York  with 
1 80  passengers — the  largest  list  ever 
carried  by  any  one  ship  up  to  that 
time.  At  9:30  that  night  she  struck 
on  the  sandy  beach  of  Dundrum  Bay 


where  she  lay  for  several  weeks  with- 
out having  suffered  any  serious  in  jury 
— a  remarkable  illustration  of  the  sta- 
bility with  which  the  work  was  put 
together.  After  some  slight  repairs 
she  was  again  put  on  the  route  and 
many  years  afterward  was  still  afloat 
and  engaged  in  the  transportation  of 
passengers  and  merchandise  to  Aus- 
tralia and  ran  as  a  steamship  till  1876. 
At  last  accounts  she  was  lying  at  the 
Falkland  Islands  as  a  coal  hulk. 

As  first  built  the  "Great  Britain" 
was  decidedly  different  from  the  boat 
that  became  so  generally  known.  She 
then  had  five  masts,  four  of  which 
were  hinged  at  the  trunnion  to  lower 
in  heavy  weather,  and  was  a  "side- 
wheeler."  Though  designed  by  the 
builder  of  the  "Great  Eastern,"  who 
had  been  associated  earlier  with  the 
Stevens's  in  building  the  first  steam- 
boats in  the  world,  she  was  a  failure 
and  for  months  lay  up  as  a  "wreck  in 
port"  But  she  passed  into  other 
hands  and  was  refitted  for  service. 
The  side-wheels  and  one  of  the  masts 
were  removed  and  two  oscillating 
engines,  of  five  hundred  horse-power, 
•were  installed.  As  a  side-wheeler 
she  had  an  extra  weight  of  one  hun- 
dred tons — that  is,  the  wheels  and  the 
connecting  machinery  weighed  one 
hundred  and  eighty  tons.  As  a  pro- 
peller the  total  weight  of  the  wheel 
and  the  machinery  was  but  eighty 
tons. 

But  it  was  not  long  before  the 
"Great  Britain"  was  superseded  by 
bigger,  faster  boats.  Ships  with  com- 
pound engines  were  built  which  left 
those  of  the  old  single  type  far  be- 
hind. The  "Bothnia"  was  the  first 
compound  Cunarder,  and  when  she 
crossed  the  ocean  with  an  average 
speed  of  thirteen  knots,  carrying  340 
passengers  and  3,000  tons  of  cargo, 
she  was  for  a  time  called  the  "Queen 
of  the  Atlantic."  The  "Great  East- 
ern" came  before  her  day,  though 
she  proved  a  failure  in  trying 
to  combine  sidewheels  and  propeller, 
she  solved  many  problems  which  have 
been  of  subsequent  aid  to  the  ship- 


builder.  In  many  characteristics  the 
"Great  Eastern"  was  unmatched  for 
years.  Her  displacement  of  27,000 
tons  was  not  surpassed  until  the 
arrival  of  the  28,500  ton  "Oceanic." 
And  her  depth  of  fifty-seven  and  a 
half  feet  and  beam  of  eighty-three 
feet  would  still  remain  the  record  fig- 
ures were  they  not  exceeded  by  the 
new  Cunarders,  which  are  sixty  feet 
deep  and  eighty-eight  feet  wide,  and 
which  accordingly  surpass  any  ves- 
sels ever  built. 

To  show  how  transitory  is  the  pres- 
tige of  the  trans- Atlantic  flyer  the  fol- 
lowing are  named,  with  the  date  that 
each  beat  the  record  of  its  predeces- 
sor: Persia,  1856;  Scotia,  1866;  City 
of  Brussels,  1869;  Baltic,  1873;  City 
of  Berlin,  1875;  Germanic,  1876'; 
Britannic,  1877;  Arizona,  1880; 
Alaska,  1882;  Oregon,  1884;  Amer- 
ica, 1884;  Etruria,  1885;  Umbria. 
1887;  City  of  Paris,  1889;  Majestic, 
1891 ;  Teutonic,  1891 ;  Campania, 
1893  ;  Lucania,  1893 ;  Kaiser  Wilhelm 
der  Grosse,  1897;  Deutschland,  1900, 
and  Kaiser  Wilhelm  II,  1904. 

And  in  this  race  for  supremacy 
every  mechanical  factor  has  been  de- 
veloped as  far  as  engineering  skill 
would  permit.  As  the  single  engine 
was  followed  by  the  double  engine,  so 
the  double  engine  has  been  succeeded 
by  the  quadruple.  The  single  screw 
gave  way  to  the  twin  screw  boat,  and 
now,  with  the  "Mauretania,"  the  four 
screw  ship  has  come.  Indeed,  it 
would  seem  that  the  prophecy  of  the 
late  Lord  Inverclyde,  head  of  the  Cu- 
nard  Company,  would  some  day  be 
realized — that  the  steamship  of  the 
future  would  have  propellers  all  along 
its  bottom,  and  that  it  would  exceed 
in  speed  even  the  fastest  express 
trains. 

So  gradual,  however,  has  been  the 
development  of  the  steamship  that  the 
people  of  to-day  fail  to  realize  how 
tremendous  it  has  been.  The  great 
monarchs  of  the  deep  come  in  and  go 
out  of  New  York  Harbor,  but  so  long 
as  no  accident  happens  to  them  the 
city  pays  little  heed.  What  business 


Jtrsi 


tn    (Eroaa 


man  to-day  leaves  his  work  simply  to 
look  at  an  arriving  transatlantic  liner  ? 
The  day  when  the  whole  town  rushed 
down  to  the  water-front  to  stare  at 
the  "Sirius"  will  doubtless  never  be 
repeated.  No  matter  how  big  or  how 
fast  may  be  the  ships  of  the  future 
they  will  never  arouse  the  excitement 
and  the  curiosity  of  those  early  days. 

In  1844  Boston  Harbor  was  frozen 
solid.  The  citizens,  fearing  that  the 
terminal  of  the  line  might  be  changed 
to  New  York,  cut  a  channel  up  to  the 
very  wharf. 

In  those  early  days  it  was  the  cus- 
tom to  carry  live  sheep  and  cattle  that 
were  butchered  on  board  as  needed 
for  food.  A  stall  for  cows  was  also 
one  of  the  adjuncts  of  a  ship.  Think 
of  what  a  herd  of  Jerseys  it  would  re- 
quire now  to  furnish  the  three  thou- 
sand quarts  of  milk  and  cream  used 
on  an  ordinary  passenger  ship  on  a 
single  trip  across  the  ocean!  A 
glance  at  the  deck  plan  of  the  "Bri- 
tannia" will  show  the  arrangement  of 
the  slaughter-house  and  the  cow-stall. 

Think  of  what  it  means  to  speak  of 
a  sixty-eight  thousand  horse-power 
engine,  such  as  is  planned  for  the  new 
Cunarder  turbines.  If  the  sixty- 
eight  thousand  horse-power  engine 
were  to  be  replaced  by  sixty-eight 
thousand  horse-power  of  human  mus- 
cles, there  would  have  to  be  three  re- 
lays of  men  at  the  treadmill,  or  what- 
ever other  appliance  would  be  used. 
Each  eight-hour  shift  would  require 
six  hundred  and  eighty  thousand  men 
and  for  the  three  shifts  there  would 
be  two  million  and  forty  thousand 
men — a  population  below  deck  larger 
than  that  of  any  city  of  the  world  ex- 
cept London.  If  the  problem  were  to 
give  the  ship  the  high  speed  of  the 
railway  locomotive  the  figures  would 
vanish  in  the  unthinkable.  The  pis- 
ton speed  in  1838  was  not  more  than 
two  hundred  feet  per  minute.  In 
1860  it  had  reached  four  hundred  feet 
and  to-day  a  speed  of  more  than  a 
thousand  feet  is  common. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  United 
States,  after  having  first  solved  the 


practicability  of  the  steam  engine  has 
had  but  little  to  do  with  its  develop- 
ment upon  the  ocean.  Other  coun- 
tries have  been  quick  to  see  the  value 
of  a  merchant  marine  and  have  given 
large  bonuses  as  an  inducement  to 
both  brains  and  money,  but  we  have 
lagged  away  behind.  During  the 
year  1903  not  one  American  ship  en- 
tered or  cleared  from  a  single  port  in 
Germany,  Russia,  Sweden,  Norway, 
Denmark,  Austria-Hungary,  Greece, 
or  the  Netherlands.  With  the  larg- 
est export  trade  of  all  the  nations  and 
the  greatest  extent  of  navigable  coast 
line,  we  have  the  smallest  merchant 
marine. 

Last  year  we  paid  $200,000,000  in 
freights  to  ocean  ships  and  carried 
only  seven  per  cent  of  it  in  American 
vessels,  the  balance,  or  $186,000,000, 
going  into  the  treasury  of  foreigners. 
In  1821  we  carried  eighty-three  per 
cent  of  our  foreign  commerce.  In 
1903  we  caried  only  seven  per  cent 
and  the  total  volume  of  our  commerce 
had  increased  twenty-fold.  Can  we 
stand  this  forever? 

The  first  steamers  built  in  this 
country  to  cross  the  ocean  were  built 
for  foreigners.  This  was  in  1841 
and  the  two  boats  were  at  first  known 
as  the  "Lion"  and  the  "Eagle"  but 
when  they  went  into  the  Spanish 
navy  they  were  called  the  "Regent" 
and  the  "Congress."  At  about  the 
same  time  the  "Kamschatka"  was 
built  by  W.  H.  Brown,  of  New  York, 
for  the  Russian  navy  and  our  engi- 
neers were  at  work  on  the  "Missouri" 
and  the  "Mississippi,"  much  larger 
vessels,  for  our  navy. 

The  first  American  steamship 
owned  or  run  by  an  American  com- 
pany in  transportation  to  or  from 
any  European  port  was  built  in  1847 
when  the  Ocean  Steam  Navigation 
Company  had  two  boats  built  by 
Westervelt  and  Mackay,  at  New 
York,  which  they  named  the  "Wash- 
ington" and  the  "Hermon."  They 
ran  to  Bremen,  touching  at  Cowes, 
under  a  contract  with  the  United 
States  to  carry  mail  for  $200,000  per 

«8o 


*B?gtntttttg    nf 


annum.  The  postage  on  letters  to 
Europe  at  this  time  was  twenty-four 
cents  for  one-half  ounce  or  less,  forty- 
eight  cents  for  anything  between  a 
half  ounce  and  an  ounce  and  fifteen 
cents  for  every  additional  half  ounce. 
Newspapers  and  pamphlets  were  car- 
ried for  three  cents  each.  Ten  years 
later  Congress  refused  to  renew  the 
contract,  made  no  appropriation  to 
cover  the  transportation  of  foreign 
mails,  and  the  company  was  com- 
pelled to  withdraw  its  vessels  from 
the  service. 

In  the  same  year,  1847,  tnat 
the  "Washington"  began  her  trips, 
Charles  H.  Marshall  &  Company, 
owners  of  the  famous  "Black  Ball" 
line  of  packets  running  from  New 
York  to  Liverpool,  gave  a  contract  to 
William  H.  Webb  to  build  the  steam- 
ship "United  States."  This  vessel 
made  but  one  round  trip  and  not 
proving  a  success  as  to  payability  was 
sold  to  the  Prussian  government  and 
turned  into  a  steam  frigate  but  after- 
ward found  her  way  into  the  mer- 
chant service  where  she  plied  for 
years. 

In  1849,  tne  New  York  and  Havre 
Steam  Navigation  Company  was  also 
given  a  contract  by  the  government  to 
carry  mail  between  New  York  and 
Havre,  touching  at  Cowes,  for  which 
they  were  to  receive  $150,000  per  an- 
num for  a  fortnightly  service,  and 
built  the  "Franklin"  and  the  "Hum- 
boldt."  The  average  time  of  the  line 
to  Havre  was  twelve  days  and  ten 
hours.  The  line  to  Bremen  had  an 
average  of  fourteen  days  and  nine 
hours.  The  two  boats  on  the  Havre 
line  continued  in  service  until  they 
were  lost — the  "Humboldt"  in  enter- 
ing the  harbor  at  Halifax,  December 
5,  1853,  and  the  "Franklin"  off  Mon- 
tauk  Point,  Long  Island,  July  17, 
1854.  Two  vessels  were  chartered 
to  take  their  place  until  the  "Arago" 
and  the  "Fulton"  were  built,  in  1855, 
which  continued  on  the  run  till  1861 
when  they  were  chartered  by  the 
United  States  government  service  in 
the  war. 


The  next  line  to  carry  the  Ameri- 
can flag  was  the  famous  Collins  Line, 
under  the  corporate  name  of  "The 
New  York  and  Liverpool  U.  S.  Mail 
S.  S.  Co."  The  paid-in  capital  of  the 
company  was  $1,200,000  and  four 
vessels  were  built  from  models  made 
by  George  Steers,  the  designer  of  the 
yacht  "America."  The  first,  the 
"Atlantic,"  was  built  in  1849  by  Wil- 
liam H.  Brown ;  the  second,  the  "Pa- 
cific," was  built  the  same  year  by 
Brown  and  Bell.  In  the  next  year 
two  others, the  "Arctic"  and  the  "Bal- 
tic," were  built  by  the  same  firms. 

A  description  of  the  "Atlantic" 
from  a  contemporary  magazine  will 
show  what  magnificent  vessels  were 
placed  upon  this  line : 


The  "Atlantic"  is  two  hundred  and  sev- 
enty six  feet  on  the  keel  and  forty-five  feet 
wide.  The  stem  is  rounded  and  has  in 
the  center  the  American  eagle  clasping  the 
star  and  striped  shield  but  no  other  device. 
.  .  .  There  is  a  colossal  figure  head  at 
the  bow.  ...  A  house  at  the  stern 
contains  a  smoking-room,  and  a  small 
compartment  completely  shelters  from  the 
weather  the  steersman.  .  .  .  This  smok- 
ing-room is  the  principal  prospect  of  the 
man  at  the  helm,  who,  however,  has  to 
steer  according  to  his  signals.  Before 
him  is  a  painted  intimation  that  one  bell 
means  "port"  and  two  bells  mean  "star- 
board;" a  like  intimation  appears  on  the 
large  bell  in  the  bow  of  the  ship.  Accord- 
ing to  the  striking  of  the  bell,  so  must  he 
steer.  .  .  .  The  great  saloon  below 
deck  is  sixty-seven  feet  long  and  the  din- 
ing-saloon  is  sixty  feet  long;  both  are 
twenty  feet  broad  and  are  separated  from 
each  other  by  the  steward's  pantry. 
Panels  containing  beautifully  finished  em- 
blems of  each  of  the  states  in  the  Union 
and  a  few  other  devices  that  savor  very 
strongly  of  republicanism  are  on  every 
side.  For  example,  a  young  and  beautiful 
figure,  all  radiant  with  health  and  energy, 
wearing  a  cap  of  liberty  and  waving  a 
drawn  sword  is  represented  as  trampling 
on  a  feudal  prince  from  whose  head  a 
crown  has  rolled  in  the  dust  The  cabin 
windows  are  beautifully  painted  glass  em- 
bellished with  the  arms  of  New  York  and 
other  cities  in  the  states.  Large  circular 
glass  ventilators  reaching  from  the  deck 
to  the  lower  saloon  are  also  richly  orna- 
mented while  handsome  mirrors  multiply 
all  this  splendor.  .  .  .  There  are  one 
hundred  and  fifty  berths  ...  the  most 
novel  feature  about  them  being  the  "wed- 


281 


to 


ding-berths,"  which  are  wider  and  more 
handsomely  furnished  than  the  others,  in- 
tended for  such  newly  married  couples  as 
wish  to  spend  the  first  fortnight  of  their 
honeymoon  on  the  Atlantic.  Such  berths 
are,  it  seems,  always  to  be  found  on  board 
the  principal  river  steamers  in  America, 
but  as  yet  are  unknown  on  this  side  of  the 
water.  

The  line  started  under  a  contract 
to  carry  the  United  States  Mail  for 
$385,000  per  annum  and  this  was 
afterward  increased  to  $858,000,  yet 
the  great  expense  of  pushing  the  ves- 
sels at  a  rate  of  speed  beyond  any- 
thing that  had  ever  been  attempted 
before  and  the  necessary  repairs  that 
such  an  undertaking  involved  kept 
the  line  from  becoming  anything  like 
a  paying  investment.  Before  a  solid 
foundation  had  been  reached  the  gov- 
ernment subsidy  was  withdrawn  and 
the  company  that  had  in  it  more  of 
promise  for  the  future  of  the  country 
than  any  other  single  enterprise  was 
forced  to  the  wall.  The  loss  of  the 
"Arctic"  had  crippled  the  finances  of 
the  company  but  it  is  more  than  prob- 
able that  it  would  have  been  able  to 
weather  the  storm  if  the  interests  of 
the  South  and  Southwestern  states 
had  not  united  to  cut  down  all  the 
appropriations  recommended  in  Con- 
gress that  were  in  any  way  to  be  con- 
strued as  being  inimical  to  their  de- 
mands. Thus  the  line  received  its 
death-blow — virtually  killed  in  the 
house  of  its  friends. 

The  first  American  screw  steam- 
ship to  cross  the  Atlantic  was  the 
"Pioneer"  which  sailed  from  New 
York  to  Liverpool  in  October,  1851, 
which  was  followed  the  same  year  by 
the  "City  of  Pittsburgh."  Out  of  the 
line  that  despatched  the  "City  of 
Pittsburgh"  came  the  Inman  Line 
which  in  later  years  ran  some  of  the 
best  boats  to  be  found  upon  the  ocean. 

New  York  capitalists  built  the 
"Ericcson,"  in  1853,  to  test  the  use 
of  hot  air  instead  of  steam  as  a  motive 
power.  The  "Caloric  Ship"  was  a 
failure  and  her  engines  were  removed 
for  the  installation  of  the  much 
abused  steam  engines.  After  the 


change  this  boat  ran  for  some  time  on 
the  Collins  line  to  Bremen  and  was 
later  sold  to  Boston  parties  who  re- 
moved the  machinery  and  converted 
her  into  a  sailing-vessel  for  the  East 
India  trade.  As  an  illustration  of 
much  advertising  and  little  real  merit 
the  hot-air  engine  of  Ericcson  has  its 
counterpart  in  the  "liquid  air"  pro- 
jects of  to-day. 

Commodore  Vanderbilt  made  a 
proposition  to  the  Post  Office  Depart- 
ment in  1855  to  run  boats  alternately 
with  the  Collins  Line  for  $15,000  a 
trip  if  the  speed  of  the  Cunard  Line 
was  to  be  taken  as  a  basis  for  sailing 
and  $19,250  a  trip  if  the  speed  of  the 
Collins  Line  was  to  be  maintained. 
Congress  rejected  the  proposition,  as 
it  did  a  later  one,  to  carry  the  mail  to 
Southampton  and  Havre  for  $16,680 
a  trip,  the  rate  paid  the  Cunard  Line 
by  the  English  government.  The 
next  year  he  ran  the  "North  Star" 
and  the  "Ariel"  to  Bremen  for  two 
trips  and  in  1857  the  "Vanderbilt," 
"Ariel"  and  "North  Star"  were  put 
on  the  run.  But  there  was  no  money 
in  the  undertaking  and  it  was  aban- 
doned. 

No  other  steamship  line  carried  the 
American  flag  until  after  the  close  of 
the  war  when  the  Ruger  Brothers  and 
their  associates  started  the  North 
American  Lloyds,  but  this  enterprise 
also  proved  a  failure.  Another  at- 
tempt was  made  in  1867  and  still 
another  in  1868  but  both  went  as  their 
predecessor  had  gone. 

In  1871  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad 
Company,  wanting  to  increase  the 
foreign  business  of  the  line,  was  in- 
strumental in  the  organization  of  the 
American  Line  whose  vessels  during 
1875-8  made  some  very  remark- 
able time.  In  1884  this  line  was 
merged  into  the  International  Navi- 
gation Company,  which  in  1886 
gained  control  of  the  Inman  Line. 

Between  1838  and  1879  there  were 
one  hundred  and  forty-four  steamers, 
counting  all  classes,  lost  at  sea  while 
engaged  in  trans-Atlantic  service. 
Perhaps  the  most  noted  of  all  was  the 

a8i 


nf    ttyt 


(Enrnmerr? 


"President,"  to  which  I  have  re- 
ferred. Since  1879  the  most  mem- 
orable Atlantic  ocean  disasters  would 
make  a  list,  including  the  burning  at 
sea  of  the  "Egypt,"  of  the  National 
Line,  and  the  "City  of  Montreal,"  of 
the  Inman  Line,  both  without  loss  of 
life;  the  stranding  of  the  "State  of 
Virginia,"  of  the  State  Line,  on  the 
quicksands  of  Sable  Island  which 
quickly  entombed  her;  the  sinking  of 
the  "State  of  Florida,"  of  that  same 
line,  by  collision  with  a  sailing  ship; 
the  disappearance  of  the  National 
Liner  "Erin,"  which  is  supposed  to 
have  foundered  at  sea,  and  the  sink- 
ing of  the  magnificent  "Oregon"  of 
the  Cunard  Line  off  Fire  Island 
through  a  collision  with  a  coal 
schooner. 

From  these  beginnings,  and  upon 
these  tragedies,  built  upon  the  persist- 
ence of  Junius  Smith,  the  great  com- 
merce of  the  nations  has  developed ; 
the  gateways  of  the  world  have  been 
thrown  wide  open;  the  continents, 
which  were  literally  as  far  away  from 
one  another  as  the  planets,  have  been 
drawn  together  until  to-day  the  peo- 
ples of  the  earth  are.  all  near  neigh- 
bors. The  "sound-headed"  Ameri- 
can business  men  pronounced  the  plan 
to  establish  trans-oceanic  service  as 
"chimerical"  and  refused  to  invest  in 
the  "impracticable  project." 

Progress  in  every  line  of  the 
world's  work  has  been  made  against 
public  opinion  and  in  the  face  of  pub  • 
lie  ridicule.  Such  is  the  way  of  hu- 
man nature.  How  many  of  the  pres- 
ent day  "masters  of  finance,"  whose 
chance  and  daring  have  accumulated 
colossal  fortunes,  would  invest  in  a 


project  to  establish  aerial  navigation 
between  New  York  and  Liverpool? 
While  aerial  navigation  is  not  as  well 
advanced  now  as  was  steam  naviga- 
tion when  capitalists  disdained  Junius 
Smith,  it  is  fully  as  "tangible"  as  was 
steam  navigation  when  John  Fitch 
invited  public  attention  to  the  pos- 
sibilities of  propulsion  of  vessels  by 
steam.  Are  its  inventors  passing 
through  the  same  experiences?  Is 
"conservative"  capital  holding  back 
the  day  of  aerial  navigation? 

As  I  look  on  the  tragedies  of  un- 
fortunate men  with  "original  ideas"  I 
find  that  new  epochs  are  opened  only 
by  the  sacrifice  of  some  genius  who 
lays  down  his  life  as  the  price  of 
progress. 

I  believe  the  fact  has  been  fully  es- 
tablished that  John  Fitch,  not  Robert 
Fulton,  is  the  "father  of  steam  navi- 
gation," but  it  is  to  Fulton  that  we 
also  owe  a  great  debt.  It  was  his. 
financiering  that  developed  "the  other 
man's  ideas." 

We  have  many  John  Fitches  with 
their  so-called  "chimerical"  ideas. 
They  are  haunting  our  patent  offices 
with  their  "perpetual  motions."  They 
are  wearing  their  lives  away  over 
their  crude  models  only  to  find  that 
the  great  world  does  not  open  its 
arms  to  "radical  ideas." 

We  have  multitudes  of  Dukes  of 
Wellingtons  who  have  "no  leisure  to 
receive  the  visits  of  gentlemen  who 
have  schemes  in  contemplation  for  the 
alteration  of  public  establishments." 

We  need  more  Robert  Fultons  in 
American  business. 

We  need  more  Junius  Smiths  to 
move  the  world  along. 


(From  an  Old  Song) 


"Rocked  in  the  cradle  of  the  deep, 

I  lay  me  down  in  peace  to  sleep. 

Secure  I  rest  upon  the  wave. 

For  Thou,  O  Lord,  hast  power  to  save. 

I  know  Thou  wilt  not  slight  my  call, 

For  Thou  dost  mark  the  sparrow's  fall." 


"And  such  the  trust  that  still  were  mine. 
Though  stormy  winds  sweep  o'er  the  brine. 
Or  though  the  tempest's  fiery  breath 
Roused  me  from  sleep,  to  wreck  and  death. 
In  ocean's  wave  still  safe  with  Thee, 
The  germ  of  Immortality." 


Srtala  in  lEarhj  ifttstir? 


(ftourt 

of  3Jactirr  3abr?  Brainrrb 

£*rUmn  Olrlmra 
Qforaing  anb  Ihtratrtng  " 
&*nt?nrrii  tn   &turkfl 

(Durr  la  thrtr  (£rri>ttnrH  in 


"  (gttig  " 

Srbinni  3Prapt?ntlg 

iBrntmmuj  of  Amrrtran  tarn 


sr 
REVEREND  BERT  FRANCIS  CASE 

IN  POSSESSION  or  THK  ORIGINAL,  COURT  RECORD 


SHE  official  doings  of  a  Jus- 
tice of  the  Peace  in  Re- 
volutionary times  is  not 
without  its  points  of  in- 
terest   and    instruction. 
The    book    from    which 
these  records  are  taken 
belonged     first    to    Justice    Jabez 
Brainerd  of  Haddam  and  cover  the 
years    1773-1775.      Afterwards    his 
son-in-law,    Joseph  Dart   of  Middle 
Haddam  (town  of  Chatham),  came 
into  possession  of  the  book — and  he, 
with    a   very  proper  sense  of  econ- 
omy, used  the  remaining  blank  pages 
to  continue  the    story    (with  varia- 
tions) which  his  father-in-law  had  so 
well  begun. 

In  turning  the  pages  of  this 
ancient  record  it  is  assumed  that 
whenever  the  name  of  a  long-for- 
gotten ancestor  of  the  living  reader 
comes  into  view,  said  reader  will 
have  a  saving  sense  of  humor. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  in  those 
days  considerable  indulgence  was 
shown  the  steady  drinker,  but,  if 
he  allowed  himself  to  be  carried  by 
the  enthusiasm  of  his  calling  beyond 
a  certain  point,  some  unfavorable 
comment  was  usually  forthcoming. 
One  of  the  first  records  concerns 

one  Ben'mB ,  who  in  June,  1773, 

was  sternly  required  to  confess  a 
judgment  against  himself  of  "8 
shillings  fine  for  the  sin  of  drunk- 
ness  and  one  shilling  cost."  A  con- 
fession that  Benjamin  was  persuaded 


to  repeat  in  December  of  the  same 
year.  Ready  enough  was  Benjamin 
to  confess  but  rather  slow  to  pay  up. 
We  do  not  find  his  account  adorned 
with  the  words  "paid  for,"  which  is 
the  encouraging  foot  note  to  the  ac- 
count of  Abijah  B ,  Jr.,  who  en- 
countered a  six  shilling  judgment 
the  same  year. 

The  breach  of  the  Sabbath  was 
regarded  as  a  more  serious  offense, 
it  would  appear,  than  "profane  curs- 
ing and  swairing,"  or  even  the  "sin 
of  drunkness";  for  it  brought  a  fine 
of  ten  shillings  and  one  shilling  cost 

to  Hezekiah  B of  Middletown, 

in  June,  1774,  an  offense  and  fine 
quickly  repeated  in  the  case  of  one 

Noadiah  B ,  who  should  have 

profited  more  by  Hezekiah's  expe- 
rience— a  thing,  however,  that  man 
seldom  does. 

The  same  fruitful  year  also  handed 
out  a  judgment  of  three  shillings 

(paid)  to  one  of  the  young  B sfor 

"playing  at  meeting."  The  B 

horizon,  it  is  true,  had  its  gloomy 
aspects — yet  hope  dies  hard — and  it 

was  Jacob  B who  conceived  the 

brilliant  idea  of  himself  turning 
prosecutor.  A  neighbor  was  sum- 
moned to  court  to  answer  to  a  book 
account  which  Jacob  triumphantly 
produced.  His  demand  was  only 
"twelve  shillings  Lawful  money  said 
to  be  Due  by  Book." 

"The  parties  appeared,"  pains- 
takingly records  Justice  Brainerd, 


ffiourt  Sworh    nf  3lafo»2  Sramrcb,  1TT3-ITT5 


"and  ware  at  Issue  on  the  plea  of 
owe  nothing  and  ware  fully  Heard 
with  there  Evedances.  In  the  Case 

and this  Court  is  of  opinion 

that  the  Def'd  Doth  not  ow  the 
plaintiff  in  manner  and  forme  as  set 
forth  in  His  Dicklaration  and  that 
the  said  Defendant  shall  Recover  of 
the  plantiff  His  cost  taxed  at  ^o, 
o6s,  Q-]d" 

But  other  equally  adventurous 
spirits  were  abroad.  Samuel  Scovil 
was  constable  in  Haddam  in  those 
days,  and  that  meant  something  to 
Sabbath  day  travelers,  though  they 
seldom  comprehended  it  in  time. 
And  be  it  also  remarked  Samuel 
Brooks  was  "one  of  the  Grand  jurors 
of  our  Sovereign  the  King."  The 
two  Samuels  were  an  industrious 
pair — as  three  gentlemen  from  Mid- 
dletown  discovered  when  appre- 
hended and  fined  five  shillings  apiece 
(Feb.  20,  1775),  "for  travilng  on  the 
Sabbath  Day." 

And  it  was  just  a  week  later  that 
the  watchful  Samuel  persuaded 
Charles  Wright  "of  the  provence 
and  city  of  New  York  "  to  delay  his 
journey  long  enough  to  deposit  5* 
Lawful  money  and  zs  charges  for 
the  benefit  and  use  of  the  town 
treasury. 

A  very  nice  way  of  discharging  a 
debt,  when  there  was  nothing  to  pay 
with— one  of  the  common  sense  ar- 
rangements of  ye  olden  time  not 
without  merit  if  it  could  be  evoked 
by  present  day  creditors — was  that 
followed  by  "Joseph  towner"  of 
Haddam,  in  September,  1773.  He 
held  the  note  of  "John  Smith  tailler, 
a  transhant  person,"  for  "three 
pound  eight  shillings  Lawfull 
money."  The  Def'd  being  unable 
to  discharge  the  debt,  having  no 
money  lawful  or  otherwise,  was  as- 
signed "in  Servis  to  the  said  Joseph 
towner  the  terme  of  one  year  and 
six  month."  One  only  wonders 
what  John  Smith  "tailler's"  earning 
capacity  was  under  favorable  cir- 
cumstances if  it  took  18  months  of 
steady  labor  to  pay  a  debt  of  3^,  &s. 


One  of  Haddam's  established  in- 
stitutions that  never  attained  any 
very  wide  popularity  and  for  whose 
vacant  places  there  was  never  any 
very  brisk  competition  —  was  the 
stocks. 

December  ai,  1773,  the  case  of 
Elisha  C ,  Jr.,  was  under  inves- 
tigation. It  would  appear  that  some 
four  months  before  the  above  date 
Elisha  had  been  rather  over  enthu- 
siastic in  a  celebration  of  some  sort, 
and  at  last  "two  of  the  Grand 
Juriors  of  our  Soverign  Lord  the 
King,"  viz.,  "Charles  sears  and 
Abraham  tyler"  got  busy  in  the 
matter.  It  was  charged  that  Elisha 
was  seen  "Between  His  own  House 
and  the  meeting  House  in  s'd  Had- 
dam much  Bereveed  and  Disinabled 
In  the  use  of  his  Reason  and  Under- 
standing appearing  in  his  speech 
and  Jestures  and  Behavior." 

"Not  Gilty,"  was  Elisha's  plea. 

But  when  the  "evidance  for  the 
.King  ware  swore  and  gave  in  there 
evidences,"  the  court  said  "Gilty." 
Whereupon  the  following  choice  was 
given  Elisha:  "To  pay  a  fine  of 
Eight  Shilling  Lawfull  money  to  Be 
for  the  use  and  Benefit  of  the  Town 
of  Haddam,  or  "to  set  in  the  Stocks 
one  hour." 

An  hour  to  be  sure  was  only  60 
minutes,  and  to  sit  still  for  60  min- 
utes was  not  a  difficult  feat;  but  for 
collateral  reasons  no  doubt,  it  was 
not  to  Elisha's  liking,  so  we  have 
this  simple  foot  note — "the  fine  and 
cost  paid." 

In  May,  1774,  one  AmosD of 

"Dirham"  was  investigated.  It  was 
said  that  he  did  "swair  Rashly  and 
vainly  By  the  Holy  name  of  God  on 
the  1 8  Day  of  April  Last  pas  in  the 
Highway  near  the  Dwelling  house  of 
Jabez  Brainerd  in  Haddam."  On 
being  adjudged  "Gilty, "he  also  is 
given  a  choice:  A  six  shilling  fine  or 
a  seat  in  the  stocks  for  one  hour  and 
a  half.  History  fails  to  reveal  the 
choice  that  Amos  made,  but  no 
doubt  the  state  of  his  exchequer  was 
a  determining  factor. 


©rtala   in  Sarlg   3fu0ito  GhmrtH    in  Ammra 


One  thing  to  be  noted  in  the  case 
of  a  not  guilty  verdict  is  that  such  a 
verdict  did  not  always  bring  the 
comfort  that  was  supposed  to  go 
with  it.  There  is  the  case  of  Capt'n 
Abner  P . 

In  January,  1775  he  was  living  in 
Waterbury,  having  removed  from 
Haddam  in  September  of  the  previ- 
ous year. 

In  December,  1774,  three  of  the 
King's  Grand  Jurors  in  Haddam — 
Dan'll  Ventross,  Ezera  Tyler  and 
Josiah  Huntington — issued  an  "  In- 
formation" against  the  Captain. 
Being  much  longed  for  and  sent  for 
the  accommodating  Captain  con- 
sented to  return  to  Haddam  for  a 
short  time  in  January.  It  was 
averred  that  in  the  previous  Septem- 
ber he  "Did  swair  Rashly,  vainly 
and  profainly  in  his  then  Dwelling 
House  in  s'd  Haddam."  The  ver- 
dict was  that  "the  said  p is  not 

Gilty  In  manner  and  forme  as  set 
forth  in  s'd  Deckileration  and  there- 
fore may  be  Dismissed  He  paying 
the  cost  taxed  at  £i,  2S,  8d." 

Perhaps  the  accommodating  Cap- 
tain regretted  that  he  had  not  sworn 
rashly  and  vainly  as  charged.  Per- 
haps he  took  an  early  opportunity 
to  experiment  in  that  line.  But  of 
one  thing  we  may  be  sure  his  long- 
ings to  return  to  old  Haddam  and 
end  his  days  there  was  over. 

This  was  January  10.  That  same 
night  the  Captain,  in  honor  of  his 
temporary  sojourn  in  Haddam — and 
perhaps,  in  celebration  of  his  rather 
doubtful  victory  in  court — got  up  a 
little  tea  party.  A  fair  assumption, 
as  we  have  it  recorded  that  he  at 
tended  Court  next  day  and  confessed 
a  judgment  against  himself  for  the 
"sin  of  Intemperance."  Having 
thus  behaved  in  a  fairly  generous 
way  toward  the  town  treasury  the 
Captain  with  a  clear  conscience  re- 
tired to  his  country  seat  in  Water- 
bury,  and  the  presumption  is  that 
very  little  Haddam  dust  was  found 
clinging  to  his  feet  when  he  took  his 
departure. 


And  so  the  record  runs.  But  it 
was  not  all  fining  and  granting  exe- 
cutions—  there  was  an  occasional 
brighter  side.  Witness  the  follow- 
ing records  copied  verbatim: 


"April  the  28  1774  then  William 
Michel  of  Middletown  was  married 
to  Jerusha  towner  of  Haddam 

By  me 

J.  B.  Justice  of  peace." 
"November    the     10    1774    then 
Elijah   at  wood  was   married  to   his 
wife  Mary 

By  me  J.  B." 

"March  23,  1777  then  Ebenzer 
Wyllys  was  married  to  his  wife 
Jemima  By  me  J.  B." 


In  turning  to  Squire  Dart's  records 
(beginning  in  1780)  we  find  that  a 
large  volume  of  business  was  done — 
of  considerable  variety  too — but  the 
bulk  of  it  had  to  do  with  book  ac- 
counts and  overdue  notes.  Occa- 
sionally, however,  a  matter  presents 
itself  that  has  its  special  points  of 
interest.  For  example,  I  have  been 
much  interested  in  noting  the  vigor 
and  efficiency  with  which  the  law  of 
the  colony  was  evoked  to  meet  the 
needs  of  the  "transient  person." 

Two  such  gentlemen,  Smer  and 
Tedeo  by  name,  had  some  midnight 
dealings  with  one  Ebenezer  Rowley 
in  1783.  Ebenezer,  it  appears,  was 
not  well  pleased  with  some  of  the 
attendant  circumstances  of  the  affair. 
Next  morning  he  caused  a  writing 
to  be  made — commonly  known  as  a 
writ — in  which  Messrs.  Smer  and 
Tedeo  were  charged  "with  taking 
from  s'd  Rowley  on  the  Night  after 
the  2ist  of  Inst  July  4  Good  linen 
shifts  two  Good  linnen  shirts  up- 
wards of  10  yards  of  Good  tow  cloth 
a  linnen  Gown  2  table  cloths  2  lawn 
aprons  and  sundry  other  articles  all 
to  the  Damage  of  the  plantif  Two 
Pounds  Lawful  money." 

The  sentence  was  that  each  be 
"whipt  on  the  Naked  body  with  a 
suitable  whip  at  sum  post  Five 
Lashes  and  be  further  punished  by 

286 


(Enurt 


of  3lab?2  Srauttro,  1773-1Z75 


paying  a  fine  of  3*  L  m  for  the  use 
of  s'd  Town  and  pay  s'd  Rowley 
2j£:os:od  lawful  money  Damages 
and  the  cost  of  piosecution  taxed  at 
2 13  :i  and  stand  comited  till  s'd  Judg- 
ment is  answrd." 

"Comited"  they  both  were;  but 
later  Ebenezer,  standing  in  need  of 
an  extra  hand  or  two,  and  perceiving 
that  there  was  a  surer  way  of  secur- 
ing his  own  share  of  the  proceeds, 
decides  to  take  the  two  faithful 
friends  and  co-laborers  into  his  ser- 
vice— for  a  period  of  time  of  gener- 
ous dimensions. 

Yet  we  ought  not  to  think  that 
Justice  Dart  showed  partiality  in  the 
bestowal  of  his  favors  upon  tran- 
sient persons.  For  in  1785  two  resi- 
dents of  the  town,  Lemuel  R 

and  Sarah  E were  jointly  in- 
volved in  a  small  adventurous  affair 
with  "two  swine."  Selah  Jackson, 
the  owner  of  the  swine,  said  right 
out  that  it  was  a  plain  case  of  steal- 
ing. The  court  adopted  Selah's 
view  of  the  affair,  and  the  antidote 
was  that,  after  the  usual  several 
shillings  benefit  to  the  town  treasury 
had  been  provided  -  for,  Lemuel 
should  be  "tied  to  a  tre  or  post  and 
whipt  with  a  suitable  whip  on  the 
Naked  Body  8  Lashes,"  and  Sarah 
ditto — "5  Lashes." 

I  suspect  from  other  records  that 
in  the  case  of  Lemuel  and  Sarah 
Squire  Dart  had  good  reasons  for 
adopting  heroic  measures.  His  pre- 
scription is  comparatively  mild  in  a 
case  occurring  five  days  later.  Cap- 
tain Israel  Higgins,  having  missed 
"  3  steel  Horse  Shoes,"  undertook  to 
show  that  he  was  damaged  to  the 
amount  of  1 8  shillings.  The  Captain 
won  his  "sute,"  but  the,  damage  was 
placed  at  only  one  shilling,  and  an 
execution  had  to  be  granted  to 
secure  that,  and  there  is  no  mention 
of  a  "sutible  tre  or  post." 

The  writer,  having  made  a  num- 
ber of  inquiries  regarding  the  fact 
and  location  of  a  training  field  in 
Middle  Haddam,  was  pleased  to  find 
mention  made  of  such  a  field  in 


Squire  Dart's  narrative,  though  not 
altogether  delighted  with  the  cir- 
cumstances under  which  that  his- 
toric spot  was  referred  to.  Three  of 
the  several  items  are  concerned  with 
happenings  at  the  field  on  Thursday 
the  3oth  day  of  October,  1783,  which 
appears  to  have  been  an  eventful 
day  in  Middle  Haddam  military  cir- 
cles. Something  went  wrong,  was 
misplaced,  or  carelessly  handled,  or, 
at  any  rate,  not  sufficiently  lubri- 
cated. For  the  next  day  Oliver 
A was  handed  out  two  judg- 
ments; one  for  "prophane  Cursing 
and  swairing  at  the  Training  Field 
at  middle  haddam,"  the  other  for 
"striking  Corp'l  Ithamor  Rowley  in 
the  traning field  in  middle  haddam." 
The  fine  in  each  case  was  six  shill- 
ings and  one  shilling  cost  of  Entry. 
A  point  in  Oliver's  favor  is  that  he 
voluntarily  came  to  court  and  con- 
fessed. A  point  not  in  Oliver's  favor 
is  that  the  year  following  the  judg- 
ment was  still  unsatisfied  and  Oliver 
still  warding  off  the  fatal  day  of 
payment  by  giving  two  notes  of 
seven  shillings  each. 

But  the  October  30,  1783  returns 
were  not  yet  all  in.  For  July  19,  1784 
we  find  Nathaniel  S —  going  to  Squire 
Dart's  confessional  and  recalling 
some  things  he  fain  would  have  for- 
gotten—for example,  a  small  matter 
of  "  prophane  cursing  and  swairing 
at  middle  haddam  Train  field  "  on 
October  30  of  the  previous  year.  Seven 
shillings  is  the  price  for  having  his 
memory  jogged.  Nathaniel  meets 
this  unexpected  requisition  by.  giv- 
ing his  note  for  that  amount. 

Our  ancestors  were  to  a  consider- 
able degree  human,  and  while  we 
like  to  think  of  them  as  solemnly 
going  through  this  military  business 
to  be  ever  in  readiness  to  meet  their 
country's  enemies — we  must  not  lose 
sight  of  the  fact  that  they  also  most 
generally  had  an  eye  open  for  an  oc- 
casional enemy  near  at  hand.  For 

example,  Ashbul  A felt  a  strong 

call   of  duty  in  that  direction  dur- 
ing,or  it  may  have  been  just  after, 


®riala   in   iEarlg   itralto   (Eflttrte    in  Ammra 


the  military  maneuvers  of  the  1785 
October  training.  For  at  the  next 
session  of  Squire  Dart's  Court  he 
cheerfully  confessed  and  actually 
paid  his  seven  shillings  down  for  the 
great  freedom  of  speech  he  had  tem- 
porarily enjoyed  on  the  last  great 
day  at  the  Middle  Haddam  training 
field. 

It  may  be  appropriately  mentioned 
here  that  a  large  quantity  of  "State's 
powder  was  stored  in  Chatham  in 

1783.     James  R was  in  difficulty 

that  same  year  because  some  of  the 
powder  was  missing,  and  one  cask 
was  found  by  "Insn"  (Ensign?)  Jede- 

diah    Hubard  near    James    R 's 

abode.  The  case  went  to  the  County 
Court  at  Hartford  under  a  bond  of 
100  pounds. 

Some  notice  may  also  be  taken  of 
several  attempts  to  check  what  was 
known  as  illicit  trade — that  had  to 
do  with  embargoed  goods. 

In  1780  "mr.  william  Bevins"  is 
granted  a  warrant  to  "seize  a  whale 
boat  from  Long  Island  in  the  Eliset 
trade." 

Nov.  7  of  the  same  year  Capt. 
Joshua  Griffith  complains  of  a 
schooner  "Speedwell,"  Obed  Barlo, 
master,  "in  Eliset  or  embarguered 
trade " — also  of  a  sloop  of  20  tons, 
Amos  Wright,  master,  with  "prohe- 
bated  articles."  A  few  days  later 
Mr.  Bevins  complains  of  the  sloop 
"  Cumberland"  of  30  tons,  Thomas 
Lewis,  master,  "Laden  with  embar- 
goed articles  to  be  conveyed  out  of 
the  county." 

A  case  that  greatly  interested  the 
writer  when  he  came  upon  the  rec- 
ord was  one  that  came  to  trial  April 
4,  1786,  in  which  Zepheniah  Michel 
of  Chatham  was  plaintiff  and  "Isreal 
Putnam  of  Pomphret  and  county  of 
Windham,  Def'd."  It  was  an  "action 
of  Book  Demanding  the  sum  of  ^4." 
We  hardly  know  whether  to  praise 
or  censure  citizen  Michel's  pushing 
spirit  in  this  matter. 

The  General  was,  if  anything 
rather  less  enthusiastic  than  Zephe- 
niah in  the  matter.  When  he  at 


last  arrived  in  town  he  declared  that 
he  "  owed  nothing."  But  the  "evi- 
dences" were  as  usual  resorted  to, 
and  the  famous  wolf  hunter  and 
Revolutionary  fighter  yielded  at  last 
to  the  persuasive  "Opinion"  pro- 
nounced by  Squire  Dart  in  his  very 
best  style.  The  sum  granted 
Zepheniah,  however,  was  but  £2. 
The  additional  charges  were: 

£  s  d 

"Writ  and  Duty,  -  -  -  -  o:  2:  6 
Oficers  fees,  -  -  -  -  0:12:  i 
Plaintifs  travl  and  tendance,  -  o:  2:  4 
Cort  fee,  ...'...  v  ...•'••  -  o:  3:  o 

0:19:11 " 

Chatham  likewise  had  its  own  way 
of  treating  certain  worldly  diseases. 
For  example,  May  7,  1781,  Elijah 
J and  Stephen  G were  ad- 
monished that  the  little  game  of 
cards  which  they  had  enjoyed  at  a 
neighbor's  house  would  cost  them  10 
shillings  each.  The  bill  was  paid, 
but  whether  the  cards  were  hence- 
forth eschewed  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing.  However,  it  is  in  such 
items  that  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
stern  conception  of  duty  under 
which  our  forefathers  labored  in 
building  the  social  fabric  of  their 
days. 

Speaking  of  the  records  in  general 
it  seems  a  little  strange  that  where 
the  "Cort  fee"  was  only  a  shilling, 
or  seldom  more  than  two,  and  the 
other  charges  relatively  small,  not 
infrequently  a  note  would  be  given 
for  the  total  amount.  The  words 
"paid  for"  or  "Judgment  satisfied" 
are,  if  anything,  of  rather  rare  oc- 
currence. After  one  trial  was  over 
Justice  Dart  added  to  the  record  the 
words  "  Nothing  paid,"  as  though  he 
were  a  little  bit  discouraged  with 
that  sort  of  court  business.  Most 
commonly  he  writes,  "Execution 
granted,"  and  a  few  months  later 
adds,  "An  alias  execution  granted," 
and  then  perhaps  the  following  year, 
"Execution  removed."  Sometimes 
the  account  is  thus  carried  forward 
over  a  period  of  several  years,  and 
at  the  last  "no  cash  "  in  sight. 

333 


ijam?    of  iflij   (£  1)  U  Mt  0  n  it 


BY  ANNA  J.  GHANNISS.  AUTHOR  OF  "THK  BOY  WITH  THE  HOE- 


I've  been  a  long  journey  and  back  today— 

'Twixt  rise  and  set  of  a  single  sun, 
I  have  traveled  two  score  of  years  away, 

And  have  returned  with  the  journey  done. 

To  the  sun-lit  vale  of  my  early  youth 

I  bent  my  steps  in  the  dewy  morn, 
And  by  noon  I  came  to  the  place  in  truth. 

And  entered  the  house  where  I  was  was  born. 

As  I  stood  in  the  long  deserted  hall, 

A  throng  of  memories  met  me  there; 
They  gazed  at  me  from  the  vacant  wall. 

They  called  to  me  from  the  creaking  stair. 

They  knelt  with  me  at  the  cold  hearth-side 
Where  the  gay  Hames  danced  in  other  days; 

They  mingled  their  voices  with  mine  and  cried, 
Holding  pale  hands  to  the  vanished  blaze. 

In  the  open  chamber  which  once  was  mine, 
The  sun  still  shone  on  the  same  old  beams, 

But,  oh  heart  of  mine,  how  it  used  to  shine, 
On  the  splendid  castles  of  our  dreams ! 

My  glimpse  of  the  world  through  a  window  given, 
was  rainbow-hued  in  that  far-off  time, 

Then  my  own  "  Blue  Hills  "  reached  up  to  Heaven, 
And  I  was  eager  and  longed  to  climb. 


Oh,  what  have  I  been  that  I  hoped  to  be  ? 
What  have  I  done  that  I  thought  to  do? 
Return,  oh  ye  days  of  my  youth  to  me, 
Those  early  pledges  I  would  make  true  ! 

From  the  crimson  dawn  to  the  sweet  day's  close, 
Still,  God  through  Nature  Is  calling  me, 

As  all  through  the  aires  He  calls  to  those 
Who  have  ears  to  hear,  and  eyes  to  see. 

And  when  my  spirit,  as  one  who  sings. 

Trills  in  response,  I  believe  and  know 
That  a  breath  Divine  is  upon  the  strings 

By  Nature  fashioned  to  vibrate  so. 

And  believing  this,  shall  I  cry  "  alack  !  " 

For  the  unsung  melodies  of  youth  ? 
Shall  I  bid  the  years  of  my  toil  turn  back 

The  years  so  rich  in  their  love  and  truth  ? 

Even  though  the  Fountain  of  Song  be  sealed. 
Though  I  grope  my  upward  way  blind- fold, 

Already  to  me  there  have  been  revealed 
Things  such  as  poets  have  sung  and  told. 

No— the  voices  heard  as  a  little  child 

Nor  toil,  nor  the  world's  rude  tones  have  stilled; 
Life'*  conflicting  claims  will  be  reconciled, 

Its  highest  purpose  will  be  fulfilled. 


an    0f 


jHERE  hang  the  old  long-rifle  and  the  axe, 
Shadowy,  yet  huge  and  grand, 
I  see  the  hairy  hand 
Once  clutched  them,  never  to  relax; 

But  to  defend  the  home  already  won, 
And  strike  yet,  blow  on  blow, — 
Feed  to  the  wolves  the  foe, 

And  hew  on  toward  the  setting  sun. 

He  of  that  daring,  hunter's  hand  scorned  rest; 

He  must — 'twas  destiny — 

Push  onward,  do  and  die, 
Blazing  the  race-trail  West  and  West. 


Nature  did  him  for  hero's  hazardry 
From  out  her  wild  womb  fetch: 
Yon  hand  would  westward  stretch 

The  Alleghanies  to  the  sea. 

A  form  grows  to  the  hand.     I  see  him  tread 

The  solemn  forest-way, 

While  butcher-bird  and  jay 
Flit  round  him  in  the  silence  dread. 


Idle  the  warnings  in  the  low  wind's  talk; 

Lord  of  the  woodland  dim, 

Little  they  trouble  him, 
Storm,  famine  and  the  tomahawk. 


The  panther's  thews  he  has,  the  lynx's  eye, 

The  carriage  of  the  tree ; 

Stern  opportunity 
He  challenges — it  goes  not  by. 


ihtlju     Hattr?     01  Ij  r  tt 


No  tame,  unvaried  toil  would  he  begin 

Who  makes  of  skins  his  dress, 

His  home  the  wilderness 
Europe  could  lose  her  kingdoms  in. 

He  knows  the  tumult  of  ambitious  might 

That  will  the  pillars  shake; 

Will  States  unmake  and  make, 
Wipe  out  old  landmarks,  and  rewrite. 

To  his  rib-mould  the  powder-horn  is  curled; 

With  gladiator's  mien 

He  moves  from  scene  to  scene, 
Mapping  the  marches  of  a  world. 

Ay,  thou  grim  shade,  I  see  and  understand: 
That  haft  and  stock  were  held 
That  Freedom's  sons  might  weld 

The  alien  oceans  sand  to  sand ; 

File  out  along  the  fateful  trail,  to  bring 

Men  wider  liberty; 

Yea,  lead  it  sea  to  sea, 
So  far  it  tires  the  wild  bird's  wing. 

Grim,  nameless  shade,  he  does  not  need  a  name 

Who  leaves  thy  rich  bequest. 

Cemented  East  to  West, 
We,  Freedom's  men,  we  are  thy  fame. 

He  heard.     He  fades  as  when  the  brown  leaf-fall 

Laid  peace  upon  his  sleep; 

Only  the  rude  tools  keep 
Their  vigil  on  the  dim-lit  wall. 


tn  Amrrua- 


BY  DR.  ROLAND  D.  GRANT 


FTER  forty  trips  across  this 
continent,  and  twenty 
years  singing  the 
praise  of  hill  and  dale, 
of  cliff  and  crag,  of 
lake  and  river,  I  am 
still  looking  forward 
to  new  revelations  of  the  glories  of 
America.  The  beauty,  charm  and 
wonder  of  its  scenic  wealth  is  beyond 
calculation.  It  seems  to  hold  in  coun- 
terpart all  the  riches  of  the  world. 

If  you  want  Southern  France,  or 
Southern  Italy,  with  their  fruits  and 
flowers  and  palms  and  bowers,  with 
groves  of  oranges  and  pomegranates 
and  bananas,  or  a  hundred  acres  of 
snow-white  lilies,  or  a  half  mile  of 
trellis  of  geraniums  and  rose-bushes, 
they  are  here  in  endless  profusion. 
The  Yellowstone  Park  now  stands 
forever  alone  the  wonder  piece  where 
God  is  still  at  work  finishing  the  crust 
of  the  earth.  Between  the  Yosemite 
and  Kings  River  Valley  of  the  South 
and  the  mighty  Yoho  valley  of  the 
North,  are  upturned  vaults  and  gla- 
ciers to  astonish  the  world,  a  single 
one  of  which  is  more  vast  than  all  the 
glaciers  of  Europe  combined.  While 
in  waterfalls  of  every  possible  size 
and  height  and  combination,  so  many 
that  it  is  really  a  confusion  to  remem- 
ber their  names,  there  are  places 
where  mighty  cliffs  fling  a  dozen  of 
gem  cataracts  from  some  precipitous 
height,  all  to  be  seen  at  a  single 
glance.  The  Colorado  Canyon,  with 
its  mile  of  depth  and  dozen  miles 
from  shore  to  shore,  would  swallow 
the  gold  of  the  nations,  and  makes  all 
similar  scenery  of  the  Old  World 
diminutive  in  the  extreme. 

Lake  Logano  and  Como  are  per- 
haps the  most  refined  gems  of  Euro- 
pean scenery,  but  we  have  lakes 
almost  without  number  possessing 
equal  charm,  although  it  belongs  to  a 
group  of  a  hundred  similar  lakes  of 
indescribable  beauty.  The  Rhine  is 
more  than  matched  by  our  Columbia 


and  Snake  rivers,  and  the  history  of 
the  Columbia  can  match  the  Rhine  in 
delightful  story.  Giant's  Causeway 
and  Fingal's  Cave  are  matched  a  hun- 
dred times  in  Idaho. 

When  asked  if  America  had  a 
Mount  Vesuvius  the  reply  was  made, 
"Not  exactly,  but  we  have  a  Niagara 
that  could  put  it  out  if  it  should  ever 
get  on  fire."  I  said  to  a  man  at  the 
base  of  Vesuvius,  "No,  our  volcano 
is  not  just  like  this,  but  we  have  an 
extinct  crater  in  America  so  vast  that 
you  could  pull  Vesuvius  up  by  the 
roots  and  drop  it  into  our  crater  and 
Vesuvius  would  go  a  thousand  feet 
out  of  sight." 

This  continent  is  a  museum  world, 
and  I  hereby  give  to  you  the  keys  to 
its  myriad  canyon  corridors,  cathe- 
dral towers,  and  crypts  of  ancient  his- 
tory. You  and  I  have  enjoyed  these 
things  for  years  and  must  consider 
them  as  only  ours  in  trust,  for  the  true 
patriotism  is  a  fatherism  that  prepares 
the  trail  for  those  who  shall  come 
after  us. 

I  want  American  scenery  taught 
in  the  public  schools.  I  want  you  to 
save  and  protect  the  Indians.  I  want 
to  save  the  animal  life,  the  buffalo, 
elk,  deer  and  beaver.  These  are  the 
original  inhabitants.  They  have  a 
claim  upon  your  honor.  Oh,  to  see 
once  more  a  million  pigeons  as  I  saw 
them  in  Minnesota  in  1867,  or  five 
thousand  geese  arise  from  a  Minne- 
sota lake ! 

Underneath  the  American  deserts 
are  rivers  of  living  water  waiting  to 
come  to  the  surface  to  transform  all 
the  regions  into  gardens  of  bloom. 
This  is  the  land  flowing  with  milk  and 
honey,  grass  for  the  cows  and  flowers 
for  the  bees.  This  is  the  land  of 
promise,  "the  land  whither  ye  go  to 
possess  it  is  a  land  of  hills  and  valleys 
and  drinketh  the  rain  of  the  water  of 
heaven." 

Excerpt  from  address  before  the  "See 
America  League  "  in  Salt  Lake  City,  Utah. 


Uruurl 

in  Ainrnra 


TIIK     MA.IKSTY    OF    NATURE'S     MASTERPIECES 

Thro*  Bummer-clad  boughs 

to  grand  snow-capped  Mount  Shasta,  in 

California,  14,442  feet  high  -  Sun  Sculpture 

by  Underwood  and  Underwood,  New  York  —  Copyrighted 


U-raurl 

in  Amrrtra 


THE    WONDERS    OF    GOD'S    HANDIWORK 

Nearly  a  mile  straight  down 

from  Glacier  Point  In  the  Yosemite 

Valley  in  California  —  Sun  Sculpture  by 

Underwood  and  Underwood,  New  York  — Copyrighted 


iTraurl 

in  Amrrira 


1HK    MASTER'S    AIARVELOl'S    ARCHITECTt'RE 

Survivor  of  the  Primeval 
Flood  in  the  Grand  Canyon  of 
Arizona  — Sun  Sculpture  by  Underwood 
and  Underwood,  New  York  —  Copyrighted 


araurl 

in  Amrrira 


NATURE'S    GREATEST    AMPHITHEATER 

Fathoming  the  depths  of  a 

vanished  sea  —  that  in  ages  past 

•wept  thro'  the  Grand  Canyon  of  Arizona  — 

Sun  Sculpture  by  Underwood  and  Underwood,  New  York  —  Copyrighted 


ODE  TO  AMERICA 

Earth's  Land  of  Liberty 


BY 


DONALD  LINKS  JACOBUS 

1 

O  Land  am  ill  the  seas! 
In  whose  green  sun-kissed  fields  lair  blossoms 

blow; 

Bright  jewel  wrapped  in  snow. 
Yet  breathed  upon  by  balmy  southern 

breeze— 

O  Land  of  cities  proud, 
Whose  thoroughfares  pulsate  with  throbbing 

life, 

Whose  massive  walls  with  strife 
Reverberate  and,  weary,  cry  for  rest  aloud: 

11 

O  Land  of  silent  mead, 
Of  peaceful  plain,  green  hill  and  bounteous 
farm, 

Where  safe  from  wild  alarm 
The  earth  gives  up  to  every  man  his  need! 

O  country  of  our  love! 
Thine  both  the  drear  monotony  of  toil 

And  thine  the  tempest's  moil 
When  furies  loose  their  angered  voices  far 


above. 


Ill 


Fair  Land  whose  climature 
Is  varied  as  thine  own  e'er  changing  face, 

Which  here  from  lowly  base 
Rises  aloft  to  snowy  summits  pure, 

And  stretches  level  there 
In  rolling  plains  graced  not  by  stately  tree— 

Our  native  Land,  to  thee 
This  hymn  of  praise  we  chant,  extolling  thee 
in  prayer. 


IV 

Earth's  Land  of  Liberty, 
Where  King's  dominion  e'er  will  be  unknown, 

And  tyrant  rule  o'erthrown 
That  all  may  live  a  life  of  manhood  free: 

May  we  forever  boast 
A  fame  unsullied  and  an  honored  name, 

No  stain  or  blot  of  shame 
In  all  the  land  from  hill  to  hill,  from  coast  to 
coast. 


What  other  land  but  thee 
In  freedom's  cause  a  patriot's  battle  waged, 

Her  sacred  honor  gaged 
That  in  her  borders  none  enslaved  should  be? 

What  country  else  resigned 
Her  sons  to  death,  a  sunny  isle  to  save 

Washed  by  the  tropic  wave, 
And  guards  two  continents,  by  oceans  four 
confined"? 

VI 

O  loveliest  land  of  all 
To  which  the  sun's  wide  circuit  bringeth 
light, 

By  thy  maternal  right 
Our  love  and  reverence  boldest  thou  in  thrall. 

All  hail,  America! 

The  land  of  freedom,  progress,  thought  and 
worth! 

The  children  of  the  earth 
And  stars  of  heaven  sing:  All  hail,  America! 

VII 

Lord  God  of  glorious  might, 
Whose  universal  mercy  we  adore, 

All-Father  we  implore 
Thy  aid  by  day,  thy  watchful  care  by  night. 

Guard  our  beloved  land 
From  foes  without  and  dissidence  within; 

Shield  us  from  pride  and  sin, 
And  rule  America,  O  God,  with  loving  hand. 


~    »iv 


•  jffi'T 


"Such  matchless  splendor  canvas  ne'er  has  shown, 
Nor  Art  nor  tongue  the  beauteous  blush  portray  " 


•V*    - 


Fair  land  whose  climature 

Is  varied  as  thine  own  e'er  changing  face  " 


?tt  iagltglyt  lies 


•OT 


'IS  Eventide;    the  King  of 

Day    descends, 
To  mark  the  course  where 

weary   labor  ends ; 
Across  the  sky  his  crim- 
son beams  are  thrown, 
Such    matchless    splendor 
canvas  ne'er  has  shown, 
Nor  Art,  nor  tongue  the 
beauteous  blush  portray. 
That  gilds  the  heavenly  dome  at  close  of 

day. 
Tis    Nature's   hour   to   fill    the   land   with 

peace, 
As,    wrapt   in   slumber,   countless   sorrows 

cease ; 
Blest   Comforter,   while   hearts    forget   the 

pain. 

Renewed  in  strength  to  take  it  up  again. 
See  the  white  mist  from  yonder  meadow 

rise, 

O'er  which  the  myriad  lamp-lit  insect  hies. 
The  twilight  deepens  with  an  incense  sweet, 
As  children's  good-night  songs  at  mother's 

feet. 
And  ling'ring  shadows  gently  reunite. 


Till    Daylight    softly   clasps    the   hand    of 

Night. 

Serene  the  lake  that  lies  along  the  grove, 
Whose    mirrored    depths    repeat    the    sky 

above, 

A  wondrous  starry  banner  heaven  unfurls, 
That  answering  orbs  may  greet  the  parent 

worlds ! 

Beneath  the  surface  hide  the  latent  rings, 
'Till    wakened    by    the    swallow's    truant 

wings. 

The  circles  hasten  with  a  sweet  unrest. 
To  lave  the  sleeping  lilies  on  its  breast ! 
Beneath    the    wooded    arch    the    mountain 

stream 
Reflects    sweet   Luna's    primal    length'ning 

beam. 

To  joys  anew  the  silver  floor  invites. 
And  many  a  laughing,  dancing,  fairy  sprite 
Comes   tripping   from   the   shadow   of   the 

mill. 

To  amorous  vespers  of  a  whip-poor-will. 
Whose  triple   love   notes   from  the  wood- 
man's street. 
Win    many    an    echoed    bride    in    cadence 

sweet! 


ESIDE    the    hedge    a    modest 

bank  of  flowers 
Is  gath'ring  pearls  along  the 

waiting  hours; 
The  nestled  jewels  many  a 

chalice  fill 
With     charms     their      loving     cups    alone 

distill. 

Glist'ning  with  gems  the  day  will  bid  forget, 
The  Lily  of  the  Vale  and  Violet 
Await  with  open  lips  the  King's  delight, 
To    kiss    away    the    moistened    breath    of 
Night ! 


And   thus   the  curtains   of   the   Night   are 

hung : 
The  curtains  part;  the  morning  stars  have 

sung! 


30* 


Aratomg  of  Ammratt  Jmmnrtala 


American  people    on 
May    the    thirtieth   will 
dedicate   eleven    bronze 
tablets     to    the     eleven 
Great  Americans  whose 
deedsand  memories  have 
recently    been    crowned 
by    an    election    to    the   American 
Academy  of  Immortals — the  Hall  of 
Fame. 

It  was  adistinguished  Western  jur- 
ist, Judge  J.  H.  Richards  of  Boise, 
Idaho,  who  in  speaking  of  America's 
greatness,  was  recently  asked  : 
"What  is  it  that  makes  America 
great  ?  Is  it  her 
mountains,  her  gold 
and  her  silver  ?  " 

To  which  he  re- 
plied emphatically: 
"No!  It  is  her  men 
and  her  women! 
They  are  the  true 
and  lasting  great- 
ness of  the  country 
that  crown  it  with 
everlasting  glory. 
One  great  man  that 
comes  up  from  the 
valleys  and  plains 
is  of  more  lasting 
worth  to  this  na- 
tion than  all  the 
gold  and  all  the 
silver  hidden  in  the 
great  mountains. 

"Men  will  never  be 
made  great  by  gold 
alone.  It  contracts 
them.  They  must  be  taught  that 
money  is  to  expand  their  hearts  and 
not  sear  them,  by  making  them  un- 
derstand that  the  mighty  power 
placed  in  their  hands  is  to  bless 
God's  children  throughout  their  en- 
tire country  and  through  them  the 
entire  world. 

"When  we  think  of  how  this  civil- 
ization was  planted  upon  the  rocks 
of  the  Atlantic  coast,  narrow  per- 
haps, indeed,  were  their  concepts  of 
what  this  country  was  yet  to  be. 
But  the  Being  who  gave  us  this 


THE  HALL  OF  FAMK 


FOR  GREAT  AMERICANS 


BY  WEALTH  OK  THOUGHT 


OR  ELSE  BY  MI«;HTY  DEED 


THKY  SERVED  MANKIND 


IN  NOBLE  CHARACTER 


IN  WORLD-WIDE  Goon 


THEY  LIVE  FOR  EVERMORE 


country  intended  that  we  should  be 
a  great  and  generous  people.  He 
gave  us  land  enough  for  the  plow, 
water  enough  for  our  shipping,  iron 
enough  for  the  forge,  mountains 
enough  for  grandeur,  gold  and  silver 
enough  for  cupidity,  snow  enough 
for  courage,  and  sunshine  enough 
for  song. 

"  And  when  men  are  whirled 
from  that  rocky  coast  out  into  the 
great,  broad  valley  of  the  Mississippi, 
their  ideas  expand.  When  they  see 
that  great  valley  and  its  possibilities, 
the  granary  of  the  world,  and  as  they 
come  on  West  and 
see  the  great  plains 
of  the  Middle  West, 
and  on  to  these 
great  cathedrals  of 
nature  in  these 
mountains,  their 
hearts  expand.  With 
expansion  they  get 
a  grander  concept 
of  what  an  Ameri- 
can was  intended 
to  and  will  yet  be." 
When  one  con- 
siders the  great 
works  of  the  forty 
immortals  now  in 
the  Hall  of  Fame, 
and  that  most  of 
them  lived  and 
labored  on  the  At- 
lantic coast  long 

'      before  the  Western 

America  had  be- 
come an  element  in  the  moulding  of 
American  character,  it  seems  as  if 
the  day  of  American  achievement 
is  yet  to  come  and  the  Great  Amer- 
ican of  the  future  must  be  a  man 
the  like  of  whom  the  world  has  never 
before  seen.  In  the  last  generation 
men  have  been  making  the  Great 
West,  but  in  the  next  generation  the 
Great  West  will  make  Great  Men. 
In  these  pages  is  presented  a  series 
of  four  of  the  Great  Men  who  have 
been  immortalized  by  their  fellow- 
men  for  services  of  scholarship. 


AN     AMERICAN     IMMORTAL, 
RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON 

PHILOSOPHER 

BORN   AT   BOSTON,   MASSACHUSETTS,    MAY    23,    18O3 
DIED    AT    COXCORB,     MASSACHUSETTS,    Al'lfll.    27,    1883 


AN  AMERICAN  IMMORTAL. 
NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE 

NOVELIST 

HORN   AT    SALEM,    MASSACHUSETTS,    JULY    4,    1SO4 
DIED    AT    PLYMOUTH,    N  I    \v     HAMPSHIRE,    MAY     Mi.    18O4 


AN  AMERICAN  IMMORTAL 
WASHINGTON    IRVING 

HUMORIST 

BOKX    AT   NEW   YORK    'III.    APRIL.    3,    1783 
IMKIl    AT   IHVIWOTOX,    NEW   YORK,    NOVEMBER    28.    1S5« 


AN  AMERICAN  IMMORTAI. 
SAMUEL,    F.    B.    MORSE 

INVKWTOH 

BORN    AT    CHAKL.K8TOWIT,  MA88 AOH178KTT8,  APRIL.  »T,    1T»X 
D1KD   AT   VB\V   YORK,   APRIL.    *,    1»7» 


ICtbrtH 


Adaptation  nf  tljp  Q!H&  Art  of  Sunk 
nriginatrfc  uritbin  Ijalf  a  rrnturgof  iljr  imtrntionnf printing 


JT  was  within  a  half  century 
from     the     invention     of 
printing    that    book-plates 
were  introduced  as  identi- 
fying   marks    to    indicate 
the  ownership  of  the  vol- 
ume.    Germany,  the  fath- 
erland of  printing  from  movable  type 
and  of  wood-cutting  for  making  im- 
pressions in  ink  on  paper,  is  likewise 
the  home-land  of  the  book-plate.    The 
earliest   dated   wood-cut   of   accepted 
authenticity    is    the    well-known    "St. 
Christopher  of  1423,"  which  was  dis- 
covered in  the  Carthusian  monastery 
of  Buxheim  in  Suabia. 

It  was  to  insure  the  right  of  owner- 
ship in  a  book  that  the  owner  had  it 
marked  with  the  coat-of-arms  of  the 


family  or  some  other  heraldic  device. 
Libraries  were  kept  intact  and  passed 
from  generation  to  generation,  bear- 
ing the  emblem  of  the  family.  The 
first  book-plate  in  France  is  dated 
1574;  in  Sweden,  1575;  Switzerland, 
1607,  and  Italy,  1623.  The  earliest 
English  book-plate  is  found  in  a  folio 
volume  once  the  property  of  Cardinal 
Wolsey  and  afterward  belonging  to 
his  royal  master.  The  earliest  men- 
tion of  the  book-plate  in  English  lit- 
erature is  by  Pepys,  July  16,  1688. 
The  first-known  book-plate  in  Amer- 
ica belonged  to  Governor  Dudley. 
Paul  Revere,  the  patriot,  was  one  of 
the  first  American  engravers  of  book- 
plates, and  a  designer  of  great  ability. 


nf  an 


(Slaptattt 


AfUu'tttarru  in 

&m::h  Atnrrira  atth  in 

the  JJcrta  of  tijr  COI&  l*mrlt>  fcuring 

3Ftrat  flraru  of  tbr  Amrrtran  Srpnbltr  o*  An 

Amrrtran  (Etttzrn  JtnprrBarft  into  thr  Srilial)  £mrtr*  .* 

3jtB  Sartna  £arapr   aftrr  ^ram  of  Ckptiuttg  cn&  (Crmfltrt 


Antubuiriraphg 


CAPTAIN   JEREMIAH   HOLMES 

COMMAKDEB  Or  THE  "IlERO,"  AND  IDENTIFIED  WITH  THE  EABLY  MERCHANT  MAKIJIE— BOKX    151    1788    AND  DlED 

AT  THE  AGE  or  NINETY  TCACS 


'Tis  the  bold  race 

Laughing  at  toil,  and  gay  in  danger's  face, 

Who  quit  with  joy,  when  fame  and  glory 

lead, 
Their    richest   pasture   and   their   greenest 

mead, 

The  perils  of  the  stormy  deep  to  dare, 
And   jocund   own   their   dearest   pleasures 

there. 
One  common  zeal  the  manly  race  inspires, 

O  to  sea,  young 
man !"  This  was 
the  advice  of  the 
first  fathers  of 
America  to  the 
sons  of  the  Na- 
tion a  few  gen- 
erations ago.  It  was  considered 
"the  manly  thing  to  do."  Old  Eng- 
land had  long  been  the  lord  of  the 
seas,  and  the  new  Americans  were 
"a  race  of  men  inheriting  her  seafar- 
ing aptitude,  and  destined  to  dispute 
her  maritime  supremacy."  Thou- 
sands of  young  Americans  sailed  "be- 
fore the  mast  on  board  the  swift  Lon- 
don packets  or  in  the  carrying  trade 
to  the  West  Indies,  and  twelve  thou- 
sand American  seamen  enlisted  in  the 
King's  ships  and  the  Colonial  priva- 
teers during  the  Seven  Years'  War 
with  France." 

This  absorbing  story  of  life  on  the 
high  seas  shortly  after  the  founding 
of  the  American  Republic  is  faithfully 
given  as  received  from  the  lips  of  the 
venerable  sea-captain  by  his  nephew, 

305 


One  common  cause  each  ardent  bosom 
fires, 

From  the  bold  youth  whose  agile  limbs 
ascend 

The  giddy  mast  when  angry  winds  con- 
tend, 

And  while  the  yard  dips  low  its  pointed 
arm. 

Clings  to  the  cord,  and  sings  amidst  the 
storm. 

— HENRY  JAMES  PYE'S  "NAUCRATIA,"  1798. 

the  Reverend  F.  Denison.  In  record- 
ing the  old  mariner's  reminiscences, 
Reverend  Denison  said :  "Having,  in 
common  with  many  others,  a  laudable 
anxiety  to  secure  a  full  narrative,  in 
a  permanent  form,  of  the  life  of  my 
uncle  and  his  varied  fortunes  by  sea 
and  by  land,  in  peace  and  in  war,  I 
persuaded  him  to  sit  down  at  differ- 
ent times  and  relate  to  me  the  promi 
nent  events  of  his  history." 

Captain  Holmes,  whose  life  story 
is  here  related,  was  the  son  of  Jere- 
miah and  Mary  (Denison)  Holmes 
and  was  born  September  6,  1782, 
near  the  village  of  Milltown,  in  Ston- 
ington,  Connecticut.  At  fourteen 
years  of  age,  in  1796,  he  went  to  live 
with  his  brother-in-law,  Thomas 
Crary,  in  the  town  of  Norwich,  Che- 
nango  County,  New  York.  He  re- 
mained here  four  years  and  then 
"took  to  the  sea." 

Captain  Holmes  died  in  Mystic, 
Connecticut,  at  the  age  of  ninety 
years.  The  following  transcript  from 
his  original  autobiography  is  contrib- 
uted by  Mrs.  H.  B.  Noyes  of  Mystic. 


0f  ifmmtalj  ijnlmw — Horn  1782 


every  one  can  feel  at 
rest  upon  a  farm.  Our 
callings  are  as  various 
as  our  tastes  and  gifts. 
Being  of  a  restless  tem- 
per  I  was  allured  by  the 
prospects  of  the  sea. 
Leaving  my  brother-in-law  at  Nor- 
wich, Chenango  County,  New  York, 
in  January,  1800,  I  traveled  on 
foot  one  hundred  and  ten  miles 
to  Catskill  on  the  Hudson,  from 
whence  by  packet  I  reached  the  city 
of  New  York.  Eager  for  an  oppor- 
tunity to  know  the  ocean  and  foreign 
lands  I  shipped  in  the  schooner  "Four 
Sisters,"  under  Captain  Peleg  Barker, 
destined,  as  our  papers  read,  for  the 
Falkland  Islands.  The  state  of  com- 
mercial affairs  prompted  to  the  arti- 
fice. 

We  instantly  sailed  for  Rio  de 
Janeiro.  Reaching  that  port  the  cap- 
tain opened  an  unrecognized  business 
and  in  fact  smuggled  on  shore  dry 
goods  to  the  value  of  forty  thousand 
dollars.  After  about  two  months  our 
lucrative  business  became  suspected 
when  the  authorities  commanded  us 
to  leave  the  port.  Anxious  to  re- 
main, the  captain  feigned  himself  in 
ill-health;  but  the  ruse  was  unavail- 
ing. Thus  driven  from  this  port  the 
captain  concluded  to  sail  northward. 
We  finally  ran  into  the  mouth  of  the 
Amazon  and  anchored  near  the 
mouth  of  Para  River,  yet  so  broad 
were  the  waters  at  this  point  that  but 
for  the  freshness  of  the  water  we 
might  have  concluded  that  we  were 
on  the  shore  of  the  ocean.  Attracted 
by  the  few  dwellings  in  sight  Captain 
Barker  sent  a  boat  on  shore  contain- 
ing the  mate  and  four  men.  The 
boat  and  its  crew  were  unexpectedly 
detained.  The  Portuguese  govern- 
ment in  Brazil  did  not  at  this  time  tol- 
erate commerce  with  foreigners. 
With  the  morning  our  boat  and  men 
returned,  but  they  were  accompanied 
by  another  boat  bearing  a  white  flag 
and  filled  with  soldiers.  Our  visitors 
were  reluctantly  entertained. 


Aboard  Ship  off  Brazil 
and  Confined  in  a  Dungeon 

The  moment  the  soldiers  came  on 
board  they  took  forcible  possession  of 
the  vessel,  when  they  carried  the  cap- 
tain, mate  and  supercargo  on  shore 
and  then,  binding  the  remainder  of  us, 
proceeded  with  the  vessel  up  the 
river.  Thus  we  became  prisoners 
and  our  vessel  the  prey  of  the  Portu- 
guese power  in  Brazil. 

Para  stands  about  sixty  miles  from 
the  river  of  the  same  name.  The  city 
is  guarded  by  a  strong  fort.  In  the 
center  of  the  fort  is  a  huge,  dark  dun- 
geon, a  subterranean  prison  so  dark 
that  objects  are  dimly  discerned  at 
mid-day  though  near  the  eyes.  We 
were  hurried  into  this  fort  and  thrust 
into  this  dungeon,  a  very  undesirable 
harbor  for  one  who  delighted  in  the 
free  air  and  paths  of  the  ocean.  It 
was  now  June;  we  had  been  five 
months  from  home;  our  prospects 
were  gloomy  indeed.  We  were  un- 
der the  equator,  and  the  heat  of  the 
country  was  nearly  intolerable.  The 
old  dungeon  in  the  center  of  the  mas- 
sive fort  knew  no  healthy  light  and 
no  refreshing  winds.  There  were 
eight  of  us  to  share  this  close,  dark, 
sweltering  subterranean  prison.  To 
add  to  our  discomforts  we  had  been 
robbed  of  all  our  clothes  except  what 
was  found  upon  our  persons.  Thus 
destitute  and  suffering  we  were  held 
in  this  detestable  dungeon  for  a 
period  of  nearly  two  months. 

The  walls  of  the  dungeon  were  of 
stone;  the  doors  were  of  wood  and 
only  some  three  or  four  inches  thick. 
Our  only  hope  looked  through  these 
doors;  and  but  a  little  light  from 
these  entered  the  eye  of  hope;  yet  a 
little  light  did  for  a  time  reach  our 
anxious  hearts.  One  of  our  company 
had  the  fortune  on  his  capture  to  re- 
tain in  his  dress  an  old  but  substan- 
tial pocket-knife.  After  counting  for 
days  our  feeble  hopes  of  escape  from 
our  dire  imprisonment,  we  concluded 
to  center  our  hopes  upon  the  edge  and 
strength  of  the  old  knife — a  precious 

306 


of  an 


Ammran   8>?a   (Eapiatn 


instrument  now  in  all  our  eyes.  Se- 
lecting a  side  door  to  our  dark  abode, 
we  cut  carefully  and  at  guarded  hours 
channels  or  grooves  around  a  panel- 
shaped  piece  large  enough  to  admit  a 
man's  body.  The  grooves  were  finally 
cut  through,  and  all  our  hopes  were 
on  tip-toe  in  silence  and  in  watchings. 
But  unfortunately,  by  some  heavy 
jar,  the  separated  panel-piece  slipped 
our  temporary  fastenings  and  fell 
back  upon  the  dungeon  floor  with  a 
loud  noise  that  alarmed  our  keepers 
and  revealed  our  plot.  But  had  this 
mischance  not  occurred  our  hope  of 
escape  would  have  been  exceedingly 
small  since  the  dungeon  was  in  the 
center  of  a  strong  and  guarded  forti- 
fication. 

Held  Prisoner  by  Portugese 
Four  Months  on  a  Frigate 

The  authorities  now  took  us  to  the 
river  and  put  us  on  board  a  frigate 
lying  near  by  the  place  and  where 
we  were  much  more  uncomfortable 
than  in  the  gloomy  old  dungeon.  We 
were  thrust  into  the  frigate's  hold 
where  the  confined  air  was  well  nigh 
as  hot  as  in  an  oven.  Yet  on  the  fol- 
lowing day  we  were  allowed  our 
choice  to  remain  in  the  hold  or  to 
come  on  deck  and  work.  We  were 
unwilling  to  toil  as  slaves  under  task- 
masters beneath  a  broiling  sun. 
Albeit  our  bodies  might  have  been 
more  comfortable  in  the  breezes  on 
the  frigate's  deck  and  drenched  with 
perspiration,  our  spirits  were  yet  too 
proud.  We  endured  the  roasting 
heat  of  the  hold  for  about  a  week 
when,  fearing  the  worst  for  our 
health,  we  consented  to  work  on  deck. 
We  were  thus  painfully  imprisoned 
on  board  this  frigate  for  nearly  four 
months — and  long  months  they  were 
as  one  may  imagine. 

A  couple  of  Portuguese  vessels 
were  now  about  to  sail  for  Lisbon. 
As  one  of  the  lieutenants  of  the  frig- 
ate, John  George,  a  Portuguese,  could 
speak  good  English,  we  prevailed  on 
him  to  act  as  our  petitioner  to  the 
governor  of  the  place  to  send  us  to 

307 


Lisbon.  Our  petition  was  successful. 
The  governor  sent  us  the  following 
reply:  "I  do  not  wish  to  be  troubled 
with  you  longer ;  I  shall  send  you  out 
of  the  river  by  the  first  opportunity." 
Shortly  seven  of  us  were  sent  on 
board  the  "Grand  Maranham,"  a 
large  ship  carrying  twenty-two  guns 
and  having  on  board,  with  crew  and 
soldiers,  about  one  hundred  men,  all 
Portuguese.  We  sailed  from  the 
mouth  of  the  Amazon  in  November. 
The  ship  being  a  dull  sailer  and  suf- 
fering now  with  calms  and  now  with 
adverse  winds,  we  had  a  very  hard 
passage  that  occupied  about  one  hun- 
dred and  thirty  days  whereas  an  ordi- 
nary passage  numbered  about  fifty 
days.  On  account  of  the  length  of 
the  voyage  we  suffered  severely  both 
for  water  and  provisions.  For  forty 
days  I  had  but  a  pint  of  water  per  day 
and  a  little  farina  meal  made  of  the 
cassada  root  found  in  South  America. 
Indeed  I  had  no  meat  or  bread  during 
the  whole  voyage. 

Setting  Sail  for  Portugal 
with  a  Superstitious  Crew 

On  account  of  the  adversities  and 
privations  of  our  passage  the  super- 
stitious Portuguese,  being  devoted 
but  ignorant  Catholics,  imbibed  the 
idea  that  the  misfortunes  of  the  voy- 
age were  ascribable  to  the  presence  of 
heretics  or  Protestants  as  some  of  us 
were.  Upon  this  matters  came  well- 
nigh  assuming  a  serious  form.  They 
vowed  if  we  had  not  a  favorable  wipd 
by  a  given  day  they  would  cast  all  the 
heretics  after  the  ill-fated  Jonah. 
They  were  in  earnest  in  their  vow  and 
threat.  We  therefore  made  prepara- 
tions for  such  an  event  by  securing 
and  concealing  slung  shot  and  other 
means  of  defense  and  offense,  re- 
solved to  give  the  Catholic  faith  a  lit- 
tle of  the  ring  of  Peter's  sword  and 
make  the  triumph  of  that  faith  as  dif- 
ficult as  possible.  But  propitious 
winds  prevented  an  encounter. 

Our  voyage  had  various  discom- 
forts. All  on  board  suffered  from 
the  filth  and  vermin  abounding  in  the 


nf  31mmtafj  Sjnlmos — 10m  17 S2 


old  ship.  In  most  cases  there  was 
neither  ability  nor  disposition  to  avoid 
the  contamination.  My  single  and 
scanty  suit  worn  in  the  smothering 
dungeon  and  on  board  the  old  frigate 
during  the  long  and  laborious  months 
of  my  imprisonment  had  fairly  earned 
a  discharge;  so  on  the  voyage  I  was 
presented  with  a  little  refuse  canvas 
and  duck  out  of  which  I  made,  after 
no  Parisian  pattern,  a  duck  shirt, 
duck  pantaloons  and  a  canvas  cap — 
one  suit  only  and  pressed  by  my  bones 
night  and  day.  My  compact  ward- 
robe soon  had  other  claimants  whose 
demands  became  unpleasant.  I  have 
pulled  off  my  duck  shirt,  picked  off  a 
score  or  more  of  lusty,  healthy,  hun- 
gry vermin,  and  again  donned  the 
apparel  as  if  new.  Thus  we  had 
more  companions  and  faster  friend- 
ships than  we  were  pleased  with. 

Nearing  the  coast  of  Portugal  we 
fell  in  with  an  American  vessel  from 
which  we  obtained  a  supply  of  water. 
Words  cannot  describe  the  relief.  It 
was  a  luxury  past  description  to  once 
more  press  to  our  lips  as  much  water 
as  we  desired  to  drink;  and  we  did 
drink  copiously  and  thankfully.  The 
happiness  of  that  hour  cannot  be  for- 
gotten. 

Our  circumstances  made  it  expedi- 
ent to  land  at  St.  Ubes.  We  reached 
the  port  in  March,  and  it  was  yet  cold 
on  the  coast.  The  American  consul 
at  once  sent  us  to  Lisbon,  which  was 
eighteen  miles  distant;  but  we  were 
obliged  to  go  on  foot.  I  had  no  shoes 
and  no  coat;  but  I  still  had  more  or 
less  of  the  volunteer  body  guard  from 
the  old  ship  with  their  biting  friend- 
ships. 

I  remember  somewhat  of  the  aspect 
of  the  country  as  I  trudged  barefoot 
and  coatless  from  St.  Ubes  to  Lisbon. 
The  orange  trees  had  dropped  their 
foliage  and  yet  were  full  of  fruit,  thus 
presenting  quite  a  striking  appear- 
ance. I  bought  of  an  old  lady  an 
apron-full  or  near  a  peck  of  excellent 
oranges  for  a  piece  worth  about  two 
cents.  The  grape  vines  had  not  yet 
started.  It  was  now  the  spring  of 


1 80 1.  I  had  been  from  home  more 
than  a  year  and  had  shared  more  for- 
tunes than  I  had  counted  for  on  my 
chart  of  departure. 

Homeward  Bound  with  Colonel 
David  Humphreys  from  Spain 

In  Lisbon  I  found  the  ship  "Perse- 
verance" of  New  York,  belonging  to 
Isaac  Wright,  Esquire,  the  well- 
known  proprietor  of  a  line  of  ships 
running  to  Liverpool,  called  the  Black 
Ball  Line. 

The  "Perseverance"  was  com- 
manded by  Captain  Caleb  Cogswell,  a 
worthy  Quaker,  who  exemplified  his 
friendly  faith  by  offering  me  my  pas- 
sage to  the  United  States.  I  was 
happy  in  accepting  his  generous  offer. 
Among  Captain  Cogswell's  crew  were 
English,  Irish,  Americans  and  one 
Dane.  My  destitute  condition  was 
only  too  apparent  to  all  in  my  dress; 
yet  no  one  of  the  crew,  except  the 
Dane,  named  Hanse,  showed  me  sub- 
stantial sympathy  by  offering  me  even 
the  loan  of  a  coat.  On  learning  my 
fortunes,  Hanse  at  once  pointed  to  his 
chest  and  said:  "There  is  my  chest 
and  clothes ;  you  are  just  as  welcome 
as  myself."  I  shall  never  forget 
Hanse.  Pulling  off  my  duck  shirt 
and  pants,  my  right  to  which  had 
been  so  long  and  vigorously  disputed 
by  the  vermin,  and  throwing  them 
overboard,  I  drew  upon  the  open 
chest  of  friend  Hanse.  Finally  the 
captain  and  mate  added  to  my  ward- 
robe by  a  gift  of  some  of  their  old 
clothes  that  I  received  not  unthank- 
fully. 

Among  the  passengers  on  board 
the  "Perseverance"  was  the  American 
minister  to  Spain,  Colonel  David 
Humphreys,  who,  with  his  wife,  was 
now  returning  to  this  country.  The 
colonel  had  on  board  a  hundred 
merino  sheep  that  he  was  transport- 
ing to  the  United  States :  by  the  way, 
I  think  they  were  the  first  sheep  of 
this  kind  introduced  into  our  country. 
Finding  that  I  was  reared  on  a  farm, 
the  colonel  engaged  me  to  take  care 
of  the  sheep  on  the  passage;  for  my 

308 


Engages  of  an   (8H&   Ammran 


(Eaptam 


services  he  gave  me  two  doubloons, 
not  a  small  sum  for  a  man  in  charity 
clothes  and  nothing  in  the  pockets. 

A  passage  of  forty  days  brought  us 
to  New  York.  On  closing  up  the 
voyage,  my  true  friend  Hanse,  receiv- 
ing his  wages,  divided  the  sum  in  his 
hands  and  generously  offered  me  the 
half.  His  kindness  and  liberality 
touched  my  heart,  but  I  was  too  hon- 
orable to  accept  the  offer,  especially 
as  I  could  now  jingle  a  couple  of 
doubloons.  Soon  after  this  friend 
Hanse  shipped  in  a  brig  bound  to 
Demerara,  where  he  died  with  yellow 
fever;  peace  to  his  ashes  and  honor 
to  his  memory.  I  immediately  went 
to  Berne  (now  Knox),  Albany 
County,  New  York,  where  I  remained 
for  about  two  months. 

Still  looking  hopefully  toward  "a 
life  on  the  ocean  wave,"  notwith- 
standing the  ill  augury  of  my  first 
voyage,  I  returned  to  New  York 
where  I  again  shipped  under  my  old 
commander,  Captain  Barker,  who 
had  also  safely  escaped  from  Brazil. 
We  were  now  in  the  schooner 
"Lively"  bound  to  the  West  Indies. 
This  was  a  very  pleasant  voyage ;  we 
visited  Nevis,  St.  Kitts  and  St.  Eusta- 
tia.  We  returned  to  New  York  in 
September,  1801.  I  remained  in  New 
York  till  December;  meanwhile  I 
saw  no  one  that  I  knew. 

On  a  Whaling  and  Sealing 
Voyage  to  South  Pacific  Ocean 

Early  in  December  I  again  shipped 
under  Captain  Barker,  now  having 
command  of  the  ship  "Cayuga."  be- 
longing to  the  firm  of  Hoyt  &  Tom. 
We  were  bound  into  the  South  Pacific 
Ocean  on  a  whaling  and  sealing  voy- 
age. Numerous  and  trying  adven- 
tures now  awaited  me  before  T  should 
again  reach  my  home.  We  ran  up 
and  down  the  coast  of  Peru  several 
times  in  search  of  sperm  whale:  in 
the  space  of  a  year  and  a  half  we  took 
about  one  thousand  barrels  of  sperm 
oil. 

We  ran  into  the  river  Tumbez  on 
the  coast  of  Peru  to  obtain  a  recruit 


of  wood  and  water.  In  our  boats  we 
visited  the  city  of  Tumbez.  We  also 
found  here  the  English  ship  "Tom," 
whose  captain  had  his  wife  with  him, 
a  Spanish  lady  that  he  had  married  at 
Gibraltar,  who  could  readily  speak 
both  English  and  Spanish  and  was 
therefore  our  ready  interpreter.  Com- 
ing down  one  day  from  the  city  to  the 
mouth  of  the  river  we  chanced  to 
have  in  our  boat  this  captain  and  his 
wife  and  also  a  wealthy  old  planter 
going  down  to  visit  his  estate  near  the 
river  mouth. 

The  coast  of  Peru  was  very  attract- 
ive. I  cannot  forget  the  many  pleas- 
ant views  that  opened  to  us  whenever 
we  approached  the  shore.  I  have 
seen  noble  deer  come  boldly  down  to 
the  beach  and  look  off  with  the  ut- 
most unconcern  upon  us  as  if  we  had 
no  power  or  disposition  to  disturb 
them. 

Ashore  on  the  Islands 

"  Exactly  Under  the  Equator  " 

We  took  occasion  to  visit  the  Gal- 
lapagos  Islands  some  six  hundred  and 
fifty  miles  from  the  continent  and 
almost  exactly  under  the  equator. 
The  islands  are  very  rich.  The 
prickly  pear  trees  here  are  noble; 
some  of  them  are  twenty-five  or  thirty 
feet  high  with  trunks  as  large  as  a 
man's  body.  We  could  supply  our- 
selves abundantly  with  fish  and  flesh 
of  the  best  quality.  The  water  at 
times  was  literally  alive  with  bonitos, 
a  fish  nearly  as  large  as  horse  mack- 
erel. There  was  also  an  abundance 
of  albicore,  a  fish  approaching  the 
size  of  a  porpoise  and  very  delicate; 
the  catching  of  these  with  huge  hooks 
and  nooses  was  rare  sport.  At  any 
time  numbers  of  green  turtle  were  in 
sight.  But  we  cared  little  for  bon- 
itos, albicore  and  green  turtle  in  com- 
parison with  the  turpin  on  the  island. 
These  are  a  thick  heavy  land  turtle 
that  never  enter  the  sea.  Their  meat 
is  very  excellent;  their  tallow  is  a 
luxury  and  is  as  yellow  as  butter ; 
their  eggs  too  are  a  great  delicacy. 
Great  numbers  of  these  turpin  might 


0f  Sferomalj 


—  Inm  17  S2 


be  seen  wandering  beneath  the  groves 
of  prickly  pear  waiting  for  the  winds 
to  shake  down  the  fruit  for  their  pal- 
ates. 

Our  ship  at  last  became  leaky  and 
we  were  compelled  to  put  into  Payta. 
Here  the  "Cayuga"  was  examined 
and  finally  condemned  as  unsea- 
worthy.  We  could  only  sell  her  and 
close  up  our  voyage,  but  in  this  we 
were  hindered  by  various  causes  for 
-nearly  three  months. 

I  now  shipped  on  board  of  another 
whaler,  the  "Cold  Spring  of  London," 
under  Captain  Dunn,  and  cruised 
again  in  the  South  Pacific.  In  about 
eleven  months  we  took  near  two  thou- 
sand barrels  of  sperm  oil.  We  also 
visited  the  Gallapagos  and  laid  in  a 
supply  of  turpin,  putting  some  of 
them  in  the  hold  on  the  top  of  our 
cargo.  I  recollect  that  some  six 
months  after  we  had  taken  these  on 
board,  when  off  Cape  Horn,  the  car- 
penter, having  occasion  to  go  to  the 
bottom  of  the  pump  well  there  found 
one  of  these  turpin  still  alive,  having 
crept  over  the  top  and  fallen  thus 
from  our  sight;  this  evidenced  their 
capability  of  enduring  hunger  and 
thirst.  We  took  our  homeward  voy- 
age by  the  way  of  St.  Helena,  where 
we  expected  to  obtain  a  convoy  to 
London,  as  the  English  were  at  this 
time  at  war  with  France  and  Spain. 
It  was  now  1804,  and  my  whaling 
cruises  had  occupied  some  two  and  a 
half  years. 

Captured  by  the  French 
Privateers  off  St.  Helena 

On  nearing  St.  Helena  we  discov- 
ered a  sail  in  shore;  but  suspecting 
no  danger  we  approached  the  vessel 
and  spoke  her.  Her  character  was  at 
once  revealed.  She  was  the  "Bo- 
logna," a  French  privateer,  mounting 
thirty-six  guns  and  carrying  more 
than  a  hundred  men.  We  were  her 
victim.  It  was  now  June,  1804. 
She  took  possession  of  us  at  about 
dark.  Taking  us  on  board  the  "Bo- 
logna" our  ship  was  instantly  sent  off 
as  a  prize.  We  were  kept  on  board 


the  privateer,  however,  only  till  the 
next  day,  when  we  were  put  into  a 
boat  and  set  adrift.  Being  only  fif- 
teen miles  from  the  island  we  reached 
the  shore  in  safety.  Again  I  found 
myself  in  a  foreign  land,  cast  out, 
alone  and  destitute,  after  many  toils 
and  an  absence  from  home  of  two  and 
a  half  years.  But  severe  trials  were 
before  me.  I  had  now  only  the 
clothes  that  were  upon  my  back. 

Reaching  the  port  of  St.  Helena  I 
found  no  American  consul  and  no 
American  vessel ;  it  was  therefore  a 
dark  day  for  me.  The  rights  of  sail- 
ors at  this  time  were  not  properly  re- 
spected, and  unhappily  for  me,  I  had 
now  lost  my  protection  papers.  The 
best  that  I  could  do  was  to  ship  on 
board  an  English  merchantman,  the 
"Fame,"  commanded  by  one  Captain 
Baker.  But  before  the  "Fame"  was 
ready  to  sail  my  destination  was  sadly 
changed. 

I  was  seized  and  pressed  on  board 
the  English  sixty-four-gun  ship, 
"Trident."  This  occurred  July  2, 
1804.  The  "Trident,"  in  fact,  mount- 
ed about  seventy  guns  and  was  com- 
manded by  Admiral  Renier  and  bore 
his  flag.  When  taken  on  board  the 
"Trident"  I  was  called  up  for  exami- 
nation by  the  first  lieutenant.  I  at 
once  said :  "I  am  an  American."  He 
responded:  "Well,  we  will  make  an 
Englishman  of  you."  I  answered: 
"No,  sir ;  you  will  never  do  that." 

I  remained  in  the  "Trident"  but  a 
short  time  when  I  was  transferred  to 
the  sixty-four-gun  ship  "Athenian." 
We  shortly  sailed  in  company  with 
the  "Trident"  and  the  frigate  "Medi- 
ator" as  a  convoy  to  forty  East  India- 
men  for  the  English  Channel.  We 
arrived  at  Dover  in  early  autumn, 
when  the  Indiamen  ran  on  their  way 
while  the  "Athenian"  ran  back  into 
Portsmouth  to  be  hauled  into  the 
naval  dock  for  repairs.  From  Ports- 
mouth I  wrote  to  the  American  consul 
at  London  seeking  his  interposition 
for  my  release.  He  obtained  an 
order  for  my  discharge,  but  in  the 
teeth  of  right  my  claim  was  disre- 

JIO 


nf  an   (SH&   Am^riran 


(Eaptam 


garded.  I  now  sent  letters  to  my  kin- 
dred and  friends  in  America  to  pro- 
cure papers  in  evidence  of  my  right. 

Going  to  Assistance  of 
Lord  Nelson  at  Trafalgar 

I  was  at  last  pressed  on  board  the 
seventy-four-gun  ship,  "Saturn,"  now 
lying  at  Spit  Head  ready  for  sea,  and 
appointed  to  join  the  fleet  under  Lord 
Nelson.  The  wind  detained  us. 
These  winds  blew  in  mercy  to  many 
on  board  the  "Saturn,"  else  we  should 
have  been  with  Lord  Nelson  off  Tra- 
falgar in  that  memorable  naval  action 
that  cost  so  much  blood,  and  where 
Nelson  himself  fell  "On  the  field  of 
his  fame  fresh  and  gory."  We  were 
unable  to  reach  the  scene  till  the  bat- 
tle had  passed.  The  "Saturn"  also 
conveyed  six  or  eight  vessels  loaded 
with  naval  stores. 

In  passing  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar 
the  French  and  Spanish  gun  boats 
from  the  shore  ran  out  and  attempted 
the  seizure  of  one  of  our  transports. 
The  attempt  was  well-nigh  successful 
but  the  wind  springing  up  the  "Sat- 
urn" hastened  to  the  rescue  and  beat 
back  the  assailants.  Quite  an  en- 
gagement now  followed.  The  fort  at 
Cabarena  Point  opened  its  fire  in  sup- 
port of  the  shots  from  the  gun  boats. 
For  about  an  hour  and  a  half  powder 
was  burnt  freely  and  the  heavy  iron 
hail  flew  merrily.  In  the  skirmish  I 
was  stationed  as  captain  of  a  gun  on 
the  lower  deck.  The  "Saturn"  played 
her  part  well  and  won  the  upper  hand. 
Satisfying  our  opponents  of  our  su- 
periority and  taking  proper  care  of 
our  transports  .we  ran  into  the  an- 
chorage at  Gibraltar  and  landed  our 
naval  supplies. 

We  next  proceeded  up  the  Medi- 
terranean to  the  Spanish  port  of  Car- 
thagena  where  we  joined  other  naval 
vessels  in  the  blockade  of  that  place. 
Here  we  remained  for  several  months. 
Finally  we  were  informed  that  Je- 
rome Buonaparte,  Admiral  of  the 
French  fleet,  with  a  number  of  ships, 
had  left  Brest.  We  knew  not  his  des- 
tination ;  he  sailed,  however,  for  the 

3" 


West  Indies.  Our  squadron  was  now 
ordered  off  the  blockade  of  Cartha- 
gena  to  Gibraltar. 

We  were  ordered  from  Gibraltar  to 
Cadiz  to  join  Lord  Collingwood  in  the 
blockade  of  that  port.  The  blockad- 
ing squadron  numbered  about  twenty 
ships  of  the  line.  Here  we  continued 
in  the  "Saturn"  for  about  two  and  a 
half  years,  occasionally  running  down 
to  Gibraltar  for  supplies.  But  in  the 
latter  part  of  1806  we  ran  down  to 
Gibraltar  to  refit  our  ship  and  receive 
stores  for  another  six  months.  Dur- 
ing this  time  a  few  incidents  occurred 
of  the  nature  of  episodes  in  my  weary 
impressment. 

In  Service  of  Lord  Collingwood 
During  Blockade  of  Cadiz 

From  my  first  impressment,  and  es- 
pecially after  my  imprisonment  on 
board  the  "Saturn"  I  had  been  medi- 
tating plans  and  watching  for  oppor- 
tunities to  fly  from  the  grasp  of  my 
oppressors.  In  one  way  and  another 
during  the  past  two  years  I  had 
earned  about  seven  guineas  which  I 
held  as  a  shot  in  the  locker.  These 
guineas  I  closely  wound  in  my  neck- 
cloth to  have  them  at  hand  when  an 
opportunity  for  escape  should  appear. 

We  took  in  water  on  the  African 
side  of  the  Straits  at  Tetuan  Bay. 
While  thus  engaged  I  strolled  from 
our  party  a  little  and  then  attempted 
concealment  and  flight,  taking  refuge 
in  a  vast  field  of  growing  wheat.  It 
happened,  however,  that  the  sentinels 
stationed  on  the  margin  of  the  field  to 
protect  it  discovered  me  by  moving 
grain.  I  was  first  saluted  with  stones ; 
but  they  soon  found  that  I  was  no 
brute  and  desisted.  I  succeeded  in 
conveying  to  one  sentinel  my  charac- 
ter and  situation.  He  said  to  me :  "If 
you  escape  here  you  must  turn  Turk." 
I  replied:  "I  don't  care  what  I  turn 
into  if  I  can  only  get  away  from  my 
impressment  in  the  man-of-war."  I 
offered  him  two  guineas  to  secrete  me 
in.  the  grain  and  then  assist  me  in 
reaching  Centa  Point  opposite  Gibral- 
tar. He  dared  not  accept  the  offer. 


nf  Sfmmtal? 


—  Inm  17&2 


I  was  obliged  to  return  to  the  "Sat- 
urn's" company,  only  glad  that  my 
scheme  was  not  known  to  the  officers. 

I  now  had  the  misfortune  to  suffer 
my  patriotism  to  overcome  my  pa- 
tience. While  returning  to  Gibraltar, 
all  hands  having  been  treated  to  a 
drop  for  the  cheering  of  the  spirits,  I 
was  at  my  station  in  the  main-top 
with  a  man  named  Silsby.  As  a 
Moorish  galley  passed  us  urged  on  by 
slaves  chained  to  their  oars  1  re- 
marked to  Silsby: 

"How  would  you  like  to  be  on  that 
craft?" 

"Not  at  all,"  said  he. 

"It  would  be  as  proper  for  you  to 
be  there  as  it  is  for  me  to  be  here,"  I 
responded. 

"Pshaw,"  said  he,  "you  have  as 
much  right  to  be  here  as  I  have ;  you 
are  no  American,  but  some  noble- 
man's bastard  or  else  a  runaway." 

This  was  a  word  too  much.  ?  drew 
my  fist  and  dealt  him  a  blow  between 
the  eyes  that  laid  him  horizontally 
with  a  bloody  nose.  The  fray  was 
too  open.  We  both  were  taken  be- 
low, had  our  feet  ironed,  were  laid  on 
our  backs  and  had  our  ankles  -strung 
on  the  iron  rod  arranged  for  the  safe 
confinement  of  transgressors.  In 
this  uneasy  attitude,  strung  like  her- 
ring on  the  deck,  we  lay  for  three 
days  consoling  ourselves  with  bread 
and  the  confident  expectation  of  a 
sound  flogging.  In  the  meantime 
four  other  disobedients  were  added  to 
the  iron  rod.  On  the  fourth  day  of 
our  confinement,  and  it  was  the  fourth 
of  July,  the  criminal  crew  were  or- 
dered up  to  receive  their  penal  lashes. 
It  being  Independence  Day  my  spirit 
was  stirred  within  me.  I  managed 
to  scribble  a  note  addressed  to  the 
captain  to  be  handed  to  him  in  case  1 
should  be  sentenced  to  be  flogged. 
The  note  was  to  the  effect  that  "if  I 
should  be  flogged  for  the  sudden  and 
disorderly  ebullition  of  my  national 
and  manly  pride  I  would  never  lift  a 
hand  in  the  British  service,  be  the 
consequences  what  they  might." 

Several   received   their  two   dozen 


each,  and,  after  the  blood  started 
freely,  Silsby  and  myself  were  re- 
served to  the  last ;  this  gave  us  a  little 
hope.  Silsby  was  brought  forward 
and  addressed:  "This  is  the  third 
time  you  have  been  put  in  irons ;  once 
for  drunkenness ;  once  for  making 
disturbance,  and  now  for  quarreling 
You  are  pardoned  this  time,  but  if 
ever  caught  in  disobedience  again, 
you  shall  be  paid  for  old  accounts  and 
new."  I  was  addressed  in  substance 
as  follows :  "This  is  your  first  misde- 
meanor; beware  of  the  second;  you 
are  also  pardoned." 

An  Attempt  to  Escape  from 
the  English  at  Gibraltar 

I  was  exceedingly  uneasy.  I  hated 
the  English  and  utterly  loathed  their 
service.  My  unjust  impressment 
chafed  my  free  spirit  and  made  me 
ready  to  accept  almost  any  hazard  for 
my  freedom.  While  lying  off  Gibral- 
tar at  this  time  I  attempted  an  escape 
by  swimming.  Some  of  the  sailors 
were  perfectly  willing  to  wink  at  my 
endeavor,  on  the  principle  of  dealing 
as  they  would  be  dealt  by.  On  a 
chosen  night  I  secretly  slipped  out  of 
a  forward  port  hole  and  let  myself 
down  into  the  sea.  As  I  swam  past 
the  ship,  the  man  in  the  yawl  along- 
side whispered  an  inquiry  after  my 
plan.  In  a  word  I  informed  him, 
when,  reaching  his  hand  and  grasp- 
ing mine,  he  said :  "God  bless  you  ;  I 
hope  you  will  succeed."  The  "Sat- 
urn" lay  about  two  miles  from  the 
shore  and  a  heavy  current  was  setting 
past  her  and  making  directly  for  the 
land  and  I  supposed  ran  near  the 
shore  which  gave  me  my  hope  of  suc- 
cess. I  was  deceived;  the  stream 
or  tide  very  soon  changed  its  direction 
and  ran  up  the  sea.  I  found  that 
it  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  reach 
the  land  across  so  swift  a  tide  and  that 
I  should  inevitably  be  swept  by  the 
waters  far  away  into  the  Mediterra- 
nean to  perish.  Thus  the  path  to  my 
freedom  was  confronted  by  certain 
death.  My  skill  in  swimming  was 

3" 


0f  an 


Ameriratt 


(Eaptam 


not  small,  and  it  was  taxed  to  the  ut- 
most. By  taking  advantage  of  an 
eddy  that  just  now  formed,  and  I 
think  it  was  providential,  setting  the 
waters  around  me  back  towards  the 
"Saturn,"  I  made  exertions  to  re- 
turn. Using  my  best  skill  and 
strength  favored  by  the  eddy  I  at  last 
succeeded  in  reaching  the  launch  that 
was  trailing  at  the  "Saturn's"  stern. 
I  caught  the  cable  of  the  launch  and 
here  rested  a  moment  to  recover  my- 
self and  to  plan  for  the  future.  I  then 
slipped  back  on  the  cable,  caught  the 
bows  of  the  launch  and  scrambled 
into  her. 

What  now  should  I  do?  How 
could  I  get  on  board  the  "Saturn" 
again  without  being  detected?  Ne- 
cessity is  a  mother.  Concealed  by  the 
darkness  I  carefully  hauled  the  launch 
up  under  the  ship's  stern  and  to  the 
larboard  stern  port  hole  of  the  lowef 
deck.  The  port  hole  was  but  little 
above  the  launch  and  was  opened; 
and  it  opened  by  one-half  downward. 
Creeping  up  I  perched  myself  here 
with  no  little  anxiety.  -The  sentry  on 
the  lower  deck  was  directly  before 
me  pacing  his  beat  fore  and  aft  and 
coming  almost  up  to  the  port  hole.  I 
watched  him  and  observed  that  he 
constantly  looked  straight  forward 
and  downward  as  if  absorbed  in 
thought,  and  when  wheeling  invaria- 
bly turned  on  his  left.  I  at  once  saw 
my  only  chance.  As  he  wheeled  to 
march  from  me  I  slipped  through  the 
port  hole  and  tripping  with  my  bare 
feet  softly  up  behind  him  followed 
him  on  tip-toe  the  length  of  his  beat 
and  then,  gliding  on  the  right  as  he 
wheeled  on  his  left,  slid  forward  into 
darkness  and  noiselessly  hastened  to 
the  hammocks  among  the  sailors. 
My  comrades  were  astonished.  They 
had  measured  my  chances  with  the 
tide  and  felt  assured  that  I  could 
never  return  to  the  ship.  They  almost 
believed  me  a  ghost  and  looked  upon 
my  adventures  as  partaking  of  the 
marvelous. 

313 


An  American's  Appeal  to  His 
Country  to  Secure  His  Freedom 

On  returning  from  Gibraltar  to  re- 
sume our  station  in  the  blockading 
squadron  off  Cadiz,  while  standing  in 
towards  the  squadron,  the  "Saturn" 
struck  a  reef  and  was  seriously  dam- 
aged. All  our  pumps  were  brought 
into  play  and  we  hastened  back  to 
Gibraltar.  The  ship  was  to  be  un- 
loaded and  hauled  out  immediately, 
and  a  hard  job  this  was;  we  toiled 
like  slaves.  Her  keel  and  bottom 
were  finally  repaired.  During  this 
time  we  were  put  on  board  the  large 
Spanish  seventy-four-gun  ship,  "St. 
John,"  taken  by  Lord  Nelson  and 
now  used  as  a  hulk.  When  the  "Sat- 
urn" was  made  seaworthy  again  she 
was  ordered  to  England  for  a  more 
thorough  overhaul.  We  immediately 
proceeded  to  Portsmouth  and  the  ship 
was  taken  into  the  naval  dock. 

I  now  applied  by  letter  the  second 
time  to  the  American  consul  at  Lon- 
don for  my  discharge  from  the  Brit- 
ish service  into  which  I  had  been  un- 
justly impressed.  I  had  managed  to 
write  to  my  kindred  and  friends  in 
the  United  States  at  different  times 
and  particularly  while  at  Gibraltar, 
informing  them  of  my  impressment 
and  praying  them  to  procure  suitable 
papers  in  my  behalf  and  send  them 
to  our  consul  at  London.  I  knew 
they  had  faithfully  attended  to  this 
brotherly  duty  and  was  aware  that  the 
consul  had  now  many  documents  in 
my  favor.  The  consul  was  the  Hon- 
orable William  Lyman,  formerly  of 
Hartford,  Connecticut,  and  I  felt 
assured  that  he  would  act  in  my  be- 
half. I  received  no  immediate  re- 
sponse. 

When  I  had  been  to  Portsmouth 
about  six  weeks  I  received  a  letter 
from  the  consul  stating  that  applica- 
tion had  been  made  to  the  Lords' 
Commissioners  for  the  Admiralty  for 
my  discharge,  and  an  answer  had 
been  returned  that  my  papers  were 
insufficient.  I  was  disappointed.  I 
was  indignant.  I  was  thoroughly 


0f 


Storn  1782 


mad.  My  whole  blood  was  hot.  The 
legal  flaw  in  my  papers,  it  appears, 
was  in  the  fact  that  they  had  not  been 
ceremoniously  endorsed  by  a  regular 
custom-house  officer — a  mere  trifle 
that  gave  occasion  for  a  legal  techni- 
cality that  answered  for  the  crown- 
serving  lawyer  to  hang  his  crown- 
pleasing  objection  on.  Thus  per- 
sistently denied  my  rights  and  having 
suffered  so  long  and  so  much  I  was 
well-nigh  exasperated.  I  now  raised 
my  right  hand  and  using  strong 
words  that  I  care  not  to  repeat,  swore 
strongly  that  I  would  never  work 
more  for  the  British  crown.  I  meant 
what  I  said — bating  the  wickedness 
of  my  passionate  words ;  and  I  was  as 
good  as  my  vow.  Affairs  were  now 
to  take  some  shape  for  the  better  or 
the  worse. 

Revolt  Against  Unjust 
Impressment  in  British  Service 

It  was  now  Thursday  noon,  the 
fifth  of  November,  1806;  and  I  had 
been  in  this  dire  slavery  for  about  two 
years  and  a  half.  I  had  irrevocably 
determined  to  end  it.  Instead  of  go- 
ing to  work  in  the  afternoon,  I  said  to 
the  officer  of  the  deck  that  I  wished 
to  see  the  first  lieutenant,  Mr.  Greg- 
ory Grant.  My  request  was  granted. 
Showing  the  lieutenant  certain  papers 
that  I  had  received  from  Stonington 
my  native  town,  signed  by  the  select- 
men of  the  town,  I  said:  "Mr.  Grant, 
here  are  my  papers  from  my  native 
town  in  the  United  States,  certifying 
my  American  birth  and  rights.  I 
have  received  similar  papers  properly 
endorsed  at  five  different  times ;  some 
of  these  papers  have  been  laid  before 
the  authorities  by  our  consul ;  yet  I 
am  denied  my  rights.  I  ought  to  be 
discharged.  And  if  I  am  not  set  at 
liberty  I  am  resolved  never  more  to 
work  for  the  British  crown,  let  the 
consequences  be  what  they  may." 
My  language  was  bold  and  strong, 
but  I  spoke  as  I  felt.  The  lieutenant 
replied :  "It  is  my  duty  to  take  notice 
of  such  language  as  this  and  to  pun- 
ish you  for  it.  Should  I  do  my  duty 


I  should  put  you  in  irons  and  send 
you  on  board  the  'Royal  William'  out 
at  Spit  Head." 

The  "Royal  William"  was  now  a 
receiving  ship.  She  was  more  than  a 
hundred  years  old  and  was  the  first 
three-decker  ever  built  by  the  English 
government. 

Manifestly  the  lieutenant  felt  some- 
what lenient  towards  me  and  so  did 
not  act  up  to  the  extent  of  his  author- 
ity. He  was  a  Scotchman  and  must 
naturally  have  felt  a  respect  for  a 
lover  of  freedom,  who  was  suffering 
the  privation  of  his  dearest  rights. 
He  advised  me  to  write  further  to  our 
consul.  I  was  excused  from  work 
for  the  remainder  of  the  day  and  also 
for  Friday  and  Saturday,  which  pre- 
vented a  trial  of  my  vow  on  board  the 
ship  by  violence. 

I  immediately  wrote  again  to  our 
consul  at  London,  stating  more  fully 
my  situation  and  my  just  rights.  I 
also  addressed  a  letter  to  America  to 
the  Honorable  James  Madison,  our 
secretary  of  state,  informing  him  of 
my  case  and  stating  that  my  Ameri- 
can papers  had  been  rejected  by  the 
English  authorities.  I  wrote  these 
letters  because  I  knew  not  what  might 
be  in  the  future,  though  I  had  now  re- 
solved to  try  the  experiment  of  help- 
ing myself.  Of  course  I  could  not 
wait  for  replies  to  these  letters. 

An  American  Ship  Assists 
in  Plight  from  Captivity 

At  this  time  we  were  on  board  a 
hulk,  as  the  "Saturn"  was  in  the  dock. 
On  Sunday  morning  I  approached  the 
lieutenant  to  ask,  as  some  others  had 
done  with  success,  for  leave  to  go  on 
shore.  Without  waiting  to  hear  my 
request  he  said:  "There  is  no  liberty 
for  you."  Modifying  my  first  pur- 
pose I  then  said:  "I  only  wish  to  go 
on  board  the  American  ship  'Med- 
ford.'"  The  "Medford"  was  from 
Boston  and  lay  but  a  little  distance 
from  the  hulk.  The  lieutenant  finally 
gave  consent  for  me  to  visit  the  "Med- 
ford" in  the  yawl  under  the  charge  of 
a  midshipman.  I  did  not  choose  to 

314 


nf  an 


Am*riran 


(Eaptain 


go  in  this  way.  I  was  looking  for  a 
loophole  in  the  direction  of  personal 
liberty. 

I  now  went  below  and  put  on  a 
second  suit  of  clothes  as  far  as  I  could 
without  having  the  duplicates  exposed 
to  sight.  While  thus  engaged  a 
sailor,  William  Coffin. knowing  my  re- 
solves and  sympathizing  with  me,  put 
his  hand  into  his  pocket  and  taking 
out  all  the  money  he  had — only  a  few 
pence — handed  it  to  me,  adding: 
""There,  that  will  help  you  a  little  in 
crossing  the  water;  luck  go  with 
you."  His  generosity  was  heartily 
received,  for  I  was  now  penniless,  not 
having  received  my  pay  for  service  in 
*he  "Saturn." 

It  was  now  noon.  Coming  on  deck 
I  began  to  study  how  I  might  reach 
the  shore  or  the  American  ship. 
There  were  wherries  skulling  about 
among  the  shipping  to  accommodate 
such  as  were  going  to  and  from  the 
shore  or  among  the  ships.  Acting  as 
if  I  had  full  permission,  when  the 
lieutenant  was  out  of  sight,  I  beck- 
oned a  wherry  alongside  of  the  hulk 
and  was  going  over  the  side  when  the 
sentry  on  that  side  of  the  ship  stopped 
me.  Just  at  this  moment,  however,  the 
sentry  on  the  other  side  of  the  deck' 
— from  an  imperfect  understanding 
of  the  interview  that  he  had  noticed 
between  the  lieutenant  and  myself,  or 
perhaps  from  sympathy  with  me — 
interposed  the  remark:  "I  heard  the 
lieutenant  give  him  permission  to  go 
on  board  the  "Medford."  Touched 
by  a  little  light  of  hope  I  now  slid  into 
the  wherry  and  was  skulled  to  the 
-"Medford."  Rarely  did  a  mortal 
ever  pay  for  so  short  a  voyage  more 
-gladly. 

It  was  a  hopeful  though  trembling 
moment  when  I  put  my  long  wander- 
ing and  long  imprisoned  feet  on  the 
deck  of  an  American  ship.  I  at  once 
formed  the  acquaintance  of  the  mate 
of  the  "Medford,"  Mr.  Goram  Cof- 
fin, of  Nantucket,  to  whom  I  fully  un- 
folded my  situation.  He  was  ready 
to  stand  by  me  as  a  brother.  On  in- 
. quiring  of  me,  "From  what  part  of 

3«S 


America  are  you?"  I  answered: 
"From  Stonington,  Connecticut." 
"Indeed,"  said  he,  "I  am  acquainted 
there!"  In  him  I  found  a  friend  in- 
deed. He  then  said:  "Come,  why 
not  escape  now?"  I  answered:  "I 
have  vowed  never  again  to  go  on 
board  a  British  man-of-war  alive." 
He  encouraged  my  vow.  I  added: 
"I  want  to  reach  London  and  see  our 
consul  myself.  But  how  shall  I  get 
there?  And  how  can  I  avoid  detec- 
tion on  the  way  and  keep  out  of  the 
clutches  of  press  gangs?  It  is  sev- 
enty miles  to  London  and  I  have  no 
money,  except  a  few  pence  given  me 
by  a  sailor."  He  took  from  his  pocket 
a  one-pound  note  and  extending  it  to 
me  said :  "There,  you  are  welcome  to 
that."  Heaven  bless  him!  He  was 
willing  to  help  a  poor  fugitive  from 
oppression. 

Fleeing  to  London  on  a 
Stage  Coach  in  1806 

Mr.  Coffin  now  took  me  on  shore 
and  we  began  to  plan  for  my  journey 
to  London.  We  finally  went  to  the 
stage  office  and  learned  that  the  regu- 
lar coach  would  leave  Portsmouth  for 
London  at  six  o'clock  in  the  evening 
and  that  a  passage  on  the  outside 
would  be  only  seventeen  shillings  and 
sixpence.  Of  course  expedition 
would  be  economy  and  the  most  open 
ride  would  be  the  least  suspicious.  In 
the  meantime  I  had  armed  myself 
with  two  good  stout  pocket-knives 
that  I  might  command  at  any  instant. 
I  was  not  to  be  returned  to  a  man-of- 
war  without  bloodshed,  for  liberty 
was  born  in  my  blood. 

We  retired  to  an  inn  and  talked 
openly  like  Englishmen  but  privately 
of  my  best  course  of  action.  At  six 
o'clock  the  stage  horn  blew  when  we 
hastened  to  the  office  where  I  paid  my 
fare  with  no  suspicious  money  and 
jumped  upon  the  coach  top.  Speak- 
ing loudly  so  as  to  be  heard  Mr.  Cof- 
fin called  Mr  John  Hix,  as  I  had  so 
registered  my  name  on  the  stage 
books,  and  bid  me  give  his  respects  to 
old  acquaintances,  giving  their  names 


af  iferomalj 


Stont  17  82, 


and  residences  in  London,  and  hoped 
that  I  should  find  my  kindred  and 
friends  in  health.  The  deception  was 
managed  artfully;  we  parted  like  old 
London  cronies. 

This  night,  the  eighth  of  Novem- 
ber, 1806,  for  its  anxieties,  its  hopes, 
its  fears,  its  long,  dark,  cold  hours, 
made  also  impressive  by  wind  and 
sleet,  has  a  marked  record  in  my 
memory.  That  seventy  miles  was 
traveled  wakefully  and  thoughtfully. 

On  the  rear  of  the  stage  was  sta- 
tioned a  soldier  as  a  guard.  Shortly 
after  starting  he  accosted  me :  "Well, 
shipmate,  what  craft  do  you  belong 
to?"  I  was  quick  to  answer:  "To 
the  man-of-war,  'Saturn.'"  We 
talked  freely;  I  told  of  sea  adven- 
tures ;  he  told  of  jolly  sailors  that  had 
rode  to  London.  No  suspicion  was 
awakened.  At  the  relief  stations  I 
was  merry  and  generous  and  so  far 
treated  the  driver  and  guard  as  to 
draw  my  purse  to  only  a  remaining 
sixpence  of  the  pound  appropriated  to 
my  journey.  I  studiously  kept  up 
every  appearance  and  profession  of 
loyalty  to  the  royal  realm,  lest  detec- 
tives should  scent  my  track.  Upon 
the  whole  we  were  a  merry  company, 
at  least,  outwardly.  There  rode  with 
us  two  soldiers,  lately  from  Buenos 
Ayres,  having  inherited  some  prop- 
erty, who  were  flush  with  money  and 
wine  and  song  and  cheering  story, 
and  thus  aided  to  relieve  the  dark, 
chill,  drearv  night.  I  studied  oppor- 
tunities to  make  large  English  profes- 
sions for  my  better  security.  As  we 
passed  near  Lord  Nelson's  country 
seat  and  some  one  pointed  in  its 
direction,  I  observed:  "Our  nation 
met  with  a  great  loss  in  Lord  Nel- 
son's death ;"  but  inwardly  I  was  glad 
he  was  dead  and  wished  half  the  na- 
tion dead  with  him. 

Homeward  Bound  Across 
Atlantic  a  Free  American  Citizen 

On  reaching  London,  as  it  was  ex- 
tremely muddy,  I  had  the  politeness 
to  help  a  lady  passenger  from  the 
coach  by  taking  her  in  my  arms  and 


landing  her  safely  on  the  sidewalk. 
Expressing  suitable  obligation  for  the 
favor  she  continued  by  asking  in  what 
direction  I  was  going.  I  told  her  I 
wished  to  find  the  Royal  Exchange 
and  inquired  how  I  might  find  it. 
She  directed  me  to  follow  the  street 
on  which  we  stood  till  I  reached  Lon- 
don Bridge  when  the  Royal  Ex- 
change would  be  full  in  sight.  So 
my  politeness  received  its  recompense. 
I  walked  forward  somewhat  anx- 
iously, thinking  withal  of  the  in- 
quiries that  were  now  on  foot  in 
Portsmouth  for  Holmes,  the  deserter. 
I  was  armed  with  my  two  trusty 
knives  and  I  now  carried  them  open 
though  concealed  to  defend  myself 
should  a  press  gang  lay  hands  on  me. 
I  felt  that  a  certain  part  of  the  execu- 
tive power  corresponding  with  my  in- 
alienable rights  was  in  myself  and  the 
tools  of  oppressors  in  the  shape  of 
press  gangs  would  have  found  no 
mercy  at  my  hands  and  no  prize  in 
me  except  my  dead  body. 

I  had  previously  learned  that  our 
consul's  office  was  in  a  street  adjoin- 
ing the  Royal  Exchange.  I  soon 
found  the  office  but  it  was  closed.  I 
waited  near  by  revolving  my  prob- 
lematic destiny  and  holding  fast  to 
my  knives.  Shortlv  the  clerk  ap- 
peared and  opened  the  office.  I  im- 
mediately entered  and  made  myself 
known.  It  was  Lord  Mayor's  day 
and  therefore  a  high  day  in  the  city. 
The  consul  was  somewhere  in  the 
crowd  witnessing  the  pageant.  The 
procession  finally  passed  the  office 
and  the  clerk,  discovering  the  consul, 
stepped  out  and  informed  him  that 
"the  Holmes  who  had  so  often  written 
to  him  was  in  the  office  anxious  to  see 
him."  The  consul  soon  came  in  and 
I  fully  spread  my  case  before  him. 
Asking  me  various  questions  about 
Connecticut  and  Stonington,  he  be- 
came satisfied  that  I  was  no  deceiver. 
His  duty  was  plain.  He  ordered  his 
clerk  to  furnish  me  with  a  protection. 
I  had  gained  my  great  point.  I  had 
no  more  use  for  my  open  knives.  I 
now  had  the  hand  and  seal  of  liberty. 


nf  an   (SHft   Am?riran 


(Eaptetn 


It  was  an  hour  of  inexpressible  relief 
and  I  stood  up  in  the  pride  and  dig- 
nity of  an  attested  American  citizen. 
But  the  more  I  rejoiced  in  my  liberty 
and  my  endorsed  rights  the  more  I 
scorned  and  hated  the  English  that 
had  so  long  wronged  me  of  my  time 
and  strength.  And  I  was  glad  too 
that  for  my  liberty  I  owed  the 
haughty  crown  no  thanks.  I  rather 
owed  that  which  I  exultingly  en- 
deavored, not  without  some  success, 
to  pay  on  the  tenth  of  August,  1814, 
in  the  borough  of  Stonington. 

My  hatred  to  the  English  was  only 
natural  but  was  not  altogether  right. 
I  now  hastened  to  leave  the  loathed 
country  and  find  my  own  sweet  and 
free  home.  Searching  for  a  home- 
ward passage  I  shipped  on  board  the 
"Powhattan,"  a  merchant  ship  from 
Petersburg,  Virginia,  under  com- 
mand of  Captain  William  Cottle.  I 
need  not  say  that  I  coveted  for  the 
"Powhattan"  a  quick  passage  .and 
bounded  across  the  Atlantic  with  a 
heart  more  buoyant  than  the  waves  or 
the  winds. 

Back  in  America  After 

Five  Years'  Fearful  Experiences 

We  reached  the  United  States  in 
March,  1807.  I  made  no  delay  in 
finding  old  Stonington.  After  an 
absence  of  above  five  years,  having 
passed  through  privations  and  im- 
prisonment, and  slavish  toils  and  im- 
minent perils,  and  goading  insults, 
and  now  penniless,  I  was  indeed 
happy  to  end  the  deep  anxieties  of 
my  friends  and  to  tread  again  the  free 
soil  of  the  region  of  my  nativity. 
My  experiences  had  prepared  me  to 
prize  freedom. 

The  wars  abroad  among  the  Euro- 
pean powers  now  brought  on  a  state 
of  general  non-intercourse  in  com- 
mercial affairs  which  was  soon  fol- 
lowed by  what  was  termed  the  long 
embargo.  For  a  season  therefore  I 
remained  about  home,  and  in  the 
meantime  busied  myself  variously  in 
farming.  My  restless  thoughts,  how- 
ever, still  roamed  upon  the  sea.  Mis- 


fortunes had  not  quenched  my  sea- 
ward ambitions.  I  only  waited  the 
lifting  of  the  war-clouds  to  launch 
again  upon  the  treacherous  but  prom- 
ising element.  I  accepted  not  disas- 
trous beginnings  as  auguries  of  final 
defeat. 

In  March,  1809,  I  was  married  to 
Miss  Anne  B.  (Denison)  Gallup, 
daughter  of  Isaac  and  Eunice  (Wil- 
liams) Denison.  This  doubtless  was 
the  most  fortunate  as  it  was  the  hap- 
piest step  of  my  life  in  respect  to  my 
temporal  interests. 

It  being  reported  that  the  long  em- 
bargo was  about  to  close  I  sought  an 
opportunity  to  again  go  to  sea.  Only 
seven  days  after  my  marriage  I  went 
to  New  York  and  sailed  immediately 
for  Liverpool  as  mate  of  the  large 
schooner  "Sea  Flower"  under  Cap- 
tain Peter  Guifford,  a  Frenchman. 
We  left  port  before  the  embargo 
closed  so  as  to  take  the  first  chance  in 
freights.  The  voyage  occupied  above 
eight  months.  The  only  incident  'of 
the  voyage  meriting  notice  was  that 
of  a  most  terrific  hurricane  which  we 
experienced  on  our  return  passage  off 
St.  Johns.  Not  a  shred  of  canvas 
dare  we  expose  and  death  howled 
unon  our  track  from  the  raging  heav- 
ens and  the  boiling  and  surging  deep. 
In  all  my  fifty  years'  wanderings  on 
the  sea  I  have  known  no  tempest  that 
was  its  parallel.  We  reached  New 
York  in  November. 

I  now  left  the  "Sea  Flower"  for  the 
coasting  trade  at  home.  I  took  a 
sloop  in  company  with  Manassah 
Minor  and  sailed  south,  trading  in 
produce  chiefly  between  Richmond, 
Norfolk  and  other  ports  on  the  Atlan- 
tic shore.  Thus  I  passed  the  winter 
of  1809  and  1810. 

In  Coasting  Trade  on  Atlantic 
Coast  a  Hundred  Years  Ago 

In  the  spring  of  1811  I  joined  a 
company  who  bought  of  Peck  &  Hal- 
lam  of  New  London,  the  schooner 
"Sally  Ann."  I  owned  a  fourth  of 
the  vessel,  bought  wholly  on  credit. 
I  had  just  invested  all  my  property  in 


317 


ISnrn  17S2 


the  erection  of  the  dwelling  that  I 
still  occupy  (1859).  We  paid  for  the 
schooner  five  thousand  eight  hundred 
dollars.  Simeon  Haley  was  chosen 
captain  and  I  was  appointed  mate. 
In  June  we  sailed  to  Richmond,  Vir- 
ginia. Here  we  secured  a  cargo  of 
tobacco  for  Bristol,  England,  receiv- 
ing six  pounds  and  two  shillings  per 
hogshead,  making  an  excellent 
freight.  In  eight  months  from  the 
time  we  sailed  from  Mystic  I  had 
cleared  my  part  of  the  cost  of  the  ves- 
sel, more  than  fourteen  hundred  dol- 
lars. 

I  was  now  put  in  command  of  the 
"Sally  Ann"  and  ran  her  in  the  coast- 
ing business  on  the  Atlantic  shore  till 
within  a  few  weeks  of  the  opening  of 
the  War  of  1812,  when  I  sold  out  to 
Simeon  Haley. 

Soon  after  the  breaking  out  of  the 
war  I  bought  one-fourth  of  the  fam- 
ous sloop  "Hero"  and  was  appointed 
as  her  commander. 

In  February,  1813,  I  took  the 
"Hero"  to  New  York  to  receive  a 
freight  to  Charleston,  South  Carolina. 
The  great  difficulties  of  the  coast 
trade  at  this  time  made  it  profitable  to 
such  as  dared  to  pursue  it.  On  reach- 
ing1 New  York  we  learned  that  the 
Chesapeake  was  blocked  by  a  British 
squadron,  and,  knowing  that  the  ene- 
my's ships  were  hovering  thickly  on 
the  whole  coast,  it  was  deemed  very 
hazardous  to  attempt  the  contem- 
plated voyage.  Captain  Potter  and 
the  other  owners  had  their  misgiv- 
ings. I  was  ready  to  try  the  cruise 
relying  upon  the  "Hero's"  keel  and 
the  strength  of  her  cordage. 

I  ran  out  to  sea  and  for  a  day  or  so 
had  no  trouble.  Some  of  the  time  I 
had  the  company  of  the  pilot  boat, 
schooner  "Ulysses,"  cruising  off  the 
coast  to  inform  Commodore  Rogers 
of  the  blockade  of  the  Chesapeake. 
My  first  anxiety  was  from  five  British 
ships  of  the  line  discovered  close  upon 
me  during  the  night.  Favored  by  the 
darkness  and  a  skilful  management  of 
my  canvas  to  avoid  being  seen  and 
giving  reins  to  the  "Hero"  on  a  run 


I  soon  left  the  ships  beyond  the  hori- 
zon. On  another  night  I  fell  in  with 
a  single  man-of-war  that  I  dodged  by 
like  maneuvers.  On  a  third  night  I 
was  again  surprised  and  the  enemy, 
discovering  me,  turned  and  bent  her- 
self upon  my  track.  The  "Ulysses" 
was  now  in  sight  to  the  northward 
and  on  the  shore  side  of  me.  The 
enemy  soon  turned  her  pursuit  upon 
the  "Ulysses,"  which  was  the  larger 
vessel ;  meanwhile  I  turned  to  the 
eastward  and  so  escaped.  The 
"Ulysses"  pressed  canvas  and  carried 
away  her  mainmast,  when  the  enemy 
came  up  and  taking  her  crew  pris- 
oners, sent  her  to  the  bottom. 

Adventures  as  Commander  of 
the  •«  Hero  "  in  War  of  1812 

Only  the  night  after  this  escape'  I 
was  surprised  by  a  bright  light  direct- 
ly on  my  bow.  In  a  moment  I  dis- 
cerned five  vessels  of  the  British  line 
standing  directly  for  me.  Instantly  I 
bore  away  unseen  by  them,  as  in  a 
moment  they  were  busy  making  a 
tack  and  ran  to  the  eastward;  but 
soon  shaping  my  course  to  southward 
again,  before  morning  I  ran  into  the 
midst  of  the  same  company  and 
passed  within  a  cable's  length  of  a 
brig's  bow,  and  yet  again,  as  my  for- 
tune would  have  it,  I  was  unobserved. 

On  a  following  night  with  the  wind 
blowing  well-nigh  a  gale  and  in  the 
midst  of  a  fog  that  was  exchanged  for 
rain,  I  found  a  large  three-decker  just 
aft  and  a  heavy  ship  just  ahead  plung- 
ing on  their  way.  I  again  concealed 
myself  by  taking  in  my  sails  till  a  lit- 
tle distance  made  it  safe  to  put  the 
bone  again  in  the  "Hero's"  mouth. 

Thus  with  play  in  e  hush  and  dodg- 
ing and  scudding,  all  with  sleepless 
anxiety  and  yet  confidence  in  the  good 
"Hero's"  keel,  canvas  and  helm,  after 
a  passage  of  about  six  days,  I  ran 
over  the  bar  into  Charleston  Harbor 
to  the  no  little  astonishment  of  the 
people  in  the  city;  for  only  the  day 
before  a  shio  and  a  brig  were  prowl- 
ing in  the  offing  on  the  lookout  for 
victims,  and  had  succeeded  in  captur- 

318 


nf  an   QDlfc   Ameriran 


(ttaptatn 


ing  the  schooner  "Federal  Jack,"  then 
in  the  government  service  supplying 
lighthouses  with  oil  and  other  neces- 
saries. The  collector  of  the  port  at 
once  asked  me  if  I  had  a  license  for 
my  cruise  from  the  English.  I  told 
him  my  only  license  was  from  the 
custom-house  in  New  London.  He 
seemed  astonished  at  my  daring  and 
success. 

I  lay  in  Charleston  about  two 
weeks  discharging  and  making  ready 
and  taking  in  freight  for  my  return 
voyage.  I  laid  the  "Hero"  ashore, 
scrubbed  and  tallowed  her  that  she 
might  make  a  clean  furrow.  I  found 
here  the  "Nimble,"  under  Captain 
John  Rathbun,  and  the  "Revenue," 
under  Captain  Forsyth,  both  from 
Mystic.  These  sailed  the  day  before 
me,  heavily  loaded,  and  were  captured 
off  Cape  Hatteras  by  Admiral  War- 
ren and  were  taken  to  the  Chesapeake 
when  the  crews,  with  about  two  hun- 
dred other  prisoners,  were  put  on 
board  the  frigate  "Junan"  and  car- 
ried to  Bermuda.  I  took  in  a  reason- 
able load  of  cotton  and  other  articles 
and  started  on  my  homeward  dodge. 

About  the  third  day  out  I  fell  in 
with  an  English  frigate  off  the  capes 
of  the  Chesapeake.  She  gave  chase 
and  pursued  me  from  morning  till 
evening.  As  darkness  came  on  she 
was  within  two  gun-shots  of  me. 
Under  cover  of  the  night  I  took  in  my 
small  sails  and  hauled  in  towards  land 
and  then  tacking  to  the  north  and  tax- 
ing my  spars  successfully  eluded  the 
enemy's  reach. 

44  Gentlemen,  You  Have  Got  to 
Fight  or  Go  to  Halifax !  " 

I  met  no  other  danger  till  I  neared 
the  island  of  No  Man's  Land,  when, 
at  daylight,  I  discovered  a  brig  on  my 
weather  quarter  busy  making  sail. 
The  wind  was  now  north.  I  at  once 
spread  all  my  canvas  and  squared 
away  before  the  wind.  The  brig 
came  bounding  after  me.  I  had  a 
clear  track  for  about  two  hours  and  I 
measured  my  knots  right  handsomely. 
I  now  made  two  English  frigates1 


directly  on  my  bow.  This  gave  me  a 
shorter  berth  than  I  could  have  de- 
sired. But  despair  never  shipped  on 
board  the  "Hero,"  nor  was  her  keel 
made  for  a  prize.  I  jibed  and  stood 
to  the  eastward.  I  now  had  the  brig 
on  my  quarter  and  the  frigates  astern 
and  one  of  the  frigates  immediately 
gave  chase ;  the  other  had  a  schooner 
in  care.  I  bid  the  "Hero"  do  her 
best  and  helped  her  as  best  I  could. 
A  little  relief,  however,  unexpectedly 
arose  from  the  character  and  fears  of 
the  brig. 

The  brig  proved  to  be  an  English 
privateer,  the  "Sir  John  Sherbrook," 
of  Liverpool,  Nova  Scotia,  a  very 
famous  craft  that  took  not  a  few 
prizes  on  our  coast  during  the  war. 
She  did  not  wish  to  come  under  the 
reach  of  the  frigate  lest,  in  obedience 
to  her  superior,  she  should  be  com- 
pelled to  give  up  a  portion  of  her  men 
for  the  frigate's  use;  she,  therefore, 
gave  the  frigate  a  reasonable  berth, 
but  she  still  hung  upon  my  course  as 
best  she  could  with  her  own  interests 
in  view.  She  hauled  her  wind  to  the 
northward.  I  was  now  running  to 
the  eastward,  but  I  shortly  headed 
towards  Martha's  Vineyard. 

The  wind  now  died  away,  and  we 
were  close  in  to  No  Man's  Land.  The 
brig  lowered  her  boat  armed  witli 
muskets  and  prosecuted  the  chase. 
The  frigate  had  now  given  up  the 
chase  and  returned  to  seek  her  con- 
sort. The  brig's  boat  pressed  so 
closely  upon  me  that  the  man  in  her 
bow  with  a  musket  fired  upon  me  and 
put  a  number  of  balls  through  my 
sails.  But  for  my  consideration  this 
bowsman  would  have  lost  his  life.  I 
had  three  passengers  on  board ;  one 
of  these  was  a  Mr.  Spencer  of  Ver- 
mont, who  had  a  prime  rifle,  and  pro- 
posed to  prove  his  expertness  with 
his  piece  at  the  same  time  that  he 
should  evince  his  patriotism  by  laying 
this  armed  bowsman  in  the  bottom  of 
the  boat.  I  requested  a  little  delay. 
Counting  upon  what  might  occur  I 
made  the  "Hero"  ready  for  defense. 
I  said  to  my  passengers :  "Now,  gen- 


nf 


Unrtt  1?B2 


tlemen,  you  have  got  to  fight  or  go  to 
Halifax."  We  had  no  relish  for  Hal- 
ifax. I  had  the  men  and  passengers 
at  work  at  once,  and  I  locked  the 
companion-way  to  hold  all  the 
strength  on  deck.  We  arranged  the 
bales  of  cotton  in  tiers  like  a  bulwark. 
I  then  had  a  quantity  of  ballast  stones 
and  all  available  arms  ready  to  give 
the  privateer  a  suitable  reception. 
Fortunately,  however,  at  this  mo- 
ment, when  affairs  were  about  to 
come  to  arms,  a  breeze  sprung  up 
that  filled  the  "Hero's"  canvas  and  I 
soon  left  the  assailant  with  no  other 
choice  than  to  return  to  the  brig. 

Triumph  of  the  "  Hero  "  and 
Her  Welcome  Home  Again 

I  now  ran  between  No  Man's  Land 
and  a  reef  and  stood  on  to  the  north- 
ward. The  brig  dared  not  follow, 
but  remained  outside  and  was  be- 
calmed. 

The  brig  had  an  American  Jack 
from  her  fore-top-gallant  mast-head 
for  a  pilot.  My  mate  suggested  that 


we  should  run  down  and  put  him  on 
board  as  a  pilot  that  he  might  realize 
a  few  hundred  dollars  for  carrying 
her  into  Newport.  I  replied:  "I 
shall  neither  board  any  vessel  nor  be 
boarded  till  I  reach  a  good  harbor." 
Nearing  land  we  fell  in  with  a  num- 
ber of  small  fishing  vessels.  One  of 
these,  the  smack  "Fair  Haven"  of 
Edgartown  ran  down  and  furnished 
the  brig  with  a  pilot. 

I  had  a  good  breeze  in  shore  and  I 
made  the  best  of  it.  With  a  change 
of  wind  I  now  put  my  head  in  for 
Point  Judith.  By  four  o'clock  in  the 
morning  I  was  off  Watch  Hill.  Ly- 
ing here  with  jib  to  my  mast  till 
morning  broke  I  discovered  the  priva- 
teer brig  abreast  of  me  not  a  mile  dis- 
tant. Making  all  sail  I  stood  through 
the  reef  and  before  sunrise  the 
"Hero"  ran  into  Noank  in  Mystic 
River,  where  I  was  most  heartily  wel- 
comed by  my  owners  and  friends 
who,  not  without  reason,  praised  the 
"Hero's"  success  and  wondered  how 
I  had  so  successfully  run  the  gauntlet 
through  so  many  ships  of  war. 


MARRIAGE     CONTRACT     IN     AMERICA     IN     1675 

Transcribed  from  Original  by  MARY  R.  WOODRUFF 

Know  all  men  by  these  presents,  That  I,  William  East  of  Milford, 
in  ye  County  of  new-haven,  in  the  Colony  of  Connecticut  in  New  England, 
Do  upon  ye  Contract  of  marriage  with  mary  Plume  of  the  same  Town 
Widdow,  give,  bind  and  make  over  my  dwelling  hous  and  homlett,  and  all 
my  Land  both  arrable  and  meadow  ground  within  ye  bounds  of  Milford ; 
And  I  Doe  Further  Ingage  that  the  sd  mary  Plume  and  her  heirs  shall 
quietly  and  peaceably  enjoy  all  and  Singular  the  premises  above  sd  with 
the  Barne  and  outhouses  forever  after  my  decease,  or  Two  hundred  pound 
which  she  pleaseth,  without  any  lett  or  mollostacon  from  any  person,  per- 
sons, from,  by,  or  under  me  ye  shall  lay  Claime  thereunto :  The  above  sd 
promises  I  Do  make  over  unto  ye  sd  mary  as  a  Dowrie  or  Jointure  upon 
the  Anot.  aforesd,  and  this  to  stand  in  force  to  all  intents  and  purposes 
immediately  upon  the  Confumation  of  marriage,  or  if  it  please  God  to  take 
me  away  by  death  before  marriage,  yet  this  to  stand  in  full  power,  force 
and  vertue;  Further  I,  the  sd  William  East,  doe  hereby  promise  and 
Engage  not  to  Claime  any  interest  in  any  of  her  Estate  either  reall  or  per- 
sonall  (by  vertue  of  her  interrest)  But  do  leave  ye  same  fully,  and  whoely 
to  herself  to  dispose  when  and  as  She  pleaseth,  In  witness  whereof  I  have 
hereunto  set  my  hand  and  scale  this  4th  day  of  January  1675. 

Signed  and  delivered  in  presence  of  us     (Signed)     WILLIAM  EAST. 

DANIEL  BUCKINGHAM  SAMUELL  EAST. 


ulaitmt 


$to0t 


Hg    Norman    ©alrntt 


3T  is  not  long  since  the  great 
network  of  thoroughfares 
that    cross    and    counter- 
cross    the    Western    Con- 
tinent,   and    over    which 
some   eighty   million   peo- 
ple   now    pass,    were    but 
rough  trails  through  dense  forest  wil- 
derness. 

Then  as  the  axe  blazed  broader 
paths  and  the  trails  widened,  the  turn- 
pike and  the  post-road  stretched 
through  the  woodland  and  fields, 
winding  its  course  over  hills  and 
down  the  slopes  into  the  valleys,  join- 
ing the  neighboring  villages. 

Not  long  ago  a  single  highway  was 
the  sole  artery  between  New  York 
and  Boston,  taking  and  bearing  on- 
ward all  the  life  and  traffic  which 
flowed  into  it  from  the  smaller  arte- 
ries leading  from  the  less  populous 


villages  and  settlements.  So  impor- 
.tant  a  part  did  this  road  have  in  the 
early  life  of  the  nation  that  there  is 
hardly  a  momentous  event  in  her  his- 
tory which  it  does  not  recall. 

Along  it  rode  His  Majesty's  gov- 
ernor of  New  England,  Sir  Edmund 
Andros,  as  he  journeyed  to  take  his 
seat  at  Boston.  In  1775  spurred  over 
it  the  messenger  who  bore  the  news 
of  Lexington,  and  through  its  dust 
resolutely  trudged  the  trained  bands 
that  in  answer  to  his  summons  hur- 
ried to  the  relief  of  Boston.  Later  it 
was  traveled  by  Washington  and 
Lafayette  and  other  great  men  who 
received,  from  the  country  people 
dwelling  on  it,  ovations  amounting 
almost  to  worship. 

The  notes  of  the  post  horn  brought 
the  good  folk  of  the  towns  along  the 
way  hurrying  to  their  windows  and 


STONE  STEPS  WHERE   PUTNAM   ON   HORSEBACK   ESCAPED   FROM  THE   BRITISH 


doors  to  see  the  coach  roll  in  with  its 
cargo  of  mail  and  passengers  from 
the  outside  world. 

Among  the  Colonial  and  Revolu- 
tionary hostelries  which  were  scat- 
tered along  the  Post  Road  between 
New  York  and  Boston,  none  is  more 
intimately  linked  with  the  life  of  early 
days  than  the  old  Israel  Knapp  Inn, 
in  Greenwich,  Connecticut,  which 
was  the  headquarters  of  General 
Israel  Putnam  for  a  time  in  1779,  and 
where  he  was  surprised  by  the  Brit- 
ish on  the  day  of  his  daring  ride  down 
the  stone  steps,  the  tale  of  which  is  so 
dear  to  every  American  school-boy. 

The  house  must  have  been  built 
about  two  hundred  years  ago.  The 
land  on  which  it  stands  was  bought 
in  1692  by  one  Timothy  Knapp,  and 
there  is  in  the  Greenwich  Land  Rec- 
ords a  deed  of  a  gift  of  a  half  of  the 


house  and  land  to  his  son,  Israel 
Knapp,  in  1729.  The  erection  was 
of  course  between  these  two  dates. 
From  earliest  times  it  was  used  as  an 
inn,  and  its  hospitable  roof  has  cov- 
ered many  a  famous  man  who  jour- 
neyed on  horseback  or  in  stage  coach 
between  Boston  and  New  York. 

In  1766  the  town  records  show  that 
a  meeting  of  freeholders  was  held  at 
the  house  of  "Israel  Knapp,  Inn- 
holder."  In  this  house  were  held 
meetings  of  one  of  the  first  Masonic 
lodges  in  America,  and  in  recent 
years  while  repairs  were  being  made, 
certain  of  the  regalia  was  found  and 
is  now  in  the  possession  of  Acacia 
Masonic  Lodge  of  Greenwich. 

The  really  interesting  period  in  the 
history  of  the  place  begins  with  the 
American  Revolution.  During  most 


CELLAR    STAIRS  IX  THE     OLD    KNAPP    TAVERN*   WHERE  THE  TORIES  CONGREGATED 


of  the  war  Greenwich  was  debatable 
ground.  Much  of  the  time  there 
were  American  troops  stationed  in 
the  town,  but  there  were  frequent 
raids  by  the  British  soldiers  and  by 
the  hands  of  guerillas,  known  as 
"cow  boys,"  while  a  large  proportion 
of  the  inhabitants  were  loyal  to  the 
"crown." 

Among  the  most  inveterate  Tories 
was  the  inn-keeper,  Israel  Knapp,  and 
it  is  said  that  his  tavern  was  for  a 
long  time  a  secret  meeting-place  for 
those  who  sought  to  defeat  the  pa- 
triot cause.  It  is  certain  that  he  was 
held  in  ill-repute  by  all  good  patriots, 
and  his  name  was  on  the  dangerous 
list  held  by  the  local  "committee  of 
safety." 

Connected  with  the  cottage  is  a 
most  romantic,  though  dismal  tale. 
The  old  inn-keeper's  favorite  son, 


Timothy  Knapp,  though  as  ardent  a 
Tory  as  his  father,  was  in  love  with 
the  beautiful  daughter  of  the  patriot, 
Jonathan  Mead,  who  lived  nearby. 
Tradition  says  that  the  girl  recipro- 
cated his  affection,  but  she  was  im- 
bued with  a  spirit  of  loyalty  to  the 
cause  of  the  Revolutionists  that  made 
her  indignantly  refuse  when  Timothy 
sought  her  hand  in  marriage.  The 
youth,  as  might  be  expected,  was 
deeply  hurt. 

He  called  to  her  reproachfully  and 
angrily  as  he  left  the  house  that  even- 
ing :  "You  shall  speak  to  me  one  day, 
but  I  shall  never  answer  you !" 

He  little  knew  how  true  were  his 
words.  One  evening  shortly  after- 
ward when  he  was  approaching  the 
house,  perhaps  to  make  another  at- 
Umpt  t«>  win  the  maid,  her  father, 
mistaking  him  for  a  "cow  boy" 


323 


nf  Suing 


imj0 


marauder,  shot  him  through  the 
heart.  The  girl,  recognizing  him, 
threw  herself  upon  his  lifeless  body 
and  implored  him  to  speak,  but  he 
was  dead  and  unable  to  answer  to  the 
caresses  that  were  showered  upon 
him.  The  body  lies  buried  on  the 
grounds  of  the  ancient  inn. 

On  the  26th  of  February,  1779, 
General  Israel  Putnam  was  staying 
in  the  house  when  surprised  by  a 
large  party  of  British  and  Tories  un- 
der General  Tryon.  The  story  re- 
lates that  the  general,  old  gallant  that 
he  was,  that  'night  escorted  a  pretty 
maiden,  Mistress  Bush  of  Cos  Cob, 
to  a  dance  in  a  part  of  the  town 
known  as  Pecksland,  and  did  not  re- 
turn until  the  wee  small  hours  of  the 
morning.  It  is  only  reasonable  to 
assume  that  he  did  not  rise  early  after 
he  had  retired.  Tradition  also 
affirms  that  he  was  shaving  in  the 
morning  when  an  American  officer, 
one  Titus  Watson,  rode  in  and  in- 
formed him  of  the  approach  of  Gen- 
eral Tyron  with  a  large  force  of  Brit- 
ish and  Tories  along  the  Post  Road 
from  New  York.  He  hastened  to 
the  Congregational  meeting-house, 
which  was  but  a  few  rods  west  of  the 
Knapp  tavern,  and  drew  up  his  little 
body  of  Continentals.  Resistance 
by  such  a  small  force  was  futile,  and 
after  the  first  volley  Putnam  ordered 
his  men  to  seek  safety  wherever  they 
might  find  it,  and  himself  started  on 
a  gallop  toward  Stamford  for  rein- 
forcements. 

A  quarter  of  a  mile  east  of  the 
Congregational  Church  is  a  precipi- 
tous and  rocky  hill,  now  known  as 
"Put's  Hill."  'in  it  were  cut  steps, 
twenty-four,  it  is  said,  in  number, 
whereby  on  Sundays  the  members  of 
Christ  Church,  the  Episcopal  Church 
at  the  top  of  the  hill,  ascended.  The 
British  were  confident  that  they  had 
captured  the  American  general  when 
they  saw  him  spurring  his  horse 
toward  the  steps.  Not  so,  however. 
With  reckless  daring  he  galloped  his 
horse  down  the  stone  steps,  turning  in 


the  saddle  as  he  went,  shaking  his  fist 
and  calling  out,  defiantly:  "God  cuss 
ye,  I'll  hang  ye  to  the  next  tree  when 
I  get  ye." 

The  astounded  dragoons  reined  up 
at  the  head  of  the  steps,  catching  a 
glimpse  of  the  "flying  horseman," 
looked  at  one  another  in  bewilder- 
ment. Putnam  returned  that  day 
with  reinforcements  in  time  to  cap- 
ture a  considerable  number  of  them 
as  prisoners. 

One  of  the  eye-witnesses  of  the 
daring  ride  was  Rose  Fitch,  an  old 
slave  woman  belonging  to  Jabez 
Fitch,  who  lived  on  the  brow  of  the 
hill.  She  died  in  Port  Chester  about 
sixty  years  ago  at  a  very  advanced 
age.  Mr.  Thomas  T.  Tompkins,  of 
Port  Chester,  who  is  now  about 
eighty  years  old,  tells  the  story  which 
the  old  slave  woman  related  to  him 
when  he  was  a  boy. 

"'I  was  standing  at  the  gate  on  the 
morning  when  the  British  raided  the 
town,'  she  often  told  me,"  said  Mr. 
Tompkins  to  the  writer.  "'I  had 
heard  the  firing  near  the  Congrega- 
tional Church,  and  like  everyone  else 
in  town,  had  rushed  out  to  see  what 
was  the  matter.  As  I  looked  down 
the  road  I  saw  a  man  riding  up  the 
road  at  a  break-neck  pace.  Hardly  a 
hundred  yards  behind  him  rode  a 
dozen  or  more  men  in  scarlet  uni- 
forms. 

"'Across  the  brow  of  the  hill  ran  a 
stone  wall  in  which  there  was  an 
opening  at  the  point  where  the  path- 
way reached  the  summit.  Leaving 
the  main  road  the  first  horseman 
dashed  straight  through  and  down 
the  pathway  which  was  very  steep 
and  in  which  a  number  of  steps  were 
cut.  The  men  who  followed  reined 
up  at  the  stone  wall  and  were  silent 
for  a  moment  as  if  astonished.  Then 
they  fell  to  arguing  with  one  another, 
and  later  rode  away.  I  did  not  know 
at  the  time  who  the  daring  rider  was, 
but  was  told  later  that  the  man  was 
General  Putnam  and  that  his  pursuers 
were  British  soldiers.'" 


cm?    ICtfe    in    lEarlg    Amrrtra 


Remembrance  wakes,  with  all  her  busy  train, 
Swells  at  my  breast- 
How  often  have  1  loitered  o'er  thy  green. 
Where  humble  happiness  endeared  each  scene. 


0m?     iCtf?     in     iEarlg     Amrrtra 


TTPICAL    AMEHICAX    HOMES    IX    FIRST    YEAHS     OF    THE    REPUBLIC 


T1IE    OLD    OPKX    IIRARTI! 


THE    OLD    WELL    SWEEP 


ij  0  m  ?    £tf*    tn    E  a  r  I  g    Amrrira 


BUILT  IN  1640  AND  BELIEVED  TO  BE  THE  OLDEST  ANCESTRAL  ESTATE  IN  AMERICA 
In  Continuous  Possession  of  the  Descendants  of  Its  Pioneer  Builder,  Joseph  Loomis 
At  Windsor,  Connecticut 


SPACIOUS  HOME  A  CENTURY  AGO 


OLD  MANSION  OP  YEARS  GONE  BY 


Jtt 


3tftrat 


in  Ammra 


Br  CLARA   EMERSON    BICKFORD 


I 

CLOCK  BELONGING  TO  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


first  houses  in  America 
were  small  and  rude,  but 
very  soon  commodious 
and  comfortable  dwell- 
ings  were  built,  filled 
with  furniture  that  has 
nothing  suggestive  of 
the  frontiersman.  A  thousand  pounds 
was  a  great  sum  of  money  in 
those  days,  but  before  1650  there 
were  plenty  of  men  in  America  who 
were  worth  more  than  that  amount. 
The  wealth  of  the  settlers  consisted 
of  clothing,  cotton,  linen,  woolen  and 
silk  stuffs ;  and  tools,  implements,  ves- 
sels and  utensils  of  iron,  pewter, 
brass,  wood  and  earthenware.  Thom- 
as Morton,  writing  in  1632,  said  that 
there  was  need  of  the  tumelor  or 
cooper,  smiths,  carpenters  and  shop- 
keepers. He  complained  of  exces- 
sive prices,  saying:  "If  they  do  not 
gain  Cent  per  Cent,  they  cry  out  that 
they  are  losers."  The  first  houses 
were  constructed  of  rough-hewn  tim- 
ber with  window-panes  of  oiled  glass 
and  the  roofs  thatched.  The  hearths 
were  laid  with  stones  and  clay  and  the 
huge  chimneys  were  raised  outside 
the  walls.  Edward  Winslow  writes 
in  1621,  "Bring  plenty  of  clothes  and 
bedding,  fowling  pieces,  and  paper 
and  linseed  oil  for  your  windows  with 
cotton  yarn  for  your  lamps."  In  i62Q 
Higginson  writes  to  his  friends  in 
England,  "Be  sure  to  furnish  yourself 
with  glass  for  windows."  Men  of 
position,  wealth  and  learning  came  to 
America.  In  1638  Winthrop  notes  in 
his  diary:  "Many  ships  arrived  this 
year,  with  people  of  good  quality  and 
estate,  notwithstanding  the  Council's 
order  that  none  such  should  come 
without  the  King's  order."  Among 
those  who  intended  to  come,  history 
mentions  Oliver  Cromwell  himself. 
Along  the  Atlantic  coast  log-houses 
and  rough  abodes  developed  into 
commodious  homesteads  and  spacious 
mansions.  This  was  the  foundation 
of  the  home-life  that  has  since  be- 
come one  of  the  dearest  treasures  in 
America,  and  even  to-day  many  of 
the  truest  Americans  hold  in  trust  the 
home  furnishings  of  some  of  the  first 
homes  in  the  American  Republic. 


Types  of 

Early  Furniture  in  America 

Rare  Antiques  in  Possession  of 

Mrs.  John  Marshall  Holcombe 

at  Hartford,  Connecticut 


Jn    tit?    Jfftrjat    2jnm?0    in 


AN    AMERICAN    HOME    DURING   THE    LAST   CENTURY 


TAP  ROOM  IN  WAYSIDE  INN,  SUDBURY,  MASSACHUSETTS;  CONTAINING  DESK  USED  BY 
DANIEL  WEBSTER,  AND  THIRTEEN  ANTIQUE  CHAIRS  FROM  FLAGSHIP  "  HARTFORD 


A  n  r  i  r  tt  t    American    iCan&markH 


THE    PASSING    OF   THE    OLD    LANDMARKS 


THE    FIRST    DAYS   OF   AMERICAN    INDUSTRY 


MODERN    AMERICAN    SCULPTURE 
The  "Aztecs"  by  Louis  A.  Gudebrod 
Member  of  the  National  Sculpture  Society 


An  .Indian  C*gtn&— ®lj?  JflinJjt  nf  Jfob  Strft 


BY 


JOE 

or  CAMBRIDGE,  MASSACIJI-SETTS 


ON  the  heights  above  the  river, 
Looking      southward      to    Long 
Island. 

Stood  the  Indian  home  of  Obed, 
Stood  his  cabin  lone  and  high ; 
With  him  lived  his  comely  daughter, 
Lived  his  only  daughter  "  Red  Bird," 
She  a  robust,  lovely  maiden, 
And  the  apple  of  his  eye. 

She  had  lovers  from  the  Pequots, 
She  had  lovers  from  the  Island, 
All  the  braves  for  miles  around  her 

Sought  her  hand  but  all  in  vain ; 
To  their  tales  she  would  not  listen, 
For  her  heart  went  out  to  "  White  Face,' 
He  the  mighty  Yankee  hunter 

Of  the  forest  and  the  plain. 

Obed,  stern  and  true  to  nature, 

With  disfavor  looked  on  "  White  Face," 

And  forbade  his  daughter.  "Red  Bird  " 

To  the  hunter's  ardent  gaze ; 
Then  within  the  darkened  forest 
Did  he  meet  her  clandestinely. 
While  their  hearts  sang  love's  hosannas 

Through  the  silent  summer  days. 


One  day  Obed  came  from  Saybrooke, 
Where  he'd  been  attending  worship. 
For  'tis  said  he  was  converted, 

And  he  found  his  daughter  fled : 
She  had  taken  her  belongings, 
And  her  trail  led  to  the  river, 
Where  in  direful  consternation 

Broken  hearted  Obed  sped. 

Print  of  maid  and  print  of  lover 

Did  he  trail  through  field  and  meadow, 

Till  at  last  he  reached  the  river, 

Where  her  birch-bark  was  no  more; 
Far  out  on  the  waters  rolling, 
From  the  storm  that  was  arising, 
Could  he  see  the  lovers  fleeing 

For  the  dim  Long  Island  shore. 

Then  the  storm  broke  loose  with  fury, 
And  the  shell-like  craft  was  beaten 
On  the  mad  waves  like  a  feather 

Till  'twas  lost  from  human  sight; 
Obed,  dazed  and  bent  with  sorrow. 
Turned  him  back  unto  his  cabin. 
Now  a  place  of  chill  and  darkness, 

Cursing    "White     Face"     through     the 
night. 


Then  a  watchful,  spying  Pequot, 
Who  was  haunting  stream  and  forest, 
Came  upon  the  happy  lovers, 

And  to  Obed  told  the  tale; 
Obed  full  of  wrath  and  hatred, 
Ever  after,  in  his  absence, 
Locked  his  daughter  in  the  cabin. 

Where  she  silent  grew  and  pale. 


Gone  his  only  daughter  "Red  Bird," 
Gone  the  hope  and  joy  of  Obed, 
Last  of  tribe  and  name  of  Obed, 

On  the  treach'rous  Saybrooke  shoal. 
Sought  he  then  the  sacred  boulder, 
Known  to  fame  as  "  Obed's  Altar," 
Where  he  threw  himself  in  sorrow 

And  in  agony  of  soul. 


Sunday  came,  the  church  was  opened, 
But  no  Obed  came  for  worship, 
And  they  wondered  at  his  absence. 

Seldom  had  he  staid  away. 
When  they  sought  him  on  the  morrow 
Dead  they  found  him  on  his  altar, 
On  his  altar  on  the  hillside, 

Where  it  stands  in  peace  today. 


333 


Jtftrst    Patent   tn 


Qj»rantrfo    in    Ifi4fi    tn    ib,r    Jlnurntnr  nf  "an   rnginr   nf 
mills  to  go  bn,  utatrr  "  anh  rrrnrbr^  as  "  3lrnkr0  iHupulyr  " 

BY 

EMELINE  JENKS  CRAMPTOX  OF  ST.  CL.AIR,  MICIIIGAX 

A  LINEAL  DESCENDANT  or  THE  PATENTKK 


At  a  generall  courte  at  Boston  the  6th  of  the  3th  mo  1646  The  Cort  con- 
sidringe  ye  necessity  of  raising  such  manufactures  of  engins  of  mils  to  go  by 
water  for  speedy  dispatch  of  much  worke  wth  few  hands,  and  being  suffi- 
ciently informed  of  ye  ability  of  ye  petitionr  to  pforme  such  workes  grant 
his  petition  (yt  n  othr  pson  shall  set  up,  or  use  any  such  new  invention,  or 
trade  for  fourteen  years  wtout  ye  licence  of  him  ye  said  Joseph  Jenkes)  so 
far  as  concernes  any  such  new  invention,  and  so  as  it  shalbe  always  in  ye 
powr  of  this  corte  to  restrain  ye  exportation  of  such  manifactures,  and  ye 
prizes  of  them  to  moderation  if  occasion  so  require. 


®HE  first  patent  in  America 
was    granted    to    Joseph 
Jenks,  the  first,  a  founder 
and    machinist    who   had 
emigrated     from     Ham- 
mersmith,     England, 
where    he    was    born    in 
1602.      He    was    "a    very    ingenious 
man,"  and  was  induced  by  Governor 
AVinthrop,   the   younger,   to  come  to 
Lynn,  Massachusetts,  about  1642,  as 
master    mechanic,    to    establish    "the 
iron    and    steel    works."     He    is   the 
acknowledged  head  of  the  iron-smelt- 
ing and   founding  business,   and  the 
first    builder    of    machinery    in    this 
country,  and  first  patentee  of  inven- 
tions in  America,  having  introduced 
the  idea  (first  granted  by  act  of  Par- 
liament in  1625)  of  protection  for  the 
manufacture  of  improvements  by  pe- 
tition to  the  government  of   Massa- 
chusetts Bay.     In  1646  he  took  pat- 
ents  for  mill   improvements ;  and   in 
1655  he  patented  the  present  form  of 
the  grass  scythe,  for  which  "he  should 


be  held  in  grateful  remembrance." 
In  1652  he  made  dies  for  the  first 
coinage  of  money,  the  "Pine  Tree 
Shillings."  In  1654  he  built  the  first 
fire  engine,  to  the  order  of  "the  se- 
lectmen of  Boston"  (the  first  ever 
built  in  the  country)  ;  in  1657  he  built 
a  forge,  and  entered  upon  the  manu- 
facture of  his  improved  scythes  nine 
years  before  his  application  was 
granted. 

Inventor  Jenks  was  a  widower  and 
left  two  sons,  Joseph,  eleven,  and 
George,  in  England,  who  early  fol- 
lowed him  to  America.  He  married 
again  in  Lynn,  and  had  three  sons  and 
two  daughters.  His  son,  Joseph,  was 
born  in  England  in  1632,  followed  his 
father  to  Lynn  about  1647,  an^  served 
at  his  business;  he  subsequently  went 
to  Providence,  Rhode  Island,  and  es- 
tablished the  iron  and  machine  busi- 
ness at  Pawtucket  Falls,  founding  the 
town  of  Pawtucket.  His  shops  were 
destroyed  in  King  Philip's  War,  but 
were  rebuilt.  By  his  enterprise  the 


JtrBt    |Iatrut    in    Amerira    in     164fi 


foundation  was  laid  which  made  that 
town  the  great  "iron  workshop  of  the 
colonies,"  and  the  place  where  skilled 
mechanics  gathered,  who  have  since 
made  Rhode  Island  noted  for  her  steel 
and  iron  products,  machinery  and 
other  manufactures. 

The  manufacture  of  firearms  be- 
gan to  be  carried  on  extensively  in 
this  place  by  Stephen  Jenks ;  and  sev- 
eral independent  companies  were  fur- 
nished with  arms  of  home  manufac- 
ture. Sixty  heavy  cannons  besides 
field  pieces  were  made  at  the  iron 
works. 

Inventor  Jenks  came  from  an  old 
family  abroad.  The  surname  is 
spelled  Jenks,  Jynks.  Jenkes,  Jencks. 
and  Jenckes.  This  family  is  descend- 
ed from  the  Welch  or  ancient  Britons. 
Robert  Jenks  was  of  Wolverton 
(manor)  parish  of  Eatounder- 
Eywood,  Shropshire,  about  1350,  in 
the  reign  of  Edward  III.  This  gen- 
tleman was  the  son  of  Jenkyn  Cam- 


brey  of  that  place  and  Dorothy, 
daughter  and  co-heiress  of  Sir  Walter 
Collyng,  Knight,  of  Church  Stretton, 
in  the  same  county.  From  Robert, 
the  ancestry  is  traced  to  Sthelstan, 
who  reigned  from  925  to  941,  the 
head  of  the  fourth  royal  tribe  of 
Wales.  Sthelstan  was  descended 
from  Vortigern,  who  ruled  the  Brit- 
ons from  454  to  485  A.D.,  and  seven 
generations  beyond  Caractacus — as 
far  as  Welch  annals  and  Bardic  pedi- 
grees are  carried.  At  Wolverton  it 
continued  for  ten  direct  descents  and 
families  branched  therefrom.  Her- 
bert Jenks,  Esquire,  possessed  Wol- 
verton about  1640  and  his  estate  fell 
to  his  heirs  by  a  daughter.  From  this 
ancestry  was  Joseph  Jenks,  the  first 
patentee  in  America. 

Inventor  Jenks'  grandson  was  dis- 
tinguished in  his  service  to  Rhode 
Island  and  was  assistant  governor  for 
eleven  years,  and  governor  from  1727- 
1732 — five  years. 


THE    FIRST    ENGLISH-SPEAKING    AMERICAN    HOUSEHOLDS 
33S 


THE    HEART    OF    THE    AMERICAN    DOMINION     A    GENERATION    AGO 


THE    CONQUEST    OP    THE    AMERICAN    WILDERNESS 

Prints  from  Honorable  William  Henry  Mllburn's  "In  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi  " 


336 


(feat  ij£art  of  tty  Ammratt  Hmmttum 


of 

a  Janrnrg  in  tfyr  39Uarrnrsa 
of  th.P  iWir.iiir.si}Hii  Uallni  in 
txyrrirnrra  in  Haul  firgiim  tliat  ifi  (Saining  (Control 
of  thr  American  Nation  anb  nnui  Qlontaina  Smrnty-tmo  of  lljr 
3Partg-fiw  Hnitrb  fctatrn   J*    SraurlH  in  tye  tarlg  Saga  of  Amrrtran  Urpublir 

BT 

MAJOR    SAMUEL,    S.    FORMAN 

FROM  TUB  ORIGINAL  MANUSCRIPT  Now  IN  POSSESSION  or  His  FAMILY 


M^^fpHE  great  precursors  of  civ- 
s  ilization   have   nearly  all 

m  come  within  the  memory 

AIL  of  the  generation  that  is 
^^^^Jr  now  passing.  Wonder- 
ful are  the  scenes  that 
have  been  enacted  before 
the  eyes  of  the  silver-haired  men  and 
women  who  are  now  turning  their 
faces  from  the  great  drama  of  a 
world's  unfolding  and  lifting  their 
arms  in  willingness  to  the  Infinite 
Power.  It  is  hard  to  conceive  what 
the  next  generation  will  witness  along 
this  triumphant  march  of  progress. 

Many  men  now  of  middle  age  knew 
Major  Samuel  S.  Forman  and  have 
heard  him  tell  his  experiences  on  a 
journey  down  the  Mississippi  Valley 
when  it  was  a  vast  wilderness,  with 
only  here  and  there  a  small  settle- 
ment fortified  against  the  Indians. 
While  he  was  relating  his  adventures 
the  wilderness  disappeared  as  if  by 
magic,  until  to-day  the  very  men  who 
heard  his  lips  repeat  the  story  are 
traversing  the  scene  and  erecting 
upon  it  temples  of  civilization. 

As  we  read  these  words,  twenty- 
two  of  the  forty-five  states  of  this 
American  Republic  are  wholly  within 
this  wilderness  of  yesterday — the 
Mississippi  Valley.  With  Oklahoma 
and  Indian  Territory  admitted  as  one 
state,  it  will  make  the  twenty-third 
and  give  the  Mississippi  Valley  a  ma- 
jority of  the  United  States,  ultimately 
controlling  the  nation,  politically  and 

337 


financially,  and  "establishing  the  seat 
of  the  American  Dominion  in  the 
great  heart  of  the  continent." 

When  Major  Forman  made  his  not- 
able journey  into  the  wilds  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  he  found  Pitts- 
burg  but  a  few  log-houses  in  the  for- 
est, and  it  was  with  difficulty  that 
land  could  be  disposed  of  at  fifty  cents 
an  acre  or  hundred-acre-tracts  for 
fifty  dollars  each.  To-day  it  is  the 
greatest  industrial  city  on  the  West- 
ern Continent,  spanning  the  Monon- 
gahela  river  with  the  finest  and  largest 
structure  in  American  civilization,  a 
million  dollar  terminal  on  the  very 
site  of  old  Fort  Duquesne,  and  its 
railroad  bridges  handling  more  traf- 
fic than  any  other  locality  in  this  coun- 
try. All  along  the  route  taken  by 
Major  Forman,  rich  and  beautiful 
cities  have  been  similarly  built  and  it 
is  with  these  in  mind  that  the  major's 
adventures  become  intensely  interest- 
ing. 

Major  Forman  was  born  in  Mid- 
dletown  Point,  Monmouth  County, 
New  Jersey,  July  2r,  1765,  and  re- 
lated this  story  shortly  before  his 
death  at  the  age  of  ninety-seven  years, 
August  1 6,  1862,  in  Syracuse,  New 
York.  The  manuscript  of  his  adven- 
tures was  secreted  for  nearly  forty 
years,  when  Honorable  Lyman  C. 
Draper  had  them  preserved  in  a  bro- 
chure in  Cincinnati.  The  record  here 
given  is  contributed  by  Mrs.  Breese 
Stevens  of  Madison,  Wisconsin. 


in  iff?  UJtH0i00tppt  Balbg  in    lfB9 


ENERAL  DAVID  FOR- 
MAN,  of  New  Jersey, 
entered  into  a  negotia- 
tion with  the  Spanish 
minister,  Don  Diego  de 
Gardoque,  for  his 
brother,  Ezekiel  For- 
man,  of  Philadelphia,  to  emigrate 
with  his  family  and  sixty  odd  colored 
people,  and  settle  in  the  Natchez 
country,  then  under  Spanish  author- 
ity. 

I  agreed  with  General  Forman  to 
accompany  the  emigrating  party ;  and, 
about  the  last  of  November,  1789, 
having  closed  up  my  little  business  at 
Middletown  Point,  New  Jersey,  I  set 
out  from  the  general's  residence,  in 
Freehold,  with  Captain  Benajah  Os- 
mun,  an  old  continental  captain,  who 
was  at  that  time  the  faithful  over- 
seer of  the  general's  blacks.  There 
were  sixty  men,  women,  and  children, 
and  they  were  the  best  set  of  blacks  I 
ever  saw  together.  I  knew  the  most 
of  them,  and  all  were  well-behaved, 
except  two  rather  ill-tempered  fel- 
lows. General  Forman  purchased 
some  more,  who  had  intermarried 
with  his  own,  so  as  not  to  separate 
families.  They  were  all  well  fed  and 
well  clothed. 

Traveling  in  a  Caravan 
in  America  in  1789 

We  had,  I  believe,  four  teams  of 
four  horses  each,  and  one  two-horse 
wagon,  all  covered  with  tow-cloth, 
while  Captain  Osmun  and  I  rode  on 
horseback.  After  the  distressing 
scene  of  taking  leave — for  the  gene- 
ral's family  and  blacks  were  almost  all 
in  tears — we  set  out  upon  our  long 
journey.  The  first  night  we  camped 
on  the  plains  near  Cranberry,  having 
accomplished  only  about  twelve  or  fif- 
teen miles.  The  captain  and  I  had  a 
bed  put  under  one  of  the  wagons ;  the 
sides  of  the  wagon  had  tenter-hooks, 
and  curtains  made  to  hook  up  to 
them,  with  loops  to  peg  the  bottom  to 
the  ground.  The  colored  people 
mostly  slept  in  their  wagons.  In  the 
night  a  heavy  rain  fell,  when  the 


captain  and  I  fared  badly.  The 
ground  was  level,  and  the  water,  un- 
able to  run  off,  gave  us  a  good  soak- 
ing. I  had  on  a  new  pair  of  hand- 
some buckskin  small  clothes ;  the  rain 
spoiled  their  beauty,  and  the  wetting 
and  subsequent  shrinkage  rendered 
them  very  uncomfortable  to  wear. 

Leaving  New  Jersey  on  Long 
Journey  into  the  Middle  West 

The  next  morning  we  commenced 
our  journey  as  early  as  possible.  We 
drove  to  Princeton,  where  we  tarried 
awhile,  and  all  were  made  comfort- 
able. We  crossed  the  Delaware  five 
miles  above  Trenton.  On  arriving 
at  Lancaster,  in  Pennsylvania,  the 
authorities  stopped  us,  as  we  some- 
what expected  they  would  do.  Gen- 
eral Forman  had  furnished  me  with 
all  the  necessary  papers  relating  to 
the  transportation  of  slaves  through 
New  Jersey  and  Pennsylvania.  While 
Judge  Hubley  was  examining  the 
papers,  the  servant  women  informed 
me  that  the  females  of  the  city  came 
out  of  their  houses  and  inquired  of 
them  whether  they  could  spin,  knit, 
sew,  and  do  housework,  and  whether 
they  were  willing  to  go  to  the  South ; 
so,  if  the  authorities  stopped  us,  they 
could  all  soon  have  new  homes.  But 
our  colored  women  laughed  at  the 
Lancaster  ladies,  who  seemed  morti- 
fied when  they  learned  that  we  could 
not  be  detained. 

In  Westmoreland  county  we  had  a 
little  trouble  with  a  drunken  justice  of 
the  peace  and  some  free  blacks. 
These  free  blacks,  as  we  learned  from 
a  faithful  old  colored  woman,  fur- 
nished the  two  ill-tempered  blacks  of 
our  party  with  old  swords  and  pis- 
tols, but  nothing  serious  grew  out  of 
it. 

The  weather  began  to  grow  very 
cold,  the  roads  bad,  and  traveling 
tedious.  We  encamped  one  night  in 
the  woods,  kindled  a  fire,  and  turned 
the  tails  of  the  wagons  all  inward, 
thus  forming  a  circle  around  the  fire. 
Another  night  we  came  to  a  vacant 
cabin  without  a  floor;  we  made  a 

333 


<£rrat   Ifjrart  of  %  Am^nran  iflmutuw 


large  fire,  and  all  who  chose  took 
their  bedding  and  slept  in  the  cabin, 
some  remaining  in  the  wagons.  The 
captain  and  I  had  our  beds  spread  be- 
fore the  fire. 

Camping  in  the  Forests 

of  the  Alleghany  Mountains 

One  Saturday  evening,  we  were 
apprehensive  of  being  obliged  to  en- 
camp again  in  the  woods.  I  went 
ahead,  hoping  to  find  night  quarters. 
I  rode  up  to  a  log  house  and  went  in ; 
it  was  growing  dark,  and  I  began  to 
ask  the  landlord  to  accommodate  us 
for  the  night,  addressing  myself  to  a 
tall,  lean  man.  Before  I  got  through 
with  my  inquiry,  he  caught  me  up  in 
his  arms,  as  if  I  were  merely  a  small 
child,  and  exclaimed:  "Mighty  souls! 
if  this  is  not  little  Sammy  Forman," 
and,  hugging  and  kissing  me,  added. 
"Why,  don't  you  remember  Charley 
Morgan?  Yes,  you  can  have  any- 
thing I  have,  and  we  will  do  the  best 
we  can  for  you."  This  was  some- 
where in  the  Alleghany  mountains, 
and  here  we  remained  till  Monday, 
buying  wheat,  and  sending  it  to  mill, 
and  converting  a  fat  steer  into  meat, 
so  that  we  were  well  provided  for,  for 
awhile.  This  Charley  Morgan  en- 
tered the  regular  service  as  a  corpo- 
ral in  my  brother  Jonathan's  company, 
when  he  was  a  captain,  and  raised  his 
company  in  the  vicinity  of  Middle- 
town  Point,  New  Jersey.  He  could 
ape  the  simpleton  very  well,  and  was 
sent  as  a  spy  into  the  British  army, 
and  returned  safe  with  the  desired  in- 
formation. I  was  surprised  to  meet 
him  in  this  far-off  mountain  region. 

Somewhere  about  Fort  Littleton  or 
Fort  Loudon,  our  funds  ran  out. 
When  we  left  General  Forman,  he 
told  me  that  Uncle  Ezekiel  Forman 
would  leave  Philadelphia  with  his 
family,  and  overtake  us  in  time  to 
supply  our  wants.  But  he  did  not 
start  as  soon  as  he  expected,  and  on 
his  way  in  the  mountains  the  top  of 
his  carriage  got  broken  by  a  leaning 
tree,  which  somewhat  detained  him. 

339 


so  that  we  arrived  at  Pittsburg  two 
or  three  days  before  him. 

One  morning,  while  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Fort  Littleton  or  Fort 
Loudon,  I  offered  to  sell  my  horse  to 
the  landlord  where  we  took  break- 
fast ;  he  kept  a  store  as  well  as  a  tav- 
ern, and  was  wealthy.  The  price  of 
the  horse  I  put  very  low,  when  the 
landlord  asked  why  I  offered  him  so 
cheap.  I  informed  him  that  I  was 
out  of  funds  and  had  expected  that 
Ezekiel  Forman,  who  owned  the  col- 
ored people,  would  have  overtaken  us 
before  our  means  became  exhausted. 
He  replied :  "I  know  your  uncle,  and 
I  will  lend  you  as  much  money  as  you 
need,  and  take  your  order  on  him,  as 
he  will  stop  here  on  h»'s  way.  Now, 
step  with  me  to  the  store."  Pointing 
to  the  large  piles  of  silver  dollars  on 
the  counter  in  the  store,  he  said: 
"Step  up  and  help  yourself  to  as  much 
as  you  want,  and  give  me  your  or- 
der." This  was  an  unexpected  favor. 
When  uncle  arrived,  he  satisfied  the 
order. 

It  took  nearly  three  weeks 
to  cross  Pennsylvania 

It  had  taken  us  near  three  weeks  to 
journey  from  Monmouth  to  Pitts- 
burg.  After  our  arival  at  this  place, 
our  first  business  was  to  find  situa- 
tions for  our  numerous  family,  while 
awaiting  the  rise  of  the  Ohio,  and  to 
lay  in  provisions  for  our  long  river 
voyage.  Colonel  Turnbull,  late  of 
Philadelphia,  and  an  acquaintance  of 
uncle,  politely  offered  him  the  use  of 
a  vacant  house  and  store-room,  ex- 
actly such  apartments  as  were  want- 
ed. The  colored  people  were  all  com- 
fortably housed  also. 

The  horses  and  wagons  were  sold 
at  a  great  sacrifice — uncle  retaining 
only  his  handsome  coach  horses  and 
carriage,  which  he  took  to  Natchez 
on  a  tobacco  boat,  which  Captain  Os- 
mun  commanded,  and  on  board  of 
which  the  colored  field  hands  were 
conveyed.  These  boats  were  flat- 
bottomed,  and  boarded  over  the  top, 
and  appeared  like  floating  houses. 


tn 


tppt  Halbg  tn    IfBS 


Uncle's  boat  was  a  seventy  feet  keel- 
boat,  decked  over,  with  a  cabin  for 
lodging  purposes,  but  too  low  to 
stand  up  erect.  The  beds  and  bed- 
ding lay  on  the  floor,  and  the  insides 
lined  with  plank  to  prevent  the  In- 
dians from  penetrating  through  with 
their  balls,  should  they  attack  us. 
We  had  a  large  quantity  of  dry  goods, 
and  a  few  were  opened  and  bartered 
in  payment  for  boats  and  provisions. 

On  board  of  the  keel-boat,  uncle 
and  family  found  comfortable  quar- 
ters. Mr.  and  Mrs.  Forman,  Au- 
gusta, Margaret,  and  Frances,  aged 
about  nine,  eleven,  and  thirteen,  and 
David  Forman  and  Miss  Betsey 
Church,  the  latter  housekeeper  and 
companion  for  Aunt  Forman,  an  ex- 
cellent woman,  who  had  lived  in  the 
family  several  years,  and  occasionally 
took  the  head  of  the  table.  I  and 
five  or  six  others,  two  mechanics,  and 
about  eight  or  ten  house  servants, 
were  also  occupants  of  this  boat. 

The  family  received  much  polite 
attention  while  in  Pittsburg.  By  the 
time  we  got  prepared  for  our  depart- 
ure, the  Ohio  river  rose.  We  tarried 
there  about  a  month.  Both  boats 
were  armed  with  rifles,  pistols,  etc. 
It  being  in  Indian  war  time,  all  boats 
descending  that  long  river,  of  about 
eleven  hundred  miles,  were  liable  to 
be  attacked  every  hour  by  a  merciless 
foe,  oftentimes  led  on  by  renegade 
whites. 

Embarking  at  Pittsburg  for 
a  trip  down  the  Monongahela 

Uncle  fixed  on  a  certain  Sabbath, 
as  was  the  custom  in  those  days,  to 
embark  on  ship-board.  On  that  day, 
the  polite  and  hospitable  Colonel 
Turnbull,  then  a  widower,  gave  uncle 
an  elegant  dinner,  and  invited  several 
gentlemen  to  grace  the  occasion  with 
their  presence.  After  dinner,  which 
was  not  prolonged,  we  embarked  on 
board  ouit  little  squadron.  Colonel 
William  Wyckoff.  and  his  brother- 
in-law,  Kenneth  Scudder,  of  Mon- 
mouth  county,  New  Jersey,  accompa- 
nied us  on  our  voyage.  The  colonel 


had  been,  seven  years  previous  to 
this,  an  Indian  trader,  and  was  now 
on  his  way  to  Nashville,  Tennessee. 

Uncle  Forman's  keel-boat,  Captain 
Osmun's  flat-boat,  and  Colonel 
WyckofFs  small  keel-boat  constituted 
our  little  fleet.  The  day  of  our  de- 
parture was  remarkably  pleasant. 
Our  number  altogether  must  have 
reached  very  nearly  a  hundred.  The 
dinner  party  accompanied  us  to  our 
boats,  and  the  wharf  was  covered 
with  citizens.  The  river  was  very 
high,  and  the  current  rapid.  It  was 
on  the  Monongahela  where  we  em- 
barked. 

Our  keel-boat  took  the  lead.  These 
boats  are  guided  by  oars,  seldom 
used,  except  the  steering  oar,  or 
when  passing  islands,  as  the  current 
goes  about  six  or  seven  miles  an 
hour.  As  the  waters  were  now  high, 
the  current  was  perhaps  eight  or  nine 
miles  an  hour.  Before  daybreak 
next  morning  we  made  a  narrow 
escape  from  destruction,  from  our 
ignorance  of  river  navigation.  We 
had  an  anchor  and  cable  attached  to 
our  keel-boat.  The  cable  was  made 
fast  to  small  posts  over  the  forecastle, 
where  were  fenders  all  around  the 
little  deck.  When  it  began  to  grow 
dark,  the  anchor  was  thrown  over,  in 
hopes  of  holding  us  fast  till  morning, 
while  the  other  boats  were  to  tie  up 
to  trees  along  the  river  bank. 

As  soon  as  the  anchor  fastened  it- 
self in  the  river  bottom,  the  boat  gave 
a  little  lurch  or  side  motion,  when  the 
cable  tore  away  all  the  framework 
around  the  deck,  causing  a  great 
alarm.  Several  little  black  children 
were  on  the  deck  at  the  time,  and  as  it 
had  now  become  quite  dark,  it  could 
not  be  ascertained,  in  the  excitement 
of  the  moment,  whether  any  of  them 
had  been  thrown  into  the  water. 
Fortunately  none  were  missing.  Dur- 
ing our  confusion,  Captain  Osmun's 
boat  passed  ours,  a  few  minutes  after 
the  accident,  and  we  soon  passed  him, 
he  hailing  us,  saying  that  he  was  en- 
tangled in  the  top  of  a  large  tree, 
which  had  caved  into  the  river,  and 

340 


<8r?at   ifcart  nf  1^  Amfriran  Snmtnum 


requested  the  small  row-boat  to  assist 
him.  Uncle  Forman  immediately  dis- 
patched the  two  mechanics,  with  the 
small  boat,  to  his  assistance.  Osmun 
got  clear  of  the  tree  without  injury, 
and  the  two  mechanics  rowed  hard, 
almost  all  night,  before  they  overtook 
him.  Mrs.  Forman  and  daughters 
braved  out  our  trying  situation  very 
firmly. 

After  we  lost  our  anchor,  Uncle 
Forman  took  a  chair,  and  seated  him- 
self on  the  forecastle,  like  a  pilot,  and 
I  took  the  helm.  He  kept  watch, 
notifying  me  when  to  change  the  di- 
rection of  the  boat.  When  he  cried 
out  to  me,  "port  your  helm,"  it  was  to 
keep  straight  in  the  middle  of  the 
stream;  if  to  bear  to  the  left,  he 
would  cry  out,  "starboard;"  if  to  the 
right,  "larboard."  I  was  not  able  to 
manage  the  helm  alone,  and  had  a 
man  with  me  to  assist  in  pulling  as 
directed.  Uncle  Forman  and  I  were 
the  only  ones  of  our  party  who  un- 
derstood sailor's  terms.  Ours  was  a 
perilous  situation  till  we  landed  at 
Wheeling;  it  was  the  most  distress- 
ing night  I  ever  experienced. 

Perilous  river  journey 
to  Wheeling  in  Virginia 

The  next  morning,  all  our  boats 
landed  at  Wheeling,  Virginia,  rated 
at  ninety-six  miles  from  Pittsburg. 
Here  we  obtained  a  large  steering  oar 
for  the  keel-boat,  as  the  strong  cur- 
rent kept  the  rudder  from  acting,  with- 
out the  application  of  great  strength. 
Having  adjusted  matters,  we  set  out 
again.  We  seldom  ventured  to  land 
on  our  journey,  for  fear  of  lurking 
Indians. 

One  day,  we  discovered  large  flocks 
of  wild  turkeys  flying  about  in  the 
woods  on  shore.  The  blacksmith, 
who  was  a  fine,  active  young  man, 
asked  Uncle  Forman  to  set  him  on 
shore,  and  give  him  a  chance  to  kill 
some  of  them.  The  little  boat  was 
manned,  and  taking  his  rifle  and  a 
favorite  dog,  he  soon  landed.  But  he 
had  not  been  long  on  shore,  before 
he  ran  back  to  the  river's  bank,  and 


made  signs  for  the  boat  to  come  and 
take  him  on  board.  When  safely 
among  his  friends,  he  said  that  he 
came  to  a  large  fire,  and,  from  ap- 
pearances, he  supposed  a  party  of  In- 
dians was  not  far  off.  He,  however, 
lost  his  fine  dog,  for  he  dared  not  call 
him. 

We  landed  and  stopped  at  Mari- 
etta, at  the  mouth  of  the  Muskingum, 
where  was  a  United  States  garrison. 
Some  of  the  officers  were  acquainted 
with  the  family.  It  was  a  very  agree- 
able occurrence  to  meet  with  old  ac- 
quaintances in  such  a  dreary  place. 
The  young  ladies  were  good  singers, 
and  entertained  the  officers  awhile 
with  their  vocal  music.  This  night, 
we  felt  secure  in  sleeping  away  the 
fatigues  of  the  journey.  Governor 
St.  Clair  had  his  family  here.  There 
were  a  few  other  families,  also;  but 
all  protected  by  the  troops.  I  believe 
there  was  no  other  settlement  until 
we  arrived  at  Fort  Washington,  now 
Cincinnati,  some  three  hundred  miles 
below  Marietta. 

Life  at  the  fort  where 
Cincinnati  now  stands 

A  few  hundred  yards  above  Fort 
Washington,  we  landed  our  boats, 
when  Uncle  Forman,  Colonel  Wyc- 
koff,  and  I  went  on  shore,  and  walked 
up  to  headquarters,  to  pay  our  re- 
spects to  General  Harmar,  the  com- 
mander of  our  troops  in  the  north- 
western territory.  The  general  re- 
ceived us  with  much  politeness.  As 
we  were  about  taking  leave  Q,f  him, 
he  kindly  invited  us  to  remain  and 
take  a  family  dinner  with  him,  ob- 
serving to  Uncle,  that  we  should  have 
the  opportunity  of  testing  the  deli- 
ciousness  of  what  he  may  never  have 
partaken  before — the  haunch  of  a  fine 
buffalo.  It  being  near  dining  hour, 
the  invitation  was,  of  course,  accept- 
ed. As  the  general  and  lady  were 
acquainted  with  Uncle  and  Aunt  For- 
man in  Philadelphia,  they  very  po- 
litely extended  their  kindness  by  ask- 
ing that  Uncle,  Aunt,  and  their  fam- 
ily, together  with  Colonel  WyckoflE 


9aimt*g;  in  tty 


in    1?B9 


and  Brother-in-law  Scudder  and 
Captain  Osmun,  would  spend  the  next 
day  with  them,  which  was  accepted 
with  great  pleasure.  General  Har- 
mar  directed  where  to  move  our  little 
fleet,  so  that  all  should  be  safe  under 
military  guard.  We  then  returned  to 
our  boats,  and  conveyed  them  down 
to  the  appointed  place. 

The  next  morning,  after  breakfast, 
and  after  attending  to  our  toilets,  we 
repaired  to  General  Harmar's  head- 
quarters, where  we  were  all  received 
most  cordially.  Our  company  con- 
sisted of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Forman,  their 
three  daughters,  and  Master  David 
Forman,  Miss  Church,  Captain  Os- 
mun, S.  S.  Forman,  Colonel  Wyckoff, 
and  Mr.  Scudder — eleven  in  all. 

Mrs.  Forman  and  Mrs.  Harmar  re- 
sembled each  other  as  much  as  though 
they  were  sisters.  The  general  in- 
vited some  of  his  officers  to  share  his 
hospitalities,  also,  and  we  had  a  most 
sumptuous  dinner  and  tea.  Before 
it  was  quite  dark,  we  took  leave  of 
our  hospitable  friends.  I  had  the 
honor  of  a  seat  at  the  table  next  to  the 
general.  While  at  dinner,  the  officer 
of  the  day  called  on  General  Harmar 
for  the  countersign,  so  as  to  place  out 
the  sentinels.  Captain  Kirby,  of  the 
army,  who  dined  with  us,  was  direct- 
ed by  the  general  to  accompany  us  on 
our  return  to  our  boats.  Just  before 
we  came  to  the  sentinel,  Captain 
Kirby  asked  us  to  halt,  until  he  could 
advance  and  give  the  countersign, 
which  is  done  with  much  prudence. 
I  sauntered  along,  and  happened  to 
hear  the  challenge  by  the  guard,  and 
the  reply  of  the  captain.  The  coun- 
tersign was,  I  believe,  "Forman." 

In  the  morning,  Captain  Osmun 
said  to  me,  that,  after  paying  our  re- 
spects to  General  Harmar,  he  wanted 
me  to  accompany  him  to  the  quarters 
of  the  other  officers,  as  he  probably 
knew  all  of  them ;  that  they  were  old 
continental  officers  retained  in  ser- 
vice, and  he  added:  "They  all  know 
your  brother,  Colonel  Jonathan  For- 
man, of  the  Revolution,  and  will  be 
glad  to  see  you  on  his  account."  We, 


accordingly,  after  our  interview  with 
General  Harmar,  went  to  their  quar- 
ters. They  recollected  Captain  Os- 
mun, and  he  introduced  me,  when 
they  welcomed  me  most  cordially,  and 
made  many  inquiries  after  my 
brother. 

I  think  it  was  in  the  autumn  of  1790 
that  General  Harmar  was  defeated  by 
the  Indians,  and  most  of  these  brave 
officers  were  killed.  At  that  period 
officers  wore  three-cornered  hats, 
and  by  that  means  nearly  all  of  them 
were  singled  out  and  killed,  as  they 
could  be  so  easily  distinguished  from 
others. 

Encounters  with  Indians 
along  the  Ohio  River 

Some  distance  above  Fort  Wash- 
ington, the  Scioto  river  empties  into 
the  Ohio.  Near  this  river  was  a  cave, 
which  the  whites  had  not  discovered 
till  after  Harmar's  defeat.  Here  the 
Indians  would  sally  out  against  boats 
ascending  the  Ohio.  A  canoe  passed 
us  the  day  before  we  passed  the 
Scioto,  which  had  been  fired  into  at 
that  point,  one  man  having  been  shot 
through  the  shoulder,  another 
through  the  calf  of  the  leg,  while  the 
third  escaped  unhurt.  When  these 
poor  fellows  arrived  at  Fort  Wash- 
ington, they  waited  for  us.  After  our 
arrival,  understanding  that  we  were 
going  to  tarry  a  day,  they  set  off. 
Harmar's  defeat  caused  a  French  set- 
tlement near  the  Scioto  to  be  broken 
up;  some  of  them  were  killed  by  the 
Indians. 

I  must  mention  an  anecdote  about 
my  friend,  Captain  Osmun.  At  the 
Battle  of  Long  Island,  and  capture  of 
New  York  by  the  British,  many 
American  prisoners  were  taken,  Cap- 
tain Osmun  among  them.  He  pre- 
tended to  be  a  little  acquainted  with 
the  profession  of  physic,  but  he  never 
studied  it,  and  could  bleed,  draw 
teeth,  etc.  A  German  officer  had  a 
very  sick  child,  the  case  baffling  the 
skill  of  all  the  English  and  German 
physicians,  and  the  child's  recovery- 
was  given  up  as  hopeless.  At  last  it 


©It?   (great   Ijrart  0f  ilf?  Ammran  9mninum 


was  suggested  to  call  in  the  rebel  doc- 
tor. So  Osmun  was  sent  for.  He 
suppressed  as  well  as  he  could  his 
half-comical,  half-quizzical  expres- 
sion, and  assumed  a  serious  look; 
felt  of  the  child's  pulse,  and  merely 
said  he  would  prepare  some  pills  and 
call  again.  He  accordingly  did  so, 
giving  the  necessary  directions,  and 
promised  to  call  at  the  proper  time  to 
learn  the  effect.  When  he  called  the 
third  time  the  child  had  grown  much 
better,  and  finally  recovered.  He 
said  that  all  he  did  for  the  little  suf- 
ferer was  to  administer  a  little  pow- 
der-post, mixed  up  with  rye-bread, 
made  into  little  pills.  He  said  he 
knew  they  could  do  no  harm,  if  they 
did  no  good,  and  regarded  himself  as 
only  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  the 
Almighty  in  saving  the  child's  life. 
The  father  of  the  child  gave  him 
almost  a  handful  of  guineas.  Prior 
to  this  occurrence  he  had,  while  a 
prisoner,  suffered  for  the  necessaries 
of  life,  but  thenceforward  he  was  able 
to  procure  needful  comforts  till  his 
exchange. 

Sojourning  in  Louisville 

when  it  contained  sixty  houses 

The  next  morning,  after  our  enter- 
tainment by  General  Harmar  and 
lady,  we  renewed  our  journey,  float- 
ing rapidly  down  the  Belle  Riviere. 
Nothing  of  moment  occurred  till  our 
arrival  at  Louisville,  at  the  Falls  of 
the  Ohio.  The  weather  now  grew  so 
severely  cold,  in  the  latter  part  of  Jan- 
uary, 1790,  that  the  river  became 
blocked  with  ice.  Here  we  laid  up, 
disembarked,  and  took  a  house  in  the 
village,  the  front  part  of  which  was 
furnished  for  a  store,  which  exactly 
suited  us,  and  which  was  gratui- 
tously offered  to  Uncle  Forman  by  a 
Mr.  Rhea,  of  Tennessee.  We  were 
remarkably  fortunate  in  this  respect, 
both  here  and  at  Pittsburg. 

Here  I  opened  a  store  from  our 
stock  of  goods,  and  took  tobacco  in 
payment,  which  was  the  object  in 
bringing  the  merchandise.  Louis- 
ville then  contained  about  sixty  dwell- 

343 


ing-houses.  Directly  opposite  was 
Fort  Jefferson,  which  was,  I  believe, 
only  a  captain's  command.  At  the 
Great  Miami  was  Judge  Symmes's 
settlement,  which  dragged  heavily 
along  at  that  time,  having  been 
allowed  only  a  sergeant's  command 
for  its  protection. 

Besides  Symmes,'  there  was  na 
other  settlement  between  Cincinnati 
and  Louisville,  except  that  of  a 
French  gentleman  named  Lacas- 
sangue,  a  few  miles  above  Louisville, 
who  began  a  vineyard  on  the  Indian 
side  of  the  river ;  and  one  day  Indians 
visited  it,  killing  his  people,  and  de- 
stroying his  vines.  Mr.  Lacassangue 
was  a  polite,  hospitable  man,  and  gave 
elegant  dinners. 

A  nephew  of  Mrs.  Washington  of 
the  name  of  Dandridge  lived  with 
Mr.  Lacassangue.  When  I  returned 
to  Philadelphia,  I  there  met  him 
again;  he  resided  at  General  Wash- 
ington's. While  the  Dandridge  fam- 
ily stayed  at  Louisville,  they  received 
much  attention.  It  was  the  custom 
of  the  citizens,  when  any  persons  of 
note  arrived  there,  to  get  up  a  ball  in 
their  honor.  They  would  choose 
managers;  circulate  a  subscription 
paper  to  meet  the  expenses  of  the 
dance.  Every  signer,  except  stran- 
gers, must  provide  his  partner,  see 
her  safe  there  and  home  again. 

Holding  a  ball  in  Kentucky 
to  raise  funds  to  travel 

We  had  scarcely  got  located  before 
a  subscription  paper  was  presented  to 
Uncle  Forman  and  myself.  But  the 
first  ball  after  our  arrival  proved  a 
failure,  owing  to  the  inclemency  of 
the  weather,  so  that  no  ladies  could 
attend.  General  Wilkinson  happened 
in  town,  and  though  he  and  Uncle 
Forman  stayed  but  a  little  while,  the 
young  blades  were  disposed  for  a 
frolic.  Some  time  before  this  a  ball 
was  tendered  to  General  St.  Clair, 
when  the  youngsters  had  a  row,  and 
destroyed  the  most  of  the  breakable 
articles  that  the  house  afforded.  But 


in  %  ifttteaiaHippi  Hallnj  in    17 B3 


such  instances  of  rudeness  occurred 
only  when  no  ladies  were  present. 

Not  long  after  the  failure  on  ac- 
count of  the  weather,  the  scheme  for 
a  dance  was  renewed,  and,  at  length, 
we  had  an  elegant  collection  of  south- 
ern fair.  The  ball  was  opened  by  a 
minuet  by  Uncle  Forman  and  a 
southern  lady — Aunt  Forman  did  not 
dance.  This  was  the  last  time,  I  be- 
lieve, that  I  saw  that  elegant  dance 
performed.  Then  two  managers 
went  around  with  numbers  on  paper 
in  a  hat — one  going  to  the  ladies,  the 
other  to  the  gentlemen.  When  the 
manager  calls  for  lady  number  one, 
the  lady  drawing  that  number  stands 
up,  and  is  led  upon  the  floor,  await- 
ing for  gentleman  number  one,  who, 
when  called,  takes  his  place,  and  is  in- 
troduced by  the  manager  to  the  lady. 
So  they  proceed  with  the  drawing  of 
couples  until  the  floor  is  full  for  the 
dance. 

I,  in  my  turn,  was  drawn,  and  in- 
troduced to  my  dancing  partner  from 
Maryland,  and  we  were  called  to  the 
first  dance.  This  lady  happened  to 
be  acquainted  with  Uncle  Forman's 
oldest  son,  General  Thomas  Marsh 
Forman,  which  circumstance  ren- 
dered our  casual  meeting  all  the  more 
agreeable.  The  officers  of  the  garri- 
son over  the  river  generally  attended, 
and  they  brought  the  military  music 
along.  I  became  well  acquainted  with 
the  officers.  Dr.  Carmichael,  of  the 
army,  used  often  to  come  over  and  sit 
in  my  store. 

Adventures  with  Savages 
at  mouth  of  the  Cumberland 

It  was  the  last  of  February,  I  be- 
lieve, when  Uncle  Forman  and  his  lit- 
tle fleet  took  their  departure  from 
Louisville,  destined  for  the  Natchez 
country.  The  river  was  now  free 
from  ice.  There  subsequently  came 
a  report,  that  when  they  reached  what 
was  called  the  low  country,  below  the 
Cumberland  and  Tennessee  rivers, 
they  were  captured  by  the  Indians. 
I  was  in  a  painful  suspense  for  a  long 
time,  and  until  I  heard  from  them. 


While  Uncle  Forman  and  party 
were  sojourning  in  Louisville,  there 
was,  it  appears,  a  white  man  there, 
who  learned  the  names  of  Ezekiel 
Forman  and  Captain  Osmun,  their 
place  of  destination,  and  all  about 
them.  This  fellow  was  a  decoyer, 
who  lived  among  the  Indians,  and 
whose  business  it  was  to  lure  boats 
ashore  for  purposes  of  murder  and 
robbery.  At  some  point  below  the 
mouth  of  the  Tennessee,  this  rene- 
gade saw  the  boats  approaching,  ran 
on  the  beach,  imploring,  upon  his 
bended  knees,  that  Mr.  Forman,  call- 
ing him  by  name,  would  come  ashore 
and  take  him  on  board,  as  he  had  just 
escaped  from  the  Indians.  Mr.  For- 
man began  to  steer  for  his  relief, 
when  Captain  Osmun,  who  was  a  lit- 
tle way  in  the  rear,  hailed  Uncle, 
warning  him  to  keep  in  the  middle  of 
the  stream,  as  he  saw  Indians  in  hid- 
ing behind  trees  along  the  bank  where 
the  wily  decoyer  was  playing  his 
treacherous  part.  Giving  heed  to 
this  admonition,  Uncle  Forman  kept 
clear  of  the  dangerous  shore. 

Then  an  old  Indian,  finding  that 
his  plot  was  exposed,  ran  down  to  the 
beach,  hailing  the  boats:  "Where  you 
go?"  It  is  not  clear  what  could  have 
been  the  Indian's  motive  in  making  a 
display  of  himself,  and  seeking  the  in- 
formation already  known  to  his  rene- 
gade associate.  But  for  the  circum- 
stance of  Captain  Osmun  being  in  the 
rear,  and  discovering  the  exposed  In- 
dians screened  behind  trees,  the  whole 
party  might  have  been  lured  on  shore 
and  massacred.  It  seems  that,  after 
boats  entered  the  Mississippi,  they 
were  not  molested  by  the  Indians,  as 
they  were  not  at  war  with  the  Span- 
iards. 

I  was  left  in  Louisville,  with  a  store 
of  goods.  When  I  had  disposed  of 
them,  I  was  directed  to  join  Uncle 
Forman  at  Natchez;  but  some  con- 
siderable time  was  necessary  to  trade 
off  my  stock,  and  convert  it  into  to- 
bacco. I  spent  my  time  very  pleas- 
antly at  Louisville.  The  southern 
people  are  remarkably  friendly  to 

344 


nf 


Am^riran  inminum 


strangers.  One  family,  in  particular, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ashby,  were  as  kind  to 
•me  as  though  I  had  been  their  own 
son.  They  soon  called  on  Uncle  and 
Aunt  Forman,  showing  all  possible 
attention,  and  soon  became  quite  fa- 
miliar. 

One  day,  Mr.  Ashby  called,  and  in- 
•quired  of  Aunt  for  "old  Mr.  For- 
man." "I  tell  you,  Mr.  Ashby,"  Mrs. 
Forman  laughingly  replied,  "you 
shall  not  call  my  husband  old.  Please 
to  refer  to  him  as  Mr.  Forman,  and 
our  nephew  as  Mr.  Sam.  Forman." 
Mr.  Ashby  took  the  suggestion  in 
good  part,  and  promised  ready  obedi- 
ence. After  Uncle  and  Aunt  For- 
man left  for  the  Natchez  country, 
Mrs.  Ashby  would  come  to  my  store 
like  a  mother,  and  inquire  into  the 
condition  of  my  lodgings,  and  sent 
bed  and  bedding,  and  had  a  kind  old 
woman  examine  my  trunk,  taking 
out  all  my  clothing,  first  airing  and 
then  nicely  replacing  them,  and  kindly 
did  all  my  washing  during  my  stay. 
Mr.  Ashby  had  a  farm  a  little  way 
out  of  town,  but  he  and  his  family 
came  in  very  often.  Mrs.  Ashby 
never  came  without  making  me  a 
motherly  call,  and  looking  over  my 
clothing  to  see  if  any  repairs  were 
needed.  I  never  parted  with  briefly- 
made  acquaintances  with  so  much  re- 
gret. 

Social  Life  In  the  Wilderness 
and  customs  of  the  pioneers 

I  became  every  intimate  with  a  Mr. 
Smith,  from  New  York,  a  young  gen- 
tleman about  my  own  age.  The  Vir- 
ginians, as  were  most  of  the  Louis- 
ville people,  were  very  fond  of  danc- 
ing. Smith  and  I  agreed  to  let  each 
other  know  when  a  hop  was  in  agita- 
tion, and  they  were  very  frequent. 
When  notified  by  him  of  one  such 
occasion,  I  apologized  for  not  being 
able  to  go,  as  I  had  no  suitable  pumps. 
"You  have  purchased,"  said  he,  "a 
parcel  of  elegant  moccasins  for  your 
New  York  ladies.  You  don  a  pair 
and  I  will  another."  "Good!  good!" 
we  mutually  ejaculated.  So  we  en- 

345 


gaged  our  favorite  partners,  and  at- 
tended the  ball.  It  was  something 
new  to  appear  in  such  an  assembly 
decked  off  in  such  Indian  gear;  but 
they  were  much  admired,  and,  at  the 
next  dance,  almost  all  appeared  in 
moccasins.  So,  it  seems,  we  led  the 
town,  and  introduced  a  new  fashion. 

There  was  but  one  tavern  and  one 
boarding-house  in  the  place.  The 
boarding-house  was  kept  by  a  Dr. 
Walter,  who  was  also  the  pilot  to 
take  boats  over  the  Falls ;  and  he 
was,  moreover,  a  great  hunter  and 
fisherman.  One  day  in  April,  I  think, 
a*  some  public  festival,  several  of  our 
boarders,  the  leader  was  the  Com- 
missary of  the  Army,  proposed  to 
have  what  they  called  a  setting,  and 
asked  me  to  join  them.  I  had  often 
heard  the  commissary  relate  his  ex- 
ploits— drinking  egg-nog  was  then 
all  the  go.  I  declined  to  share  in  the 
frolic,  fearing  the  influence  of  these 
southern  blades  on  such  occasions. 
In  the  course  of  the  night,  I  was 
alarmed  by  the  rattling  of  stones 
thrown  against  my  store-door  and 
window-shutters.  At  first,  I  thought 
it  might  be  Indians.  The  clatter  was 
kept  up,  and  the  glass  windows  all 
broken.  I  finally  concluded  that  it 
was  the  work  of  the  egg-nog  party. 
Not  only  were  my  windows  com- 
pletely shattered,  but  my  store  door 
was  broken  open  by  the  pelting  of 
large  stones. 

These  egg-nog  disturbers  served 
Captain  Thomas,  the  landlord,  in  the 
same  way  as  they  had  done  me.  The 
next  morning,  when  we  all  met  at  the 
breakfast  table  at  our  boarding-house, 
scarcely  a  word  was  spoken  during 
the  meal.  As  I  went  out  of  the  door, 
passing  my  friend,  the  commissary,  I 
asked  him  if  he  would  direct  my  win- 
dows glazed,  and  some  little  carpen- 
ter work  done.  He  pretended  to  be 
astonished  how  they  should  have  been 
broken.  I  made  no  reply,  but  walked 
back  to  my  store,  only  looked  at  him 
and  smiled.  In  the  afternoon,  at 
Captain  Thomas's,  the  business  as- 
sumed almost  a  tragical  form— dirks 


in 


tot 


were  nearly  drawn;   however,  it  was 
amicably  settled. 

The  next  morning  these  gentlemen 
asked  me  if  I  would  be  satisfied  if  my 
windows  and  door  were  made  whole. 
I  answered  in  the  affirmative,  and 
asked  them  whether  they  had  not 
acted  very  imprudently,  situated  as 
we  were  on  the  frontiers  in  time  of 
Indian  warfare.  "You  know,"  said 
I,  "that  it  was  but  a  little  time  since 
that  Captain  Thomas  and  some  others 
saw  Indians  in  the  night  making,  as 
they  supposed,  for  my  store,  when  I 
kept  it  up  by  Bear  Grass  creek;  and 
a  few  people  got  together  in  the  night, 
and  followed  the  Indian  trail  out  of 
the  village  without  alarming  me.  The 
Indians  evidently  thought  themselves 
discovered,  and  retired,  hence  I  es- 
caped. In  consequence  of  this  alarm, 
I  immediately  moved  from  that  place 
to  the  center  of  the  village,  into  the 
corner  building  opposite  the  tavern." 

Experiences  of  a  merchant 
on  the  American  Frontier 

It  was  observed  one  Sunday  morn- 
ing, soon  after  starting  my  store,  that 
it  was  not  opened  on  that  day,  as 
other  establishments  were;  and  I  was 
asked  why  I  kept  my  store  closed — 
that  Sunday  had  not  crossed  the 
mountains,  and  that  I  was  the  first 
person  who  kept  his  store  shut  on  that 
day.  I  told  them  that  I  brought  the 
Sabbath  with  me.  It  so  happened 
that  I  had  the  honor  of  being  the  first 
to  observe  the  day  in  Louisville. 

Directly  opposite  to  me  a  billiard 
table  was  kept.  It  was  customary  at 
the  South  for  ladies  to  indulge  in  bil- 
liards, considering  it  a  genteel  and 
healthful  amusement.  During  the 
morning  hours,  a  few  ladies  used  to 
honor  me  with  a  call,  when  I  would 
spend  a  little  while  in  that  pleasant 
recreation;  but  I  never  gambled,  and 
ladies'  company  is  always  more 
agreeable  than  gentlemen's.  Besides, 
if  you  play  with  gentlemen,  it  is  apt 
to  lead  to  gambling;  and  it  was  con- 
sequently better  to  pay  for  the  use  of 
the  table  with  ladies,  when  one  im- 


proves in  manners  from  their  refine- 
ment. 

One  day  Captain  Thomas  brought 
a  little  negro  boy  to  my  store,  tender- 
ing me  his  services  while  I  remained 
in  Louisville ;  that  he  should  be  of  no 
expense  to  me,  but  live  at  home,  and 
come  over  regularly  and  do  my 
chores,  tote  water,  sweep  my  store, 
clean  my  shoes,  etc.  The  captain  ex- 
plained that  he  had  another  boy  of 
about  the  same  age  and  size,  and  that 
one  was  better  than  both.  I  had  a 
spruce  colored  barber,  who  was  also 
a  tailor,  the  pleasure  of  whose  com- 
pany I  occasionally  had  in  helping 
out  in  my  labors. 

Some  time  about  the  latter  part  of 
May,  perhaps,  four  tobacco  boats 
arrived  at  Louisville  on  their  way  to 
New  Orleans,  under  the  respective 
command  of  Captain  Andrew  Bayard, 
Captain  Winters,  and  Captain  Gano, 
of  New  York,  and  Captain  January, 
of  Kentucky.  Captain  Bayard's  boat 
received  some  injury  in  passing  over 
the  Falls  of  the  Ohio,  and  he  had  to 
unload  to  repair  damages.  I  had 
been  some  time  negotiating  with  a 
rich  planter,  Mr.  Buckner,  of  Louis- 
ville. After  I  had  heard  of  the  acci- 
dent to  Captain  Bayard's  boat,  Mr. 
Buckner  came  into  the  village.  I 
got  him  in  my  store,  locked  the  door, 
and  told  him  that  now  was  the  time  to 
close  our  long-talked-of  trade,  so  that 
I  could  have  the  company  of  this  de- 
scending fleet.  After  spending  the 
night  in  conversation,  I  gave  up  my 
bed  to  Mr.  Buckner,  and  threw  down 
some  blankets  and  coarse  clothes  for 
my  own  lodging. 

To  make  a  long  story  short,  we 
effected  a  trade — closing  out  my  store 
of  goods  to  him.  He  bought  me  a 
tobacco  boat,  loaded  her  with  this 
product  of  the  country,  and  got  mat- 
ters and  things  arranged  so  that  I  was 
ready  to  accompany  the  descending 
fleet.  Of  these  tobacco  traders,  I  was 
partially  acquainted  with  Mr.  Bayard. 
I  had  at  Louisville  a  competitor  in 
trade,  a  young  Irish  gentleman,  but 
he  could  not  succeed. 

346 


(great   lj£art  nf  ilf*  Ameriran  inmtnum 


The  Beginning  of  Commerce 
along  the  Ohio  River 

My  boat  was  loaded  below  the 
Falls,  and  by  some  means  the  hands 
suffered  her  to  break  from  her  fas- 
tenings, and  went  a  mile  or  two  down 
stream  before  they  brought  her  to.  I 
put  my  blanket  on  board  of  Mr.  Bay- 
ard's boat,  and  got  on  board  with 
him,  and  took  my  tea  with  him.  In 
the  evening,  being  moonlight,  my 
canoe,  with  an  old  sailor,  came  for 
me.  I  took  some  blankets  and 
wrapped  them  around  my  arms  care- 
lessly. I  jumped  into  the  canoe ;  and 
the  sailor,  it  seems,  had  taken  a  little 
too  much  whiskey,  so  that  when  he 
pushed  off  from  Mr.  Bayard's  boat, 
in  order  to  clear  its  bow,  he  leaned 
over  so  far  as  to  make  the  canoe  dip 
water;  and,  in  recovering  his  posi- 
tion, he  leaned  so  far  the  other  way 
that  the  canoe  filled.  My  arms  being 
entangled  with  the  blankets,  I  was  to- 
tally helpless.  Mr.  Bayard's  hands 
jumped  into  their  small  boat,  came  to 
my  rescue,  and  saved  me  from  a 
watery  grave. 

Partly  from  economy,  and  partly 
from  lack  of  time  to  secure  another 
hand,  I  attempted  to  manage  my  to- 
bacco boat,  which  was  somewhat 
smaller  than  the  usual  size,  with  less 
than  the  usual  supply  of  boatmen. 
This  made  it  come  hard  on  me,  whose 
unskilled  strength  was  but  half  of 
that  of  an  ordinary  man.  I  had  this 
old  sailor  with  me  for  one  watch,  and 
an  old  northwestern  man  and  a  Jer- 
seyman  for  another.  The  boats 
would  follow  the  current,  except 
when  passing  islands,  when  the  men 
must  all  beat  their  oars.  I  believe  the 
old  sailor,  while  on  board,  was  a  little 
deranged.  After  I  discharged  him 
at  Natchez,  he  was  found,  I  was  told, 
in  the  woods,  dead. 

Nothing  of  any  moment  occurred 
while  descending  the  Ohio,  until  we 
reached  Fort  Massac,  an  old  French 
fortification,  about  thirty  miles  above 
the  mouth  of  the  Ohio.  Tt  was  a 
"beautiful  spot.  All  of  the  captains, 

347 


and  some  of  the  hands,  with  a  small 
boat,  went  on  shore,  while  our  to- 
bacco boats  glided  gently  along. 
When  we  landed,  we  separated  in 
squads,  and  visited  the  old  deserted 
ramparts,  which  appeared  quite  fresh. 
It  was  in  the  afternoon,  just  after  a 
refreshing  shower.  Those  first  arriv- 
ing at  the  intrenchment,  espied  a  fresh 
moccasin  track.  We  all  looked  at  it, 
and  then  at  each  other,  and,  without 
uttering  a  word,  all  faced  about,  and 
ran  as  fast  as  possible  for  the  little 
boat.  Some  hit  its  locality,  while 
others  struck  the  river  too  high  up, 
and  others,  too  low. 

Those  of  us  who  missed  our  way 
concluded,  in  our  fright,  that  the  In- 
dians had  cut  us  off ;  and  no  one  had 
thought  to  take  his  rifle  but  me,  and 
I  feared  that  I  should  be  the  first  to 
fall.  After  we  were  all  safe  on  one 
of  the  tobacco  boats,  we  recovered 
our  speech,  and  each  one  told  how  he 
felt,  and  what  he  thought,  during  our 
flight  to  the  boats.  This  locality  of 
Fort  Massac,  we  understood,  was  the 
direct  way  from  the  Ohio,  in  that 
country,  to  St.  Louis,  and  probably 
the  track  we  saw  was  that  of  some 
lonely  Indian;  and,  judging  from  its 
freshness,  the  one  who  made  it  was 
as  much  frightened  from  our  numbers 
as  we  were  at  our  unexpected  dis- 
covery. 

I  will  note  a  little  circumstance  that 
occurred  during  our  passage  down 
the  Ohio.  One  day,  I  was  ahead  of 
the  fleet,  when  one  of  the  boats  passed 
by  suddenly,  when  we  observed  by  the 
woods  that  we  were  standing  still — 
evidently  aground,  or  fast  on  some- 
thing below  the  surface.  I  gave  no- 
tice to  the  boats  behind  to  come  on, 
and  take  position  between  my  boat 
and  shore,  hoping,  by  this  means,  to 
raise  a  temporary  swell  in  the  river, 
and,  by  fastening  a  rope  to  my  boat, 
and  extending  along  beside  the 
others,  and  making  the  other  end  fast 
to  a  tree  on  shore,  be  enabled  to  get 
loose. 

While  thus  engaged,  we  heard  a 
whistle,  like  that  of  a  quail.  Some 


in 


n 


observed  that  quail  never  kept  in  the 
woods,  and  we  felt  some  fear  that  it 
might  be  Indians;  but  we  continued 
our  efforts  at  the  rope,  and  the  boat 
was  soon  so  far  moved  that  we  dis- 
covered that  we  were  fast  upon  a 
planter — that  is,  the  body  of  a  tree 
firmly  embedded  in  the  river  bottom. 
At  last,  the  men  could  partly  stand 
upon  it,  and,  with  a  hand-saw,  so 
weakened  it  that  it  broke  off,  and  we 
were  released. 

Another  dangerous  obstruction  is  a 
tree  becoming  undermined  and  falling 
into  the  river,  and  the  roots  fastening 
themselves  in  the  muddy  bottom, 
while,  by  the  constant  action  of  the 
current,  the  limbs  wear  off,  and  the 
body  keeps  sawing  up  and  down  with 
great  force,  rising  frequently  several 
feet  above  the  water,  and  then  sinking 
as  much  below.  These  are  called 
"sawyers,"  and  often  cause  accidents 
to  unsuspecting  navigators. 

On  the  Mississippi  River 
with  a  fleet  in  1790 

When  we  arrived  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Ohio,  we  stopped.  I  fastened  my 
boat  to  trees,  and  the  other  boats  did 
likewise.  We  kept  watch,  with  an  ax 
in  hand,  to  cut  the  fastenings  in  case 
of  a  surprise  by  Indians.  Here  were 
marks  of  buffalo  having  rested. 
Where  the  waters  of  the  Mississippi 
and  Ohio  mingle,  they  look  like  put- 
ting dirty  soap-suds  and  pure  water 
together.  So  we  filled  all  our  vessels 
that  were  water-tight,  for  fear  we 
might  suffer  for  want  of  good  water 
on  our  voyage.  But  we  found  out, 
afterward,  that  the  Mississippi  was 
very  good  water,  when  filtered. 

After  we  got  all  arranged,  the  sec- 
ond day  after  we  embarked,  the  cap- 
tains agreed  that  we  would,  in  rota- 
tion, dine  together,  which  rendered 
our  journey  more  pleasant.  Mr. 
Bayard's  and  my  boat  were  frequently 
fastened  together  while  descending 
the  Ohio,  but  on  the  Mississippi,  from 
the  turbulence  of  the  stream,  it  was 
not  possible  to  do  so.  The  first  day 
that  we  entered  the  Mississippi,  we 


discharged  all  our  rifles  and  pistols, 
as  we  were  then  out  of  danger  from 
the  hostile  Indians.  In  the  after- 
noon, we  had  a  strong  wind  ahead, 
which  made  a  heavy  sea,  accompanied 
with  thunder  and  lightning.  The 
waves  ran  so  high  that  we  felt  in  dan- 
ger of  foundering.  The  forward 
boat  pulled  hard  for  shore,  which  we 
all  followed. 

Presently,  we  saw  an  Indian  canoe 
pulling  for  that  boat.  I  asked  my 
northwestern  man  what  that  meant. 
He  looked  wild,  but  did  not  know 
what  to  make  of  it.  I  directed  the 
men  to  pull  away,  and  I  would  keep 
an  eye  upon  the  suspicious  visitors, 
and  at  the  same  time  load  our  rifles 
and  pistols  again.  Reaching  the  ad- 
vanced boat,  the  Indians  were  kindly 
received,  and  no  fighting;  and,  in- 
stead of  hostile  demonstrations,  they 
lent  a  hand  in  rowing. 

After  much  hard  work,  we  at 
length  all  effected  a  landing  in  safety. 
We  then  prepared  for  dinner.  It  so 
happened  that  it  was  my  turn  to  re- 
ceive the  captains  at  dinner.  Having 
a  large  piece  of  fresh  beef — enough 
and  to  spare,  I  invited  three  of  our 
copper-faces  to  dine  with  us.  Dinner 
ever,  Captain  Gano  set  the  example 
of  pitching  the  fork  into  the  beef,  as 
we  used,  in  our  school  days,  to  pitch 
the  fork  into  the  ground.  So  the  In- 
dians, one  after  the  other,  imitated 
the  captain,  and  very  dextrously 
pitched  their  forks  also  into  the  beef, 
thinking,  probably,  that  it  was  a  white 
man's  ceremony  that  should  be  ob- 
served. 

After  dinner,  at  the  conclusion  of 
the  pitching  incident,  I  mixed  some 
whiskey  and  water  in  the  only  glass 
I  had,  and  handed  it  to  one  of  the 
captains;  and  then  repeating  it,  fill- 
ing the  tumbler  equally  alike  in  quan- 
tity, handed  it  in  succession  to  the 
others.  When  I  came  to  the  Indians, 
not  knowing  their  relative  rank,  I 
happened  to  present  the  glass  to  the 
lowest  in  order,  as  I  discovered  by 
his  declining  it;  but  when  I  came  to 
the  leader,  he  took  the  offering,  and 

348 


(Srrat   lj?art  nf  ilj?  Am^rtran  Snmwum 


reaching  out  his  hand  to  me  in  a  gen- 
teel and  graceful  manner,  shook  mine 
heartily;  and  then  repeated  the  cor- 
dial shake  with  each  of  the  others, 
not  omitting  his  own  people,  and  then 
drank  our  healths  as  politely,  I  imag- 
ine, as  Lord  Chesterfield  could  have 
fully  acknowledged  the  compliment, 
done.  The  other  Indians  were  simi- 
larly treated,  and,  in  turn,  as  grace- 
They  all  appeared  much  pleased  with 
their  reception. 

This  ceremony  over,  our  men  asked 
leave  to  visit  the  opposite  side  of  the 
river,  where  these  Indians  had  a  large 
encampment.  This  granted,  they  all 
went  to  get  their  rifles.  The  Indians 
seemed  to  understand  etiquette  and 
politeness,  and  objected  to  the  men 
going  armed.  But,  instead  of  speak- 
ing to  the  men,  they  addressed  the 
captains  of  the  boats,  saying:  "We 
have  no  objections  to  your  men  going 
among  our  people,  if  they  don't  take 
their  rifles.  We  came  among  you  as 
friends,  bringing  no  arms  along." 
We,  of  course,  told  our  men  to  leave 
their  rifles  behind.  They  did  so. 
Returning,  they  reported  that  there 
were  a  good  many  Indians  there.  By 
some  means,  some  of  our  men  must 
have  let  the  Indians  have  la  tafia — a 
cheap  variety  of  rum  distilled  from 
molasses.  At  all  events,  they  became 
very  much  intoxicated,  "and  we,"  said 
the  visitors,  "were  very  apprehensive 
of  difficulty ;  but  a  squaw  told  us  that 
the  Indians  could  not  fight,  as  she  had 
secreted  all  their  knives,  and  we  were 
very  much  relieved  when  morning 
appeared,  so  we  could  bid  good-by  to 
our  new  acquaintances." 

Entertained  by  a  Spanish 
grandee  in  the  New  America 

The  next  day  we  arrived  at  L'  Anse 
a  la  Graisse,  which  place,  or  adjoin- 
ing it,  bears  the  name  of  New 
Madrid,  which  is  the  American  part 
of  the  little  village  settled  under  the 
auspices  of  Colonel  George  Morgan. 
Uncle  Forman  wrote  me  by  all  means 
to  call  at  this  Spanish  post,  as  he  had 
left  my  name  with  the  genteel  com- 

349 


mandant  there,  who  would  expect  to 
see  me.  In  the  morning,  after  break- 
fast, we  all  prepared  our  toilets  pre- 
paratory to  paying  our  respects  to  the 
officer  of  the  place.  The  captains  did 
me  the  honor  of  making  me  the  fore- 
man of  the  party,  as  my  name  would 
be  familiar  to  the  commandant.  I  re- 
gret that  I  have  forgotten  his  name. 
We  made  our  call  at  as  early  an  hour 
as  we  could,  so  that  we  might  pursue 
our  voyage  without  any  unnecessary 
waste  of  time. 

Arrived  at  the  gate,  the  guard  was 
so  anxious  to  trade  his  tame  raccoon 
with  our  men  that  he  scarcely  took 
any  notice  of  us.  We  went  to  head- 
quarters ;  there  was  as  little  cere- 
mony. When  we  were  shown  into 
the  commander's  presence,  I  stepped 
toward  him  a  little  in  advance  of  my 
friends,  and  announced  my  name.  I 
was  most  cordially  and  familiarly  re- 
ceived. Then  I  introduced  my 
friends,  mentioning  their  respective 
places  of  residence.  After  a  little 
conversation,  we  rose  to  retire,  when 
the  commandant  advanced  near  me, 
and  politely  asked  me  to  dine  with 
him  an  hour  after  twelve  o'clock,  and 
bring  my  accompanying  friends  with 
me.  I  turned  to  the  gentlemen  for 
their  concurrence,  which  they  gave, 
when  we  all  returned  to  our  boats. 

I  then  observed  to  my  friends  that 
the  commandant  would  expect  some 
present  from  us — such  was  the  cus- 
tom— and  what  should  it  be?  Mr. 
Bayard,  I  believe,  asked  me  to  sug- 
gest some  thing  in  our  power  to  ten- 
der. I  then  remarked,  that,  as  we 
had  a  plenty  of  good  hams,  that  we 
fill  a  barrel,  and  send  them  to  our 
host ;  that  they  might  prove  as  accept- 
able as  anything.  The  proposition 
met  the  approval  of  all,  and  the  hams 
were  accordingly  sent  at  once,  with 
perhaps  an  accompanying  note. 

At  one  hour  after  twelve  o'clock,  I 
well  remember,  we  found  ourselves 
comfortably  seated  at  the  hospitable 
board  of  the  Spanish  commandant, 
who  expressed  much  delight  at  re- 
ceiving our  fine  present.  He  gave  us 


tn 


in 


an  elegant  dinner  in  the  Spanish  style, 
and  plenty  of  good  wine  and  liquors, 
and  coffee  without  cream.  The  com- 
mandant, addressing  me,  while  we 
were  indulging  in  the  liquids  before 
us,  said  that  we  must  drink  to  the 
health  of  the  ladies  in  our  sweet 
liquors.  "So,"  said  he,  "we  will 
drink  the  health  of  the  Misses  For- 
man" — my  worthy  cousins,  who  had 
preceded  us  in  a  visit  to  this  garrison. 

Through  the  open  woods  with 
a  coach-and-four  to  St.  Louis 

After  dinner,  the  commandant  in- 
vited us  to  take  a  walk  in  the  fine 
prairies.  He  said  he  could  drive  a 
coach-and-four  through  these  open 
woods  to  St.  Louis.  There  came  up 
a  thunder-storm  and  sharp  lightning, 
and  he  asked  me  what  I  called  that  in 
English,  and  I  told  him,  when  he 
pleasantly  observed:  "You  learn  me 
to  talk  English,  and  I  will  learn  you 
French."  Returning  to  headquar- 
ters, we  took  tea,  and  then  got  up  to 
take  our  final  leave.  "Oh,  no!"  said 
he,  "I  can't  spare  you,  gentlemen. 
I'm  all  alone.  Please  to  come  to- 
morrow, one  hour  after  twelve,  and 
dine  again  with  me."  So,  at  the  ap- 
pointed time,  we  were  on  hand  again. 
The  same  kind  hospitality  was  ac- 
corded us  as  on  the  preceding  day. 

In  the  evening,  we  thought  we 
should  surely  tender  the  last  farewell. 
But  no ;  we  must  come  again,  for  the 
third  day,  to  enjoy  his  good  company 
and  delightful  viands.  That  even- 
ing, there  was  a  Spanish  dance,  all 
common  people  making  up  the  com- 
pany— French,  Canadians,  Spaniards, 
Americans.  The  belle  of  the  room 
was  Cherokee  Katy,  a  beautiful  little 
squaw,  dressed  in  Spanish  style,  with 
a  turban  on  her  head,  and  decked  off 
very  handsomely.  On  these  occa- 
sions, a  king  and  queen  were  chosen 
to  be  sovereigns  for  the  next  meeting. 
The  commandant  was  asked  to  honor 
them  by  taking  a  partner,  and  sharing 
in  the  mazy  dance,  which,  of  course, 
he  declined;  and  we  also  had  an  in- 
vitation, but  declined  also.  The  com- 


mandant said  he  always  went  to  these 
happy  gatherings,  and  sat  a  little 
while,  and  once,  he  added,  he  played 
a  little  while  on  his  own  violin,  for  his 
own  and  their  amusement. 

He  expressed  much  regret  at  part- 
ing with  us.  He  said  he  was  so  lone- 
some. He  was  a  man  not  over  thirty, 
I  suppose,  highly  accomplished,  and 
spoke  pretty  good  English.  I  fear 
he  was,  in  after  years,  swallowed  up 
in  the  earthquake,  which  destroyed 
many;  among  them,  I  believe,  a  Mr. 
Morris,  who  was  a  brother  to  Mrs. 
Hurd;  a  Mr.  Lintot,  from  Natchez, 
who  was  a  passenger  with  me  from 
New  Orleans  to  Philadelphia. 

On  our  entering  the  Mississippi,  we 
had  agreed  that  the  foremost  boat 
should  fire  a  gun  as  a  token  for  land- 
ing, if  they  saw  a  favorable  spot  after 
the  middle  of  the  afternoon.  It  was 
not  possible  to  run  in  safety  during 
the  night.  It  so  happened  that  every 
afternoon  we  had  a  thunder  shower 
and  head  wind. 

Nothing  special  occurred,  I  believe, 
till  our  arrival  at  Natchez.  There 
was  no  settlement  from  L'Anse  a  la 
Graisse  to  Bayou  Pierre,  something 
like  sixty  miles  above  Natchez.  At 
Bayou  Pierre  lived  Colonel  Bruin,  of 
the  Virginia  Continental  line,  who, 
after  the  war,  took  letters  from  Gene- 
ral Washington  to  the  governor  of 
that  country  while  it  belonged  to 
Spain,  and  secured  a  fine  land  grant. 
I  once  visited  Colonel  Bruin,  with  a 
gentleman  from  Natchez.  That  sec- 
tion of  country  is  remarkably  hand- 
some, and  the  soil  rich.  The  colonel's 
dwelling-house  was  on  the  top  of  a 
large  mound,  and  his  barn  on  another, 
near  by.  These  mounds  are  com- 
mon in  the  Ohio  and  Mississiopi 
countries,  and  no  tradition  gives  their 
origin. 

While  in  Louisville,  I  bought  a 
young  cub  bear,  and  kept  him  chained 
in  the  back  room  of  my  store.  He 
was  about  a  month  or  two  old  when  I 
got  him;  and  when  I  went  down  the 
river,  I  took  him  along  to  Natchez. 
When  twelve  or  fifteen  months  old,  he 

350 


(Sreat   i[*art  0f  tty  Ammran  inmtnum 


became  very  saucy;  I  only  could 
keep  him  in  subjection.  When  he  be- 
came too  troublesome,  Uncle  Forman 
had  him  killed,  and  invited  several 
gentlemen  to  join  him  in  partaking  of 
his  bear  dinner. 

<•  Drum  beat  to  arms  "  when 
travelers  stopped  at  Natchez 

When  our  little  fleet  of  five  boats 
first  came  in  sight  of  the  village  of 
Natchez,  it  presented  quite  a  formid- 
able appearance,  and  caused  a  little 
alarm  at  the  fort;  the  drum  beat  to 
arms,  but  the  affright  soon  subsided. 
About  this  time,  a  report  circulated 
that  General  somebody,  I  have  for- 
gotten his  name,  was  in  Kentucky 
raising  troops  destined  against  that 
country ;  but  it  all  evaporated. 

Natchez  was  then  a  small  place, 
with  houses  generally  of  a  mean 
structure,  built  mostly  on  the  low 
bank  of  the  river,  and  on  the  hillside. 
The  fort  was  on  a  handsome,  com- 
manding spot,  on  the  elevated 
ground,  from  which  was  a  most  ex- 
tensive view  up  the  river,  and  over 
the  surrounding  country.  The  gov- 
ernor's house  was  not  far  from  the 
garrison.  Uncle  Forman  had  at  first 
hired  a  large  house,  about  half-way 
up  the  hill  from  the  landing,  where 
he  lived  until  he  bought  a  plantation 
of  five  hundred  acres  on  the  bank  of 
St.  Catherine's  creek,  about  four 
miles  from  Natchez.  This  he  re- 
garded as  only  a  temporary  abode, 
until  he  could  become  better  acquaint- 
ed with  the  country.  The  place  had 
a  small  clearing  and  a  log  house  on 
it,  and  he  put  up  another  log  house 
to  correspond  with  it,  about  fourteen 
feet  apart,  connecting  them  with 
boards,  with  a  piazza  in  front  of  the 
whole.  The  usual  term  applied  to 
such  a  structure  was  that  it  was  "two 
pens  and  a  passage."  This  connect- 
ing passage  made  a  fine  hall,  and  alto- 
gether gave  it  a  good  and  comfort- 
able appearance. 

Boards  were  scarce,  and  I  do  not 
remember  of  seeing  any  saw  or  grist  • 
mills  in  the  country.  Uncle  Forman 

351 


had  a  horse-mill,  something  like  a 
cider-mill,  to  grind  corn  for  family 
use.  In  range  with  his  dwelling  he 
built  a  number  of  negro  houses,  some 
distance  off,  on  the  bank  of  St.  Cath- 
erine's creek.  It  made  quite  a  pretty 
street.  The  little  creek  was  extremely 
convenient.  The  negroes  the  first 
year  cleared  a  large  field  for  tobacco, 
for  the  cultivation  of  that  article  was 
the  object  of  Mr.  Forman's  migra- 
tion to  that  country. 

Allotting  vast  plantations 
to  settlers  in  Mississippi 

After  my  arrival,  and  while  so- 
journing at  Natchez,  Uncle  Forman 
asked  me  if  I  intended  to  apply  to  the 
government  for  lands.  I  replied  that 
I  did  not  want  any.  He  said  he  was 
glad  of  it,  unless  I  remained  in  the 
country.  He  hinted  something  to  the 
effect  that  one  of  the  Spanish  officers, 
who  talked  of  leaving  the  country, 
had  an  elegant  plantation,  with  ne- 
groes for  its  cultivation,  and  he 
thought  of  buying  it,  if  I  would  stay 
and  take  it;  that  if  I  took  land  of 
government,  and  sold  out,  it  might 
give  umbrage  to  the  governor,  and  I, 
being  a  relation,  he  suffer  by  it.  I 
told  him  my  father  was  loath  to  let 
me  come  away,  and  I  promised  that 
I  would  return  if  my  life  was  spared 
me. 

After  this,  Surveyor-General  Dun- 
bar,  much  to  my  surprise,  called  on 
me,  and  said  that  he  brought  the  sur- 
vey and  map  of  my  land,  and  present- 
ed a  bill  of  sixty  dollars  for  his  ser- 
vices. I  told  him  that  I  had  not 
asked  for  land,  nor  had  Governor 
Gayoso  ever  said  anything  to  me 
about  land,  nor  did  I  want  any.  Gen- 
eral Dunbar  replied  that  the  governor 
directed  him  to  survey  for  Don  Sam- 
uel S.  Forman  eight  hundred  acres 
of  land,  and  that  it  was  the  best  and 
most  valuable  tract  that  he  knew  of 
in  the  district,  including  a  beautiful 
stream  of  water,  with  a  gravelly  bot- 
tom— rare  in  that  country;  that  it 
was  well  located,  near  a  Mr.  Ellis,  at 
the  White  Cliffs,  and  advised  me  by 


in  tip 


Balbg  tn 


all  means  to  take  it.  Uncle  Forman 
happened  to  be  absent,  and  I  was  in 
doubt  what  to  do.  At  last  I  paid  the 
bill  and  took  the  papers.  The  largest 
quantity  that  the  Spanish  govern- 
ment gave  to  a  young  man  who  set- 
tled in  that  country  was  two  hundred 
and  forty  acres,  so  the  governor 
showed  much  friendship  by  compli- 
menting me  with  so  large  a  grant. 

I  must  go  back  a  little,  and  state 
that  my  good  traveling  companions, 
Messrs.  Bayard,  Gano,  Winters,  and 
January,  parted  from  me,  and  con- 
tinued their  journey  down  the  river. 
Uncle  Forman  had  been  acquainted 
with  Mr.  Bayard,  in  Philadelphia, 
and  their  meeting  in  a  distant  and 
foreign  country  was  very  gratifying. 
The  interview  was  very  brief,  for 
Mr.  Bayard  and  associates  were 
anxious  to  pursue  their  voyage. 

Southern  Hospitality  and 
Aristocracy  of  old  Louisiana 

At  Natchez  we  made  many  agree- 
able acquaintances.  Governor  Gayoso, 
a  bachelor,  was  very  affable  and 
pleasant,  and  had  an  English  educa- 
tion. The  fort-major,  Stephen 
Minor, was  a  Jerseyman  from  Prince- 
ton, and  Mr.  Hutchins,  a  wealthy 
planter,  was  a  brother  to  Thomas 
Hutchins,  the  geographer-general  of 
the  United  States.  His  wife  was  a 
Conover,  from  near  Freehold  village, 
and  knew  more  about  Freehold  than 
I  did.  Also  a  Mr.  Moore,  a  wealthy 
planter,  Mr.  Bernard  Lintot,  who 
moved  from  Vermont  before  the  war, 
and  Mr.  Ellis,  a  wealthy  planter — all 
having  large  families,  sons  and 
daughters,  very  genteel  and  accom- 
plished. These  all  lived  from  eight 
to  fourteen  miles  from  us. 

In  the  village  of  Natchez  resided 
Monsieur  and  Madam  Mansanteo— 
Spanish  Jews,  I  think — who  were  the 
most  kind  and  hospitable  of  people. 
These  families,  in  town  and  country, 
formed  our  principal  associates.  Gov- 
ernor Gayoso  told  us,  after  we  moved 
out  to  St.  Catherine,  that  there  would 
always  be  a  plate  for  us  at  his  table. 


The  year  1790  was  a  very  sickly 
one  for  unacclimated  persons  in  the 
Natchez  country.  All  our  family 
adults  had  more  or  less  fever,  and 
fever  and  ague.  Uncle  Forman  was 
severely  afflicted  with  gout — a  lump 
almost  as  big  as  a  small  hen's  egg 
swelled  out  at  one  of  his  elbows,  with 
something  of  the  appearance  of  chalk. 
Poor  Betsey  Church  was  taken  with 
a  fever,  and  died  in  a  few  days;  a 
great  loss  to  the  family,  having  been 
a  valuable  and  much  respected  mem- 
ber of  it  for  many  years.  I  was  the 
only  adult  of  the  family  who  was  not 
confined  to  the  house  with  sickness. 

Stephen  Minor,  the  fort-major, 
married  the  eldest  daughter  of  the 
planter,  Mr.  Ellis.  Our  family  was 
much  visited  by  the  Spanish  officers, 
who  were  very  genteel  men;  and 
Major  Minor  was  very  intimate,  and 
seemed  to  take  much  interest  in  us. 

When  the  time  was  fixed  for  my 
departure,  by  the  way  of  New  Or- 
leans, and  thence  by  sea  to  Philadel- 
phia, Uncle  Forman  said :  "Well,  you 
must  direct  Moses,  the  coachman,  to 
get  up  the  carriage,  take  two  of  your 
cousins  with  you,  and  take  leave  of 
all  your  good  friends."  The  car- 
riage, which  had  its  top  broken  off 
crossing  the  mountains  in  Pennsylva- 
nia, had  been  fitted  up  in  Natchez, 
with  neat  bannister  work  around  the 
top  of  the  body,  which  rendered  it 
more  convenient  for  the  country. 
We  sometimes  took  the  family  in  it, 
and  went  out  strawberrying  over  the 
prairies. 

First  four-wheeled  carriage 
tour  in  Mississippi  Country 

Cousins  Augusta  and  Margaret 
accompanied  me  on  my  farewell  tour. 
Ours  was  the  first  four-wheeled  car- 
riage that  ever  passed  over  those 
grounds — I  can't  say  roads,  for  the 
highway  was  only  what  was  called  a 
bridle-path — all  traveling  at  that  day 
was  on  horseback.  When  we  vis- 
ited one  place,  some  of  our  friends 
from  another  locality  meeting  us 
there  would  ascertain  the  day  we  de- 


35» 


(Srrat   ijeart  nf  tty  Ameriratt  Somtnum 


signed  visiting  their  house,  that  they 
might  have  the  cane-brakes  along  the 
trail  cleared  away  sufficient  to  permit 
the  comfortable  passage  of  the  car- 
riage; and  we  must,  moreover,  be  on 
time,  or  some  small  gust  of  wind 
might  again  obstruct  the  passage. 
Our  visits  were  all  very  pleasant  save 
the  unhappy  part  of  the  final  bidding 
each  other  farewell. 

During  this  excursion,  Governor 
Gayoso  had  given  permission  for  a 
Baptist  clergyman  to  preach  one  Sun- 
day, which  was  the  first  time  a  Prot- 
estant minister  had  been  allowed  to 
hold  religious  services.  The  meeting 
was  held  at  Colonel  Hutchins'.  We 
went  from  the  residence  of  some 
friends  in  that  vicinity.  After  ser- 
vice we  were  invited  to  stay  and  dine 
at  Colonel  Hutchins'.  When  we 
were  ready  to  depart,  all  came  out  of 
the  house  to  see  us  off,  and  I  asked 
the  ladies  in  a  jocose  way  to  join  us 
in  the  ride,  when  they  began  to  climb 
over  the  wheels  as  though  they  might 
endanger  the  safety  of  the  carriage ; 
but  this  frolicsome  banter  over,  we 
took  our  departure.  We  spent  seve- 
ral days  in  performing  this  friendly 
round  of  visits — by-gone  days  of  hap- 
piness never  to  return. 

When  I  was  about  leaving  the 
country,  Governor  Gayoso  asked  me 
what  I  intended  to  do  with  my  land. 
I  replied,  that  if  I  did  not  return  in  a 
year  or  two,  that  his  excellency  could 
do  what  he  pleased  with  it.  Some 
years  after  when  I  lived  in  Cazenovia, 
I  contemplated  going  back,  and  went 
to  my  large  chest,  which  had  traveled 
with  me  from  Pittsburgh  to  New 
Orleans,  and  thence  in  all  my  tramps 
and  changes,  where  I  supposed  all 
my  Spanish  papers  were  safe  in  a  lit- 
tle drawer;  but,  to  my  surprise,  they 
were  missing,  and  I  never  could  tell 
what  became  of  them,  as  I  kept  the 
chest  locked,  and  retained  the  key. 
So  vanished  my  eight  hundred  acres 
of  valuable  land  in  the  promising 
Mississippi  country. 

On  the  arrival  of  Colonel  Wyckoff, 
with  his  brother-in-law,  Scudder, 


from  Tennessee,  preparations  were 
made  for  our  departure.  Uncle  For- 
man  went  down  to  New  Orleans  with 
us.  It  was  in  June,  1791,  I  believe, 
that  we  left  Natchez.  The  parting 
with  my  kindred  was  most  trying  and 
affecting,  having  traveled  and  haz- 
arded our  lives  together  for  so  many 
hundred  miles,  and  never  expecting 
to  meet  again  in  this  life.  Many  of 
the  poor  colored  people,  too,  came 
and  took  leave  of  me,  with  tears 
streaming  down  their  cheeks.  Take 
them  altogether,  they  were  the  finest 
lot  of  servants  I  ever  saw.  They 
were  sensible  that  they  were  all  well 
cared  for — well  fed,  well  clothed,  well 
housed,  each  family  living  separately, 
and  they  were  treated  with  kindness. 
Captain  Osmun,  their  overseer,  was  a 
kind-hearted  man,  and  used  them 
well.  They  had  ocular  proof  of  their 
happy  situation  when  compared  with 
their  neighbor's  servants.  It  was  the 
custom  of  the  country  to  exchange 
work  at  times;  and,  one  day,  one  of 
our  men  came  to  me,  and  said:  "I 
don't  think  it  is  right  to  exchange 
work  with  these  planters;  for  I  can, 
with  ease,  do  more  work  than  any 
two  of  their  men;"  and  added,  "their 
men  pound  their  corn  over  night  for 
their  next  day's  supply,  and  they  are 
too  weak  to  work."  Poor  fellows, 
corn  was  all  they  had  to  eat. 

In  New  Orleans  before  it 
was  an  American  town 

Uncle  Forman  and  I  stopped  the 
first  night  with  Mr.  Ellis,  at  the 
White  Cliffs,  and  next  day  embarked 
on  board  of  a  boat  for  New  Orleans. 
On  our  way  down  we  sometimes  went 
on  shore  and  took  a  bowl  of  chocolate 
for  breakfast  with  some  rich  planter, 
a  very  common  custom  of  the  coun- 
try. The  night  before  our  arrival  at 
New  Orleans  we  put  up  with  a  Cath- 
olic priest;  some  gentlemen  of  our 
company  were  well  acquainted  be- 
tween Natchez  and  New  Orleans,  and 
had  learned  the  desirable  stopping 
places.  The  good  priest  received  us 
kindly,  gave  us  an  excellent  supper, 


353 


3l0nrn*g  in  tff?  JHtestsBtppt 


in    17  BS 


plenty  of  wine,  and  was  himself  very 
lively.  We  took  breakfast  with  him 
the  next  morning;  and  before  our  de- 
parture the  priest  came  up  to  me  with 
a  silver  plate  in  his  hand,  on  which 
were  two  fine-looking  pears,  which  he 
tendered  me.  He  looked  at  first  very 
serious;  but,  remembering  his  good 
humor  the  previous  evening,  I  sus- 
pected his  fun  had  not  yet  all  run 
out.  I  eyed  him  pretty  close,  and 
while  thanking  him,  I  rather  hesi- 
tated when  he  urged  me  to  take  them. 
I  knew  no  pears  grew  in  that  coun- 
try. I  finally  took  one,  weighed  it  in 
my  hand,  and  looked  at  him,  till  he 
bursted  out  into  a  loud  laugh.  They 
were  ingeniously  wrought  out  of 
stone  or  marble,  and  looked  exactly 
like  pears.  I  brought  them  home  and 
gave  them  to  a  friend. 

Arriving  in  New  Orleans,  we  took 
lodgings,  and  our  first  business  was 
to  wait  on  his  excellency,  Governor 
Miro.  Mr.  Forman  settling  within 
his  government  with  so  large  a  num- 
ber of  people,  under  an  arrangement 
with  the  Spanish  ambassador  at  New 
York,  Don  Diego  de  Gardoque,  gave 
him  a  high  standing.  Uncle  Forman 
was  in  person  a  fine-looking  man, 
very  neat,  prepossessing,  and  of  gen- 
teel deportment,  so  that  he  was 
always  much  noticed. 

On  brig  "Navarre"  homeward 
bound— Off  Florida  and  Cuba 

As  there  was  then  no  vessel  in  port 
destined  for  the  United  States,  I  had 
to  delay  a  couple  of  weeks  for  one. 
At  length  the  brig  "Navarre,"  Cap- 
tain McFadden,  made  its  appearance, 
and  soon  loaded  for  Philadelphia. 
There  were  a  number  of  Americans 
in  waiting,  who  engaged  their  pas- 
sage with  me,  on  this  vessel.  Uncle 
Forman  did  not  leave  the  city  until 
after  the  "Navarre"  had  taken  its  de- 
parture. He  suggested  that  I  should 
take  a  formal  leave  of  Governor  Miro 
and  his  secretary,  Don  Andre.  The 
.secretary  was  a  large,  fine-looking 


man.  I  politely  asked  him  if  he  had 
any  commands  for  the  cape — Cape 
Francois,  a  fine  town  in  the  northern 
part  of  St.  Domingo,  usually  digni- 
fied with  the  designation  of  the  The 
Cape — for  which  port,  I  believe,  the 
vessel  cleared.  "I  know  not,"  said 
the  secretary,  "to  what  cape  you  are 
going — only  take  good  care  of  your- 
self." 

After  all  were  on  board,  the  brig 
dropped  down  two  or  three  miles, 
where  the  passengers  went  ashore, 
and  laid  in  provisions,  enough,  the 
captain  said,  to  have  carried  us  to 
London  after  our  arrival  in  Philadel- 
phia. I  may  mention  something 
about  distances  as  computed  in  those 
days.  From  Natchez  to  New  Orleans 
was  called  three  hundred  miles  by 
water,  and  only  one  hundred  and  fifty 
by  land.  From  New  Orleans  to  the 
Balize,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, was  reckoned  one  hundred  and 
five  miles.  It  was  said  that  such  was 
the  immense  volume  of  the  Missis- 
sippi river  that  it  kept  its  course  and 
muddy  appearance  for  a  league  out 
at  sea. 

There  were  no  ladies  among  the 
passengers.  We  entered  into  an 
arrangement  that  each  passenger 
should,  in  rotation,  act  as  caterer  for 
the  party  for  each  day.  It  fell  to  my 
lot  to  lead  off  in  this  friendly  service. 
We  got  along  very  nicely,  and  with  a 
good  deal  of  mirthful  pleasure,  for  a 
couple  of  weeks,  enjoying  our  viands 
and  wine  as  comfortably  as  if  at  a 
regular  boarding-house.  The  cap- 
tain's wife,  however,  was  something 
of  a  drawback  to  our  enjoyment. 
She  was  a  vinegary-looking  creature, 
and  as  cross  and  saucy  as  her  looks 
betokened,  was  low-bred,  ill-tem- 
pered, and  succeeded  in  making  her- 
self particularly  disagreeable.  Dur- 
ing the  pleasant  weather  portion  of 
our  voyage,  she  managed,  without 
cause,  to  raise  a  quarrel  with  every 
passenger;  and  what  added  to  her 
naturally  embittered  feeling,  was  that 
we  only  laughed  at  her  folly. 

354 


0f 


Ammratt  iamttunn 


In  Philadelphia  after  nearly 
two  years'  travel  In  America 

When  we  arrived  in  sight  of  Cuba, 
the  wind  arose,  and  blew  almost  a 
hurricane,  causing  a  heavy  sea.  We 
were  in  such  danger  of  being  cast 
away  on  the  Florida  reefs  that  the 
captain  summoned  all  hands  on  deck 
for  counsel.  But,  providentially,  we 
escaped.  For  near  two  weeks  no 
cooking  could  be  done,  and  each  one 
was  thankful  to  take  whatever  he 
could  obtain  in  one  hand,  and  hold 
fast  to  something  with  the  other,  such 
was  the  rolling  and  pitching  of  our 
frail  vessel.  Most  of  the  passengers 
were  sea-sick;  I  was  among  the  few 
who  escaped  from  that  sickening 
nausea.  One  night  the  rain  was  so 
heavy,  the  lightning  so  vivid,  and 
thunder  so  tremendous,  that  the  ves- 
sel trembled  at  every  clap;  when  I 
went  to  my  friend  Wyckoff,  as  well 
as  others  who  were  asleep,  informing 


them  that  it  was  a  moment  of  no  little 
danger  and  excitement. 

Captain  McFadden  was  a  most 
profane  man.  But  during  the  hours 
of  our  distress  and  danger  he  be- 
came very  mild  and  humble,  but  it 
lasted  no  longer  than  the  storm.  The 
vinegary  Mrs.  McFadden,  too,  was 
very  sensibly  affected  during  this  try- 
ing period ;  for,  standing  in  the  com- 
panion-way, leading  to  the  cabin,  she 
very  humbly  and  demurely  said  that 
she  would  go  below  and  make  her 
peace.  We  all  thought  she  could 
not  be  too  quick  about  it.  She  was  a 
veritable  Katharine,  but  he  was  not  a 
Petruchio. 

Before  we  arrived  at  the  capes  of 
the  Delaware,  an  American  sailor, 
who  had  made  his  escape  from  a  Brit- 
ish man-of-war  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Mississippi,  sickened  and  died  on 
board  our  craft.  When  we  got  into 
the  Delaware,  the  sailors  took  his  re- 
mains on  shore  and  gave  them  a  de- 
cent sepulture.  At  length  we  reached 
Philadelphia  in  safety. 


VOTE  TO  PROSECUTE  NON-CHURCH  GOERS  IN  1644 

Record  of  an  Election  at  a  General  Town  Meeting  in  Salem,  Massachusetts,  in  1644,  at  which 
John  Porter  and  Jacob  Barney  are  appointed  to  preserve  the  Sabbath  Day— Barney  was  a 
prominent  land  owner,  served  as  selectman,  and  member  of  the  General  Court  at  Boston 

Transcript    from    Original    Record    Contributed    by    MRS.     S.     L.     GRIFFITH    of 

Danby,  Vermont 

Voted: — "At  a  General  Towne  Meetinge  held  the  seventh  day  of  the 
fifth  moneth  1644.  Ordered  that  twoe  be  appointed  every  Lord's  Day  to 
walke  forth  in  the  time  of  Gods  Worshippe,  to  take  notice  of  such  as 
either  lye  about  the  Meetinge  House  without  attending  to  the  word  or 
ordinances,  or  that  lye  at  home  or  in  the  fields  without  giving  good  account 
thereof  and  (ask)  to  take  the  names  of  such  persons  and  present  them  to 
the  Magistrate  whereby  they  may  be  accordingly  proceeded  against. 
John  Porter  and  Jacob  Barney  were  the  twoe  appointed  as  watch  for  the 
eleventh  day.  Then  to  begin  with  Goodman  Porter  next  the  Meetinge 
House  and  so  to  goe  through  the  Towne  according  to  the  order  of  the 
watch,  and  the  first  2  give  the  next  2  warning  of  it  &  so  from  tyme  to 
tyme." 


355 


THE    RED    MAN    PLEADING  "FOR    HIS    RIGHTS    BEFORE    THE    WHITE   INVADER 
From  rare  wood  engravings  published  by  William  James  Hamersley  of  Hartford,  Connecticut,  in  1851 

356 


Aitortiturro  in  Ammran 


Etfr 

of  a  fltonfrr  3Fur  GJrabrr 

and  ifte  Exurfoiiimifl  tutu  tljr  Urmntr 

JJarta  of  Ihr  2Criti  World  J*  ijnui  Amrrtran  Suainrea 

Jnattnrt  Cro  tlf?  Wag  for  CttitUzatUm  ^  Arroratr  erancrrtpt 

from  an  almoat  3no«tjin*rablr  &annarri|rt  of  Rrrrntlg  Biaronrrro   Journal 

BT 

SIR   PETER   POND 

A  FOCNDIB  OF  THB  FAMOUS  NORTHWEST  FlJB  TRUST  IN  1783 


life  story  of  a  pioneer 
fur  trader  in  the  savage 
lands  of  Northwest 
I  I  America  takes  one  into 
the  confidence  of  a  man 
who  took  a  leading  part 
in  the  first  great  trade 
war  on  the  Western  Continent.  With 
his  pen  he  carries  one  into  the  ac- 
quaintance of  some  of  the  most  rug- 
ged men  that  the  world  has  ever 
known — "men  who  had  passed  years 
remote  from  civilized  society,  among 
distant  and  savage  tribes,  and  who 
had  wonders  to  recount  of  their  wide 
and  wild  peregrinations,  their  hunt- 
ing exploits,  and  their  perilous  es- 
capes from  the  Indians.  These  were 
called  coura<r,y  de  fcoiy,  rangers  of  the 
woods;  originally  men  who  had  ac- 
companied the  Indians  in  their  hunt- 
ing expeditions,  and  made  themselves 
acquainted  with  remote  tracts  and 
tribes;  and  who  now  became,  as  it 
were,  peddlers  of  the  wilderness. 
Sometimes  they  sojourned  for  months 
among  them,  assimilating  their  tastes 
and  habits  with  the  happy  facility  of 
Frenchmen,  adopting  in  some  degree 
the  Indian  dress,  and  not  infrequently 
taking  to  themselves  Indian  wives. 
Many  of  these  coureurs  de  bois  be- 
came so  accustomed  to  the  Indian 
mode  of  living,  and  the  perfect  free- 
dom of  the  wilderness,  that  they  lost 
all  relish  for  civilization,  and  identi- 
fied themselves  with  the  savages 
among  whom  they  dwelt,  or  could 
only  be  distinguished  from  them  by 
superior  aptitude  for  licentiousness." 


As  Washington  Irving  says:  "Ri- 
valships  and  jealousies  ensued.  Trade 
was  injured  by  artifices  to  outbid  and 
undermine  each  other.  The  Indians 
were  debauched  by  the  sale  of  spiritu- 
ous liquors.  Bloody  feuds  took  place 
between  rival  trading  parties  when 
they  happened  to  encounter  each 
other  in  the  lawless  depths  of  the  wil- 
derness. To  put  an  end  to  these  sor- 
did and  ruinous  contentions,  several 
of  the  principal  merchants  entered 
into  a  partnership  in  the  winter  of 
1783,  which  was  augmented  by  amal- 
gamation with  a  rival  company  in 
1787.  Thus  was  created  the  famous 
'Northwest  Company,'  which  held  a 
kind  of  feudal  sway  over  a  vast  do- 
main of  lake  and  forest." 

"Sir"  Peter  Pond,  from  whose 
original  manuscript  now  in  posses- 
sion of  Mrs.  Nathan  Gillette  Pond  of 
Milford,  Connecticut,  this  chapter  is 
recorded,  was  born  in  that  commu- 
nity in  1740,  and  became  one  of  the 
creators  of  the  famous  Northwest 
Company,  which  might  be  called  the 
first  trust  organized  in  the  New 
World,  and  which  "for  a  time  held 
lordly  sway  over  the  wintry  lakes  and 
boundless  forests  of  the  Canadas 
almost  equal  to  that  of  the  East  India 
Company  over  the  voluptuous  climes 
and  magnificent  realms  of  the  Orient." 

To  preserve  the  individuality  of  the 
man,  his  keenness  and  observation 
and  his  quaintness  as  story-teller,  the 
phonetic  spelling  is  here  maintained 
and  the  manuscript  recorded  as  he 
leaves  it. 


&tnrg    0f  a   Jftntt^r    Jur 

HE  ancient  journal  of  "Sir"  Peter  Pond  is  browned  with  age.  It  is 
with  much  difficulty  that  the  words  inscribed  can  be  made  intelli- 
gible.  Its  opening  pages  tell  the  story  of  his  boyhood,  his  experi- 
•  I  ences  in  the  early  wars  in  America,  and  of  how  he  turned  his  atten- 
J  tion  to  the  seas,  "thinking  to  make  it  my  profession,"  in  1761.  He 
returned  from  his  first  voyage  to  find  that  his  father  had  gone  on  a 
trading  journey  to  Detroit  and  his  mother  had  died  during  the 
absence.  He  was  obliged  to  give  up  the  idea  of  going  to  sea,  and  settled  down 
at  home  to  take  charge  of  a  young  family  of  brothers  and  sisters  until  his  father 
returned.  This  occupied  three  years  and  he  relates  that  it  was  the  only  three 
years  of  his  life  that  he  was  in  one  place  from  the  time  he  was  sixteen  years  of 
age  to  sixty. 

The  first  years  of  his  adventures  in  the  Great  Northwest  are  here  related  in 
his  own  words : 

At  ye  End  of  the  three  years  I  went  into  trade  first  at  Detroit.  I  Continued 
in  trade  for  Six  years  in  Differant  Parts  of  that  Countrey  But  Beaing  Exposed 
to  all  Sorts  of  Companey.  .  It  Hapend  that  a  parson  who  was  in  trade  himself 
to  Abuse  me  in  a  Shamefull  manner  Knowing  that  if  I  Resented  he  Could 
shake  me  in  Peaces  at  same  time  supposing  that  I  Dare  not  Sea  him  at  the  Pints 
or  at  Leas  I  would  not  But  the  Abuse  was  too  Grate.  We  met  the  Next  Morn- 
ing Eairley  &  Dischargd  Pistels  in  which  the  Pore  fellowe  was  unfortenat  I 
then  Came  Down  the  Countrey  &  Declard  the  fact  But  thare  was  none  to  Pros- 
acute  me. 

I  then  Made  a  ture  to  ye  West  Indees  &  on  my  Return  Home  I  Receaved  a 
Letter  from  a  Gentleman  in  New  York  to  Com  Down  and  Sea  him  for  he  was 
Desiras  to  Go  into  Partner  Ship  with  me  in  trade.  I  Complyde  and  we  Lade 
in  a  cargo  to  the  amount  of  four  thousand  Six  Hundred  Pounds  &  I  went  In 
to  the  Entearer  Part  of  the  Countrey  first  to  Mishlemackanack  from  thenst  to 
the  Mississippey  and  up  Sant  Peters  River  &  into  the  Plains  Betwene  the 
Mississippey  &  the  Miseurea  and  Past  my  Winter  among  the  Nattawayse- 
ase  on  such  food  as  thay  made  yous  of  themselves  which  was  Verey  darteyaly 
Cooked. 

The  Next  is  to  Show  the  Way  of  Convance  of  these  Goods  to  the  Most  Re- 
mot  Parts  of  ye  Countrey  for  that  Year  or  Season.  In  the  first  Plase  thay  ware 
Shipt  at  New  York  for  allbaney — from  thens  thay  ware  taken  fourteen  Miles 
By  Land  to  Sconacaday  in  wagons — then  Shipt  on  Bord  Battoes  &  taken  up  the 
Mohawk  River  to  fort  Stanwix — thare  Carread  a  Mile  By  Land  with  the 
Boates  and  Put  in  to  Woodcrick  &  from  thens  threw  the  Onida  Lake  &  Down 
those  waters  to  Lake  Ontarey  &  Coasted  along  the  South  Side  of  that  Lake 
till  thay  came  to  Nagarey  &  from  the  Landing  Plase  a  few  Miles  South  of 
that  fort  thay  warewith  the  Battoes  Caread  a  Cross  that  Caring  Place  about 
Nine  Miles — then  Put  in  to  the  Waters  that  Com  out  of  Lake  Erey  into  Lake 
Ontarey  at  a  Plase  Cald  Fort  Slosser — from  that  the  boats  ware  taken  to  a 
small  fort  Cald  fort  Erey  in  the  North  Side  of  Lake  Erey — then  Coasting  along 
South  Side  of  that  Lake  til  thay  Com  to  the  Mouth  of  that  River — then  up  to 
Detroit — from  thens  up  those  waters  to  Lake  St.  Clair  a  small  one  about  four- 
teen Miles  Long — from  thens  Pros  these  waters  which  Com  out  of  Lake  Huron 
you  come  to  that  Lake  and  Coasting  a  Long  the  West  Sid  of  it  about  five 
Hundred  Miles  thay  Cam  to  Mishlamacknack  that  Lay  on  that.  On  the  South 
Side  of  a  Strate  Betwene  Lake  Huron  &  Mishagan  thare  was  a  British  Gara- 
son  whare  all  the  traders  asembled  yearley  to  arang  thare  afaires  for  the  In- 
sewing  Winter  But  I  Did  not  Acompany  my  Goods  myself — Left  that  Part  to 
my  Partner  Mr.  Graham.  I  wanted  Som  Small  artickels  in  the  Indian  way  to 
Compleat  my  asortment  which  was  not  to  be  had  in  New  York.  I  thare  foure 

358 


in  ilf*  Ammratt 


took  my  Boate  threw  Lake  George  &  threw  Lake  Champlain  to  Montreal  whare 
I  found  all  I  wanted.  This  was  in  the  Spring  1773.  Thare  was  a  number  of  Ca- 
noes fiting  for  Mishlemacanac.  I  agread  With  Isac  Tod  a  Sgr  to  take  my  Goods 
in  his  Cannoe  on  fraight  and  Imbarkt  with  him  &  James  McGill  Esq.  in  one  of 
his  Canoes  and  Seat  of  from  Lashean  for  Mackinac  By  way  of  the  Grand  River. 
As  you  Pass  the  End  of  the  Island  of  Montreal  to  Go  in  a  Small  Lake  Cald  the 
Lake  of  the  .  .  .  Mountains  thare  Stans  a  Small  Roman  Church  Aganst  a  Small 
Raped.  This  Church  is  Dedacated  to  St.  Ann  who  Protects  all  Voigers.  Heare 
is  a  small  Box  with  a  Hole  in  the  top  for  ye  Reseption  of  a  little  Money  for 
the  Hole  father  or  to  say  a  small  Mass  for  those  Who  Put  a  small  Sum  in 
the  Box.  Scars  a  Voiger  but  stops  hear  and  Puts  in  his  mite  and  By  that 
Meanes  thay  Suppose  thay  are  Protected.  While  absent  the  Church  is  not 
Locked  But  the  Money  Box  is  well  Secured  from  theaves.  After  the  Sarmony 
of  Crossing  them  selves  and  Repeating  a  Short  Prayer  we  Crost  the  Lake  and 
Enterd  the  Grand  River  so  Cald  which  Lead  us  to  the  Waters  which  Corns  in 
to  that  River  from  the  Southwest.  We  ascended  these  waters  &  Making  Som 
Careing  Places  we  Came  to  a  Small  Lake  Cald  Nipasank  whose  Waters  fall 
into  Lake  Huron  By  the  french  River.  We  Desended  that  River  and  Coasted 
along  the  North  Side  of  that  Lake  til  we  Came  Oppaseat  to  Mackenac  —  then 
Crost  the  Streat  to  the  Garrasson  where  I  found  my  Goods  from  New  York 
Had  Arived  Safe.  Hear  I  Met  with  a  Grate  meney  Hundred  People  of  all 
Denominations  —  Sum  trading  with  the  tribes  that  Came  a  Grate  Distans  with 
thare  furs,  Skins  &Mapel  Suga  &c  to  Market.  To  these  May  be  added  Dride 
Venson,  Bares  Greas,  and  the  Like  which  is  a  Considerable  Part  of  trade. 
Others  ware  Imployd  in  Making  up  thare  Equipments  for  to  Send  in  to  the 
Different  Parts  of  the  Country  to  Pas  the  Winter  with  ye  Indan  tribes  and 
trade  what  thay  Git  from  the  Hunt  of  ye  Winter  Insewing.  I  was  one  of  this 
Discription.  I  Divided  my  Goods  into  twelve  Parts  and  fited  out  twelve  Larg 
Canoes  for  Differant  Part  of  the  Mississippy  River.  Each  cannew  was  mad 
of  Birch  Bark  and  white  Leader  thay  would  Carry  seven  Thousand  wate. 

A  Description  of  Macenac  —  This  Place  is  Kept  up  by  a  Capts.  Command  of 
British  which  were  Lodged  in  Good  Barracks  within  the  Stockades  whare 
thare  is  Som  french  Bildings  &  a  Commodious  Roman  Church  whare  the  french 
inhabitants  &  Ingasheas  Go  to  Mass.  Befoar  it  was  given  up  to  the  British 
thare  was  a  french  Missenare  astablished  hear  who  Resided  for  a  number  of 
years  hear.  While  I  was  hear  thare  was  None  But  traveling  One  who  Corns 
sometimes  to  mak  a  Short  stay  But  all  way  in  the  Spring  when  the  People 
ware  ye  Most  numeras  then  the  Engashea  often  went  to  Confes  &  git  absolu- 
tion. I  had  the  next  winter  with  me  one  who  was  Adicted  to  theaving  —  he 
took  from  me  in  silver  trinkets  to  the  amount  of  ten  Pound  But  I  got  them 
agane  to  a  trifle.  In  the  spring  we  found  one  of  those  Preasts  at  Mackenac 
who  was  Duing  wonders  among  the  People.  My  young  Man  Babtist  who  had 
Comited  the  theft  Heard  of  it  from  his  Comrads  who  Had  Bin  to  Confess.  His 
Consans  smit  him  &  He  Seat  of  to  Confess  but  Could  Not  Git  absolution.  He 
went  a  seacond  time  without  sucksess  But  was  Informed  by  his  Bennadict  that 
Somthing  was  wanting.  He  Came  to  me  Desireing  me  to  leat  him  Have  Two 
Otter  Skins  Promising  that  He  Would  Be  Beatter  in  futer  and  sarve  well.  I 
Leat  Him  have  them.  He  went  of.  In  a  few  Minnets  after  or  a  Short  time 
he  Returned.  I  askt  him  What  Suckses.  O  sade  he  the  farther  sais  my  Case 
is  a  Bad  One  But  if  I  Bring  two  Otter  more  he  will  take  my  Case  on  himself 
and  Discharge  me.  I  let  him  Have  them  &  in  a  short  time  he  Returned  as 
full  of  thanks  as  he  Could  Expres  and  sarved  me  well  after.  The  Inhabitans 
of  this  Plase  trade  with  the  Natives  and  thay  Go  out  with  ye  Indians  in  the 
fall  and  winter  with  them  —  Men,  woman  and  Children.  Most  of  the  french- 


359 


0f  a 

mens  wives  are  white  women.  In  the  Spring  thay  make  a  Grate  Quantity 
of  Maple  Suga  for  the  youse  of  thare  families  &  for  sale  som  of  them.  The 
Land  about  Macinac  is  Vary  Baran — a  Mear  Sand  Bank — but  the  Gareson  By 
Manure  Have  Good  Potaters  and  Sum  Vegetables.  The  British  Cut  Hay  anuf 
for  thare  Stock  a  few  Miles  Distans  from  the  Gareson  &  Bring  horn  on  Boates. 
Others  Cut  the  Gras  &  Stock  it  on  the  Streat  &  Slead  it  on  the  Ice  Thirty 
Miles  in  ye  Winter.  Thare  is  Sum  Indan  Villeges  twenty  or  thirty  Miles  from 
this  Plase  whare  the  Natives  Improve  Verey  Good  Ground.  Thay  Have  Corn 
Beens  and  meney  articles  which  thay  youse  in  Part  themselves  and  Bring  the 
Remander  to  Market.  The  Nearest  tribe  is  the  Atawase  &  the  most  Sivelized 
in  these  Parts  But  Drink  to  Exses.  Often  in  the  Winter  thay  Go  out  on  a 
Hunting  Party.  In  ye  Spring  thay  Return  to  thare  Villeges  &  Imploy  the 
Sumer  in  Rasein  things  for  food  as  yousal.  But  this  is  to  Be  understood  to 
Belong  to  the  Women — the  men  Never  Meadel — this  Part  of  thare  bisness  is 
Confind  to  the  females  Ondley.  Men  are  Imployd  in  Hunting,  fishing  &  foul- 
ing, War  Parties  etc.  These  Wood  aford  Partreages,  Hairs,  Vensen  foxis  & 
Rackcones,  Sum  Wild  Pigins.  This  Lake  or  Strate  abounds  in  all  sorts  of  fine 
fish.  I  have  Wade  a  trout  taken  in  By  Mr.  Camps  with  a  Hook  &  line  under 
the  Ice  in  March  Sixtey  Six  Pounds  wate.  I  was  Present.  The  Water  was 
fifteen  fatham  Deape.  The  white  fish  are  ye  Another  Exquisseat  fish.  Thay 
will  way  from  2.^/2  to  9  &  10  Pound  wt.  Baran  La  Huntan  who  was  the  first 
that  made  an  Excirtion  from  Macanac  Into  the  Maseepey  By  the  Rout  of  thee 
Fou  River — tho  his  Ideas  ware  Rong  in  Som  things  as  I  have  Proved  Sins  his 

day — that the  flame  of  white  fish  was  Might  the  Sturges  are  the 

Best  in  these  Lakes  &  the  Harens  Exsead  in  flaver.  The  waters  are  trans  Par- 
ant  and  fine. 

I  return  to  my  one.  In  Sept  I  Had  my  Small  fleat  Readey  to  Cross  Lake 
Mishegan.  On  my  Way  to  Grean  Bay  at  the  Mouth  of  fox  river  I  Engaged 
Nine  Clarkes  for  Differant  Parts  of  the  Northan  &  Westarn  Countrey  and  Bea- 
ing  Mand  we  Imbarkt  &  Crost  the  Lake  yithout  Seaing  an  Indan  or  Eney 
Person  Except  our  One.  In  three  or  four  Days  we  arive  at  the  Mouth  of  the 
Bay  which  is  two  or  three  Mile  Brod.  In  the  Mouth  is  Som  Islands  which  we 
follow  in  Crossing  to  the  South  West  Sid  &  then  follow  ye  Shore  to  the  Bottom 
is  Seventey  Miles  whare  the  fox  River  Empteys  in  to  the  Bay.  We  went  a  Short 
Distans  up  the  River  whare  is  a  small  french  village  and  thare  Incampt  for  two 
Days.  This  Land  is  Exalent.  The  Inhabitans  Rase  fine  Corn  and  Sum  Artick- 
els  for  fammaley  youse  in  thare  Gardens.  Thay  Have  Sum  trad  with  ye 
Indans  which  Pas  that  way.  On  the  North  Part  of  this  Bay  is  a  small  Villeag 
of  Indans  Cald  the  Mannomaneas  who  Live  By  Hunting  Cheafly.  Thay  have 
another  Resois — the  Bottom  of  the  Bay  Produces  a  Large  Quantity  of  Wilde 
Rice  which  thay  Geather  in  Sept  for  food.  I  ort  to  have  Menshand  that  the 
french  at  ye  Villeg  whare  we  Incampt  Rase  fine  black  Cattel  &  Horses  with 
Sum  swine. 

At  the  End  of  two  Days  we  ascended  the  fox  river  til  We  came  to  a  Villeg 
which  Lies  on  the  East  End  of  a  small  Lake  that  Emties  into  the  fox  River. 
These  People  are  Cald  Penans  &  the  Lake  by  the  same  Name.  These 
People  are  Singelar  from  the  Rest  of  thare  Neighbors.  Thay  Speake  a  Hard 
Un  Couth  Langwidge  scarst  to  be  Learnt  by  Eney  People.  Thay  will  not  a 
Sosheat  with  or  Convars  with  the  other  tribes  Nor  Inter-marey  among  them.  I 
Enquired  into  the  Natral  Histrey  of  these  People  when  I  was  at  Detroit  of 
the  Oldest  and  Most  Entelagent  frenchmen  Who  had  Bin  aquanted  with  them 
for  Meney  Years.  The  Information  amounted  to  this  that  thay  formerley 
Lived  West  of  ye  Misararey  River — that  thay  Had  Etarnal  Disputes  among 
themselves  and  Dispute  with  the  Nations  about  them — at  Length  thare  Neigh- 

360 


in  tlf?  American 


bors  In  Grate  Numbers  fel  upon  them  and  what  was  Saved  flead  across  the 
Misesarea  to  ye  eastward  and  Over  the  Mississippey  and  on  to  this  Lake  whare 
thay  now  live  thare  thay  met  with  a  trib  of  Indans  Who  Suferd  them  to  Seat 
Down.  It  was  as  is  Suposed  the  foxe  Nation  who  lived  Near  them  —  the  fox- 
is  was  Drove  from  Detroit  for  thare  Misbehaver  which  ware  a  proper  People 
to  aSist  them  in  thare  flite.  I  Beleve  most  of  it.  They  are  Insolent  to  this 
Day  and  Inclineing  Cheaterey  thay  will  if  they  Can  Git  Creadit  from  the  trad- 
er in  the  fall  of  ye  Year  to  Pay  in  the  Spring  after  they  Have  Made  thare  Hunt 
But  When  you  Mete  them  in  Spring  as  Know  them  Personeley  ask  for  your 
Pay  and  thay  Will  Speake  in  thare  One  Languege  if  thay  Speake  at  all  Which 
is  not  to  be  understood  or  Other  ways  thay  Will  Look  Sulkey  and  Make  you 
no  answer  and  you  loes  your  Debt. 

I  was  at  Mackenac  when  Capt  George  Turnbull  demanded  Previous  to  the 
Amarecan  Reverlution  and  thare  Came  in  a  Cheaf  with  a  Small  Band  of  these. 
He  Held  a  Counsel  with  them  But  he  Couldn't  Git  an  Intarpetar  in  the  Plase 
that  Understood  them.  At  Lengh  the  Capt  Said  that  he  had  a  mind  to  Send  for 
an  Old  Highland  solge  that  Spoke  Little  But  the  Hars  Langwege  —  Perhaps  he 
mite  understand  for  it  Sounded  Much  Like  it.  The  Land  about  them  on  the  Lake 
is  Exalant.  Thare  women  Rase  Corn  &  Beens  Punkins  &c  But  the  Lake  afords 
no  Variety  of  fish  thare  Wood  Produce  Sum  Rabits  &  Partreageis,  a  small 
Quantaty  of  Vensen.  Thay  Live  in  a  Close  Connection  among  themselves.  We 
made  But  a  Small  Stay  Hear  and  Past  a  Small  Distans  on  the  Lake  and  Enterd 
the  fox  River  agane  Which  Leads  up  to  the  Cairing  Plase  of  Osconston. 

Adventure  into  Indian  Camp  during  Burial  Ceremony 

We  asended  that  River  til  we  Cam  to  a  High  Pece  of  Ground  whare  that  Na- 
tion yous  to  Entan  thare  Dead  when  thay  Lived  in  that  Part.  We  stopt  hear 
awhile  finding  Sum  of  that  Nation  on  the  Spot  Who  Came  thare  to  Pay  thare 
Respect  to  thare  Departed  frend.  Thay  Had  a  small  Cag  of  Rum  and  sat  around 
the  grave.  Thay  fild  thar  Callemeat  and  Began  thar  saremony  By  Pinting  the 
Stem  of  the  Pipe  upward  —  then  giveing  it  a  turn  in  thare  and  then  toward  ye 
head  of  the   Grav  —  then  East  &  West,   North   &   South   after  which   thay 
smoaked  it  out  and  fild  it  agane  &  Lade  By  —  then  thay  took  Sum  Rum  out  of 
the  Cag  in  a  Small  Bark  Vessel  and  Pourd  it  on  the  Head  of  the  Grave  By  way 
of  giving  it  to  thar  Departed  Brother  —  then  thay  all  Drank  themselves  —  Lit  the 
Pipe  and  seamed  to  Enjoi  themselves  Verey  well.    Thay  Repeated  this  till  the 
Sperit  Began  to  Operate  and  thare  harts  Began  to  Soffen.    Then  thay  Began  to 
Sing  a  Song  or  two  But  at  the  End  of  Every  Song  thay  Soffened  the  Clay. 
After  Sumtime  Had  Relapst  the  Cag  had  Bin  Blead  often.    Thay  Began  to  Re- 
pete  the  Satisfaction  thay  had  with  that  friend  while  he  was  with  them  and 
How  fond  he  was  of  his  frends  While  he  Could  Git  a  Cag  of  Rum  and  how 
thay  youst  to  Injoy  it  togather.    They  Amused  themselves  in  this  manner  til 
thay  all  fell  a  Crying  and  a  woful  Nois  thay  Mad  for  a  While  til  thay  thought 
Wisely  that  thay  Could  Not  Bring  him  Back  and  it  would  Not  Due  to  Greeve 
two  much  —  that  an  application  to  the  Cag  was  the  Best  Way  to  Dround  Sorrow 
&  Wash  away  Greefe  for  the  Moshun  was  soon  Put  in  Execution  and  all  Be- 
ga  to  be  Marey  as  a  Party  Could  Bea.    Thay  Continued  til  Near  Nite.    Rite 
Wen  thay  Ware  More  than  Half  Drunk  the  men  began  to  aproach  the  females 
and  Chat  frelay  and  apearantley  f  riendley.     At  T  «.  ngh  thay  Began  to  Lean  on 
Each  other,  Kis  &  apeared  Verey  amaras  ............  I  Could 

Observe  Clearly  this  Bisiness  was  first  Pusht  on  by  the  Women  who  made 
thare  visit  to  the  Dead  a  Verey  pleasing  one  in  thare  Way.  One  of  them  who  was 
Quit  Drunk,  as  I  was  By  Self  Seating  on  the  Ground  observing  thare  Saremo- 
nes,  Cam  to  me  and  askt  me  to  take  a  Share  in  her  Bountey  ........ 


&10rg   nf  a   fltntt^r   3ffur 

....  But  I  thought  it  was  time  to  Quit  and  went  about  Half  a  mile  up  the 
River  to  my  Canoes  whare  My  men  was  Incampt  But  the  Indans  never  cam 
Nigh  us.  The  men  then  shun  that  three  of  the  Women  had  bin  at  the  Camp 
In  the  Night  In  Quest  of  Imploy.  The  next  Morning  we  Proseaded  up  the 
River  which  was  Verey  Sarpentine  inded  til  we  Cam  to  a  Shallo  Lake  whare 
you  Could  Sea  water  But  Just  in  the  Canoe  track  the  Wilde  Gates  ware  so  thick 
that  the  Indans  Could  Scarse  Git  one  of  thare  Small  Canoes  into  it  to  Geather 
it  and  the  Wild  Ducks  When  thay  Ris  Made  a  Nois  like  thunder.  We  Got  as 
meney  of  them  as  we  Chose  fat  and  Good.  We  Incampt  hear  Would  not  un- 
dertake to  Cross  til  Morning — the  Water  was  two  Deap  to  wade  and  ye  Bottom 
Soft — the  Rode  so  narrow  that  it  toock  the  Most  of  ye  next  Day  to  get  about 
three  Miles  With  our  Large  Cannoes  the  track  was  so  narrow.  Near  Nite  we 
Got  to  Warm  Ground  whare  we  Incampt  and  Regaled  Well  after  the  fateages 
of  the  Day.  The  Next  Day  we  Proseaded  up  the  River  which  was  slack  water 
But  Verey  Sarpentine — we  Have  to  go  two  Miles  Without  Geating  fiftey 
yards  ahead  so  winding — But  Just  at  nite  we  reacht  within  Site  of  ye  Caring 
Plase  and  Incampt.  Next  morning  Near  noon  we  Arived  and  unLoded  our 
Canoes  &  toock  them  out  of  the  water  to  dry  that  thay  mite  be  liter.  On 
the  Caring  Plase  On  account  of  the  fox  River  and  its  Neghbering  Cuntrey  A 
Long  its  Shores  from  the  Mouth  to  the  Pewans  Lake  is  A  good  Navagation. 
One  or  two  Small  Rapeds  from  that  Lake  the  water  up  to  the  Caring  plase  is 
Verey  Cental  But  Verey  Sarpentine.  In  Maney  Parts  In  Going  three  Miles 
you  due  not  advans  one.  The  Bank  is  almose  Leavel  With  the  Water  and  the 
Medoes  on  Each  Sid  are  Clear  of  Wood  to  a  Grate  Distans  and  Clothd  with  a 
Good  sort  of  Grass  the  Opeings  of  this  River  are  Cald  Lakes  But  thay  are 
no  more  than  Larg  Openings.  In  these  Plases  the  Water  is  about  four  or  five 
feet  deap.  With  a  Soft  Bottom  these  Places  Produce  the  Gratest  Quantaties  of 
Wild  Rise  of  Which  the  Natives  Geather  Grat  Quantities  and  Eat  what  thay 
Have  Ocation  for  &  Dispose  of  the  Remainder  to  People  that  Pass  &  Repass 
on  thare  trade.  This  Grane  Looks  in  its  Groth  &  Stock  &  Ears  Like  Ry  and  the 
Grane  is  of  the  same  Culler  But  Longer  and  Slimer.  When  it  is  Cleaned  fit 
for  youse  thay  Baile  it  as  we  Due  Rise  and  Eat  it  with  Bairs  Greas  and  Suger 
But  the  Greas  thay  ad  as  it  is  Bileing  which  helps  to  Soffen  it  and  make  it 
Brake  in  the  same  Maner  as  Rise.  When  thay  take  it  out  of  thare  Cettels  for 
yous  thay  ad  a  Little  suger  and  is  Eaten  with  fresh  Vensen  or  fowls  we  yoused 
it  in  the  Room  of  Rise  and  it  Did  very  well  as  a  Substatute  for  that  Grane  as  it 
Busts  it  turns  out  perfeckly  White  as  Rise.  Back  from  this  River  the  Lands 
are  as  Good  as  Can  be  Conseaved  and  Good  timber  But  not  Overthick  it  is  Pro- 
verbel  that  the  fires  Which  Ran  threw  these  ....  and  Meadows  Stops  the 
Groth  of  ye  Wood  and  Destroise  Small  wood.  I  Have  Menshund  the  Vast 
Numbers  of  Wild  Ducks  which  faten  on  ye  Wild  Rise  Eaverey  fall.  It  would 
Sound  two  much  Like  a  travelers  Storey  to  Say  What  I  Realey-  Beleve  from 
What  I  Have  Sean.  You  Can  Purchis  them  Verey  Cheape  at  the  Rate  of  two 
Pens  Per  pese.  If  you  Parfer  shuting  them  yourself  you  may  Kill  what  you 
Plese.  On  account  of  the  Portage  of  Wisconstan  the  South  End  of  this  Caring 
plase  is  Verey  Leavel  But  in  Wet  Weather  it  is  Bad  On  acount  of  the  Mud  & 
Water  which  is  two  thirds  of  a  Mile  and  then  the  Ground  Riseis  to  a  Considera- 
bel  Hith  and  Clothed  with  fine  Open  Wood  &  a  Hansom  Varder. 

A  French  Deserter's  Experience  in  the  Wilderness 

This  Spot  is  about  the  Senter  of  ye  Portage  and  takes  up  about  a  Quorter 
Part  of  it.  The  South  End  is  Low,  flat  and  Subject  to  Weat.  It  was  on  this 
Spot  that  Old  Pinnashon  a  french  man  Impose  apon  Came  Respecting  the  Ind- 
ans haveing  a  Rattel  snake  at  his  call  which  the  Indans  Could  order  into  a 

362 


in  tl*  Am*rtran 


Box  for  that  Purpos  as  a  Peat.  This  frenchman  was  a  Soldier  in  the  troops 
that  ware  stasioned  at  the  Elenoas.  He  was  a  Sentanal.  At  the  Magasean  of 
Powder  he  Deserted  his  Post  &  toock  his  Boate  up  the  Miseura  among  the 
Indans  and  Spent  Maney  years  among  them.  He  Learnt  Maney  Langwedgeis 
and  from  Steap  to  Steap  he  Got  among  the  Mondons  whare  he  found  Sum 
french  traders  who  Belongd  to  the  french  factorey  at  fort  Lorain  on  the  Read 
River.  This  factorey  Belongd  to  the  french  traders  of  Cannaday.  These 
People  toock  Pinneshon  to  the  factorey  with  them  and  the  Consarn  toock  him 
into  thare  Sarvais  til  the  Hole  Cuntrey  was  Given  up  to  the  English  and  he  then 
Came  into  thare  Sarvis.  The  french  Strove  to  take  him  up  for  his  Desarson 
But  fald.  However  thay  Orderd  him  to  be  Hung  in  Efagea  Which  was  Dun. 
This  is  the  Acount  he  Gives  of  himself.  I  Have  Hard  it  from  his  One  Lips 
as  he  has  Bin  Relateing  his  adventures  to  others.  He  found  Garner  on  this 
Spot  Going  without  undirstanding  either  french  or  Indan  &  full  of  Enquirey 
threw  his  Man  who  Sarved  him  as  an  Interpiar  &  thought  it  a  Proper  Oper- 
tunety  to  ad  Sumthing  more  to  his  adventers  and  Make  his  Bost  of  it  after 
which  I  have  Haird  Meney  times  it  hurt  Caiver  much  hearing  such  things  & 
Puting  Confadens  in  them  while  he  is  Govner.  He  Gave  a  Good  a  Count  of 
the  Small  Part  of  the  Western  Countrey  he  Saw  But  when  he  a  Leudes  to 
Hearsase  he  flies  from  facts  in  two  Maney  Instances. 

After  Two  Days  Hard  Labor  We  Gits  our  Canoes  at  the  Carring  plase  with 
all  our  Goods  and  Incampt  on  the  Bank  of  the  River  Wisconstan  and  Gund 
our  Canoes  fit  to  descend  that  River.  About  Midday  we  Imbarkt.  The  River 
is  a  Gentel  Glideing  Streame  and  a  Considerabell  Distans  to  the  first  Villeag 
which  Lise  on  the  North  Side.  The  River  runs  near  west  from  the  Portage  to 
the  Missippey.  Its  a  Gentel  Glideing  Streame.  As  we  Desended  it  we  saw 
Maney  Rattel  Snakes  Swimming  Across  it  and  Kild  them.  The  Next  Day  we 
Arived  at  the  Villeag  whare  we  tarread  two  Days.  This  Beaing  the  Last  Part 
of  Sept  these  People  had  Eavery  artickel  of  Eating  in  thare  way  in  abandans. 
I  shall  Give  Sum  acount  of  these  People  and  the  Countrey.  These  People 
are  Cald  Sankeas.  Thay  are  of  a  Good  Sise  and  Well  Disposed  —  Les  Inclind 
to  tricks  and  Bad  manners  than  thare  Nighbers.  Thay  will  take  of  the  traders 
Goods  on  Creadit  in  the  fall  for  thare  youse.  In  Winter  and  Except  for  Axe- 
dant  thay  Pay  the  Deapt  Verey  Well  for  Indans  I  mite  have  sade  Inlitend  or 
Sivelised  Indans  which  are  in  General  made  worse  by  the  Operation.  Thare 
Villeag  is  Bilt  Cheafely  with  Plank  thay  Hugh  Out  of  Wood  —  that  is  ye  up- 
rite  —  the  top  is  Larch  Over  with  Strong  Sapplins  Sufficient  to  Suport  the  Roof 
and  Covered  with  Barks  which  Makes  them  a  tile  roof.  Sum  of  thare  Huts 
are  Sixtey  feet  Long  and  Contanes  Several  fammalayes.  Thay  Rase  a  Plat- 
foarm  on  Each  Side  of  thare  Huts  About  two  feet  high  and  about  five  feet 
Broad  on  which  thay  Seat  &  Sleap.  Thay  have  no  flores  But  Bild  thar  fire  on 
the  Ground  in  the  Midel  of  the  Hut  and  have  a  Hole  threw  the  Ruf  for  the 
Smoke  to  Pas.  In  the  fall  of  ye  Year  thay  Leave  thare  Huts  and  Go  into  the 
Woods  in  Quest  of  Game  and  Return  in  the  Spring  to  thare  Huts  before 
Planting  time.  The  Women  Rase  Grate  Crops  of  Corn,  Been,  Punkens,  Pota- 
toes, Millans  and  artickels  —  the  Land  is  Exaleant  —  &  Clear  of  Wood  Sum  Dis- 
tans from  the  Villeag.  Thare  Sum  Hundred  of  Inhabitants.  Thare  amuse- 
ments are  Singing,  Dancing,  Smokeing,  Matcheis,  Gameing,  Feasting,  Drink- 
ing. Playing  the  Slite  of  Hand,  Hunting  and  thay  are  famas  in  Mageack.  Thay 
are  Not  Verey  Gellas  of  thare  Women.  In  General  the  Women  find  Meanes  to 
Grattafy  them  Selves  without  Consent  of  the  Men.  The  Men  often  join  War 
parties  with  other  Nations  and  Go  aganst  the  Indans  on  the  Miseure  &  west  of 
that.  Sometimes  thay  Go  Near  St.  Fee  in  New  Mexico  and  Bring  with  them 
Spanish  Horseis.  I  have  scan  meney  of  them.  The  River  aford  But  a  few 

363 


&10rtj   nf  a   |H0tt£*r   Jut 

fish.  Thare  Woods  aford  Partrageis,  a  few  Rabeat,  Bairs  &  Deear  are  Plenty 
In  thare  Seasons.  Wild  foul  thay  have  But  few.  Thar  Religion  is  Like  Most 
of  the  tribes.  Thay  alow  thare  is  two  Sperits — One  Good  Who  Dweles  a  Bove 
the  Clouds,  Superintends  over  all  and  helps  to  all  the  Good  things  we  have 
and  Can  Bring  Sickness  on  us  if  He  pleases — and  another  Bad  one  who  dweles 
in  the  fire  ad  air,  Eavery  whare  among  men  &  Sumtimes  Dose  Mischchef  to 
Mankind.  , 

Courtship  and  Marriage  among  the  Indians 

Cortship  &  Marriages  —  At  Night  when  these  People  are  Seating 
Round  thare  fires  the  Elderly  one  will  be  teling  what  thay  Have  Sean  and 
Heard  or  Perhaps  thay  may  be  on  Sum  Interesting  Subject.  The  family  are 
lisning.  If  thare  be  aney  Young  Garl  in  this  Lodg  or  hut  that  aney  Man  of  a 
Differant  Hut  Has  a  Likeing  for  he  will  Seat  among  them.  The  Parson  of  his 
Arrant  Being  Prasent  hea  will  Watch  an  Opertunety  &  through  a  Small  Stick 
at  Hair.  If  She  Looks  up  with  a  Smile  it  is  a  Good  Omen.  He  Repets  a  Sec- 
ond time.  Perhaps  ye  Garle  will  Return  the  Stick.  The  Sentam  ar  Still  Gro- 
ing  Stronger  and  when  thay  think  Proper  to  Ly  Down  to  Slepe  Each  Parson 
Raps  himself  up  in  his  One  Blanket.  He  takes  Notis  whar  the  Garl  Seats  for 
thare  she  slepes.  When  all  the  famaley  are  Quit  a  Perhaps  a  Sleap  he  Slips 
Soffely  into  that  and  Seat  himself  Down  By  her  Side.  PresantLey  he  will 
Begin  to  Lift  Her  Blanket  in  a  Soft  maner.  Perhaps  she  may  twich  it  Out 
of  his  hand  with  a  Sort  of  a  Sie  &  Snore  to  Gather  But  this  is  no  Kiling  Mat- 
ter. He  Seats  awhile  and  Makes  a  Second  Atempt.  She  May  Perhaps  Hold 
the  Blankead  Down  Slitely.  At  Lengh  she  turns  Over  with  a  Sith  and  Quits 

the  Hold  of  the  Blanket This  Meatherd  is  Practest  a  Short  time 

and  then  ye  young  Indan  will  Go  ahunting  and  he  is  Luckey  to  Git  meat  he 
Cum  and  Informs  the  famaley  of  it  and  where  it  is  he  Brings  the  Lung  and  hart 
with  him  and  thay  Seat  of  after  the  Meat  and  Bring  it  Home  this  Plesis  and  he 
Begins  to  Gro  Bold  in  the  famerley.  The  Garl  after  that  will  not  Refuse  him 

He  Will  then  Perhaps  Stay  about  the  famerley    a    Year    and 

Hunt  for  the  Old  father  But  in  this  Instans  he  gives  his  Conseant  that  thay  may 
Sleap  togather  and  when  thay  Begin  to  have  Children  thay  save  what  thay 
can  git  for  thare  One  youse  and  Perhaps  Live  in  a  Hut  apart.  After  I  had 
Given  them  a  number  of  Cradeat  to  Receve  Payment  the  Next  Spring  I  De- 
sended  to  the  fox  Villeage  on  the  Same  River  and  Same  Sid  about  fiftey  Miles 
Distans.  Hear  I  meat  a  differant  Sort  of  People  who  was  Bread  at  Detroit 
under  the  french  Government  and  Clarge;  till  thay  By  Chrisanising  Grew  so 
Bad  thay  ware  Oblige  to  Go  to  War  aganst  them.  Tho  thay  Lived  Within 
thre  Miles  of  the  Garrson  and  among  the  Inhabatans,  thay  Was  Obliged  to 
fite  them  and  killed  Grate  Numbers  of  them.  The  Remander  flead  to  the  fox 
River  whare  thay  made  a  Stand  and  treated  the  traders  Going  to  the  Missa- 
seepey  Verey  111  and  Pilleaged  them.  At  Lengh  thay  went  a  Stronge  Partey 
aganst  them  and  Beat  them  back  to  whare  thay  Now  are  But  in  Sad  Sarkam- 
stanis  to  what  thay  ware  Before  thay  took  So  much  on  them  selves.  As  I 
Aprocht  the  Banks  of  the  Villeag  I  Perseaved  a  Number  of  Long  Panted  Poles 
on  which  Hung  a  Number  of  Artickels,  Sum  Panted  Dogs  and  also  a  Grate 
Number  of  Wampam  Belts  with  a  Number  of  Silver  Braslets  and  Other  Ar- 
tickels in  the  Indan  way.  I  Inquired  the  Cause.  Thay  told  me  thay  Had  a 
Shorte  time  Before  had  a  Sweapeing  Sicknes  among  them  which  had  Caread 
of  Grate  Numbers  of  Inhabitans  &  thay  had  offered  up  these  Sacrafisces  to 
Apease  that  Beaing  who  was  Angrey  with  them  and  sent  the  Sickness — that 
it  was  much  Abated  tho  thar  was  Sum  Sick.  Still  I  told  them  thay  Had  Dun 
Right  and  to  take  Cair  that  thay  Did  not  Ofend  him  Agane  for  fear  a  Grater 

36* 


in  tlf?  Ammran 


Eavel  myte  befall  them.  Thare  Villeag  was  Bilt  in  the  Sam  form  &  ye  the  sam 
Like  Materls  as  the  Sankeas  Produse  of  the  Ground  —  the  Sam  &  Brole  in 
the  Same  By  the  Women  But  not  in  so  Grate  Plentey  as  the  former  one  on 
Account  of  thare  Late  sickness.  I  taread  hear  One  Day. 

After  Suplying  myself  with  such  Artickels  as  I  wanted  and  thay  Had  to 
Spare  I  gave  them  Sum  Creadeat  and  Desended  the  River  to  the  Mouth  which 
Empteys  into  the  Masseippey  and  Cros  that  River  and  Incampt.  The  Land 
along  the  River  as  you  desend  Apears  to  be  Exalant.  Just  at  Night  as  we 
ware  InCampt  we  Perseaved  Large  fish  Cuming  on  the  Sarfes  of  the  Water. 
I  had  then  a  Diferant  trader  with  me  who  had  a  number  of  Men  with  him. 
We  were  Incampt  Near  Each  other.  We  Put  our  Hoock  and  Lines  into  the 
Water  and  Leat  them  Ly  all  nite.  In  the  Morning  we  Perseaved  thare  was  fish 
at  the  Hoocks  and  went  to  the  Wattr  Eag  and  halld  on  our  line.  Thay  Came 
Heavey.  At  Lengh  we  hald  one  ashore  that  wade  a  Hundered  and  four 
Pounds  —  a  Seacond  that  was  One  Hundered  Wate  —  a  third  of  Seventy  five 
Pounds.  The  Men  was  Glad  to  Sea  this  for  thay  Had  not  Eat  mete  for  Sum 
Days  nor  fish  for  a  long  time.  We  asked  our  men  How  meney  Men  the  Larg- 
est would  Give  a  Meale.  Sum  of  the  Largest  Eaters  Sade  twelve  men  Would 
Eat  it  at  a  Meal.  We  Agread  to  Give  ye  fish  if  thay  would  find  twelve  men 
that  would  undertake  it.  Thay  Began  to  Dres  it.  The  fish  was  what  was  Cald 
the  Cat  fish.  It  had  a  large  flat  Head  Sixteen  Inches  Betwene  the  Eise. 
Thay  Skind  it  —  Cut  it  up  in  three  larg  Coppers  Such  as  we  have  for  the  Youse 
of  our  men.  After  it  was  Well  Boild  thay  Sawd  it  up  and  all  Got  Round  it. 
Thay  Began  and  Eat  the  hole  without  the  least  thing  with  it  But  Salt  and 
Sum  of  them  Drank  of  the  Licker  it  was  Boild  in.  The  Other  two  was  Sarved 
out  to  the  Remainder  of  the  People  who  finished  them  in  a  Short  time.  Thay 
all  Declard  they  felt  the  Beater  of  thare  Meale  Nor  did  I  Perseave  that  Eney 
of  them  ware  Sick  or  Complaind.  Nxt  Morning  we  Recrost  ye  River  which 
was  about  a  Mile  Brod  and  Mounted  about  three  Miles  til  we  Come  to  the 
Planes  of  the  Dogs  so  Cald  the  Grate  Plase  of  Rondavues  for  the  traders  and 
Indans  Before  thay  Dispars  for  thare  Wintering  Grounds.  Hear  we  Meat 
a  Larg  Number  of  french  and  Indans  Makeing  out  thare  arangements  for  the 
InSewing  winter  and  sending  of  thare  cannoes  to  Differant  Parts  —  Like  wise 
Giveing  Creadets  to  the  Indans  who  ware  all  to  Rondaveuse  thare  in  Spring. 
I  Stayed  ten  days  Sending  of  my  men  to  Differant  Parts.  I  had  Nine  Clarks 
which  I  Imploid  in  Differant  Rivers  that  fel  into  the  River. 

When  I  had  finished  my  Matters  Hear  in  October  I  Seat  of  with  two  trad- 
ers in  Company  for  St.  Peters  River  which  was  a  Hundred  Leags  up  the 
River  But  the  Season  was  faverabel  and  we  went  on  Sloley  to  Leat  the  Notta- 
waseas  Git  into  the  Plain  that  we  Mite  not  be  trubeld  with  them  for  Creadit 
as  thay  are  Bad  Pay  Marsters.  In  Going  up  the  River  we  had  Plenty  of  fat 
Gease  and  Duks  with  Venson  —  Bares  Meat  in  abandans  —  so  that  we  Lived  as 
Well  as  hart  Could  Wish  on  Such  food  —  Plentey  of  flower  tea,  Coffee,  Sugar 
and  Buter,  Sperits  and  Wine,  that  we  faird  Well  as  Voigers.  The  Banks  of 
ye  River  aforded  us  Plentey  of  Crab  Apels  which  was  Verey  Good  when  the 
frost  Had  tuchd  them  at  a  Sutabel  tim. 


SONNET  BY  HORACE  HOLLEY 

Alas  for  all  old  cities  of  the  dead:  And  heroes  rise  In  towns  beleaguered:— 

(God  send  the  bitter  vision  oft  to  me  !)  But  twilight  slowly  drew  her  blanket  down 

Troy  much-sung  and  Venice  on  the  sea;  When  none  had  aught  of  dawn  left  In  his  eyes. 

Ninereh  and  Rome— all,  all  are  sped.  For  poets  had  sold  their  sorrow  for  a  fee 

Their  night  came  not  with  any  sudden  dread  And  maids  had  ceased  to  dream  of  love's  sweet  sighs. 

Of  ghastly  war  or  grinding  tyranny:—  Oh  ye  that  keep  the  rule  of  Modern  Town, 

With  sword  In  hand  men  wax  more  strong  to  be,  God  send  this  vision  oft  to  you  and  me. 

365 


ESTATE    OF    A    PROSPEROUS  AMERICAN    IN    1684 

"INVENTORY  OF    LEWIS    JONES,    LATELY    DECEASED.    OF   GOODS 

AND  CHATTELL  TAKEN  BY. US  WHOSE  NAMES  ARE  UNDER 

WRITTEN    THIS    2OTH    DAY    OF    APRIL    1684". 


TRANSCRIBED     FROM     ORIGINAL     BT 

WALTER    E.   JONES  OF    WAITSFIELD,    VERMONT 

A    DESCEWDAJTT    OF    THE    LEOATOH 

£  *  d 

The  housing  and  land 035  oo  oo 

A  cow  and  heifer 004  05  oo 

Wearing  Cloaths ooi  10  oo 

In  ye  lodging  Room 
One  feather  bed,  two  pillows,  one  bolster,  one  rug,  three  old  blankets, 

three  sheets,  curtains  and  bed  stead 05        oo        oo 

One  small  flock  bed,  one  coverlett,  one  bolster,  two  pillows,  two  sheets, 

one  old  straw  bed,  two  blankets  and  a  Trundle  bed  stead 002        04        oo 

One  Chest,   one  Tablecloath,  one  napkin,  with  some  other  old  linnen, 

one  small  box,  one  forme ooo        12        oo 

In  ye  fire  Room 

One  brass  Kettle,  two  skillets,  one  old  warming  pan ooo  17  oo 

Three  small  pewter  dishes,  one  quart  pot,  one  frying  pan ooi  10  oo 

Three  irons  potts  and  2  pr  of  pot  hooks,  one  frying  pan ooi  10  oo 

In  Books ooi  15  oo 

One  Tramell,  one  fire  shovel,  a  pr.  of  Tongs,  one  spitt,  a  pr.  of  Bellows, 

with  other  small  things oo  12  oo 

Two  Tables,  one  Chest,  a  kneading  Trough  and  2  old  chairs ooo  16  oo 

One  halfe  bushell,  a  baskett,  i  pail ooo  16  oo 

One  beetle  and  wedges,  one  ax  two  pitch  forks  with  some  old  Iron  and 

other  lumber ooo  10  oo 

In  earthen  ware  with  two  bags ooo  04  oo 

Upon  ye  chamber 

One  old  fan,  one  flock  bolster,  one  old  Caske  (sic)  &  lumber ooo        10        oo 

In  rye  and  malt ooo        18        oo 

In  barley ooo        14        oo 

In  Indian  Corn 003        10        oo 

In  ye  cellar 
One  powdering  Tub,  four  barrells,  one  old  churne,  one  small  caske, 

two  Earthan  potts  and  one  Keeler  and  other  lumber ooo        19        oo 


JOHN  COOLIDGE 
JOHN  BRIGHT 
MANNING  SAWIN 


Apr  2  1684 


Total  £  062        oa        oo 

JOSIAH  JONES  Administrator  took  oath  in 
court  hereto 


Jfftrat  S>tHy0u?tttfitH  in  Ammra 

EarlUat  Extant  JTupr  of  Jlirtnrioluan  ^  Urottm'n  Notabl* 
<£ullrrtum    of   Portrait*    of    Bi0ttnnittflhr&  Amrrtrana 

BY 

HOWARD   MARSHALL 

WITH  RIPRODUCTIONS  FROM  BROWN'S  CRIMINAL  SILHOUZTTIS 

years,  who  landed  in  New  York  un- 
der special  "management"  a  few  days 
after  the  arrival  of  Lafayette  in  1824. 
He  was  made  the  subject  of  much 
comment  in  the  newspapers  and  trav- 
eled about  the  country  exhibiting  his 
"Hubard  Gallery"  in  which  for  fifty 
cents  the  visitor  was  "entitled  to  see 
the  exhibition,  hear  the  concert,  and 
obtain  a  correct  likeness  by  Master 
Hubard,  cut  with  common  scissors  in 
a  few  seconds,  without  the  aid  of 
drawing  or  machine." 

So  lucrative  seemed  the  "new  pro- 
fession" that  many  men  entered  it, 
not  only  profiting  financially  but  also 
making  the  acquaintance  of  the  exclu- 
sive families  of  the  period.  One  of 
these  was  William  Henry  Brown,  who 
was  born  in  Charleston,  South  Caro- 
lina, May  22,  1808,  and  became  a 
genius  in  the  quaint  art  of  portrait- 
ure. In  his  travels  through  the  prin- 
cipal cities  of  the  United  States  he  cut 
the  silhouettes  of  the  most  eminent 
citizens.  So  adept  did  he  become 
that  with  a  single  glance  of  the  eye 
he  could  photograph  on  his  memory 
the  profile  and  figure  of  an  object  and 
reproduce  it  months  or  even  years 
afterwards  with  absolute  accuracy. 
He  was  brilliant  in  conversation  and 
his  fund  of  reminiscences  of  promi- 
nent men  gave  him  entree  into  the 
first  homes  of  America.  Brown  accu- 
mulated money  rapidly  and  spent  it 
lavishly,  but  at  the  close  of  his  career 
left  a  remarkable  collection  of  silhou- 
ettes of  many  distinguished  Ameri- 
cans. On  the  following  pages  four 
of  the  most  characteristic  silhouettes 
are  reproduced  from  the  collection  in 
the  Brown  "Portrait  Gallery." 


first  American  pho- 
tographer  was  the  sil- 
houettist,  and  the  early 
Americans,  with  all  the 
strength  and  weakness 
of  human  nature,  went 
to  him  for  their  portrait- 
ure, much  as  the  modern  American 
sits  before  the  camera  to-day.  The 
earliest  extant  type  of  pictoriology, 
found  upon  the  Egyptian  mummy- 
cases  and  Etruscan  pottery,  is  the  sil- 
houette. It  passed  down  the  genera- 
tions until  Madam  Pompadour,  a 
woman  of  French  society,  had  her 
profile  made  in  black  upon  a  white 
ground  by  simply  casting  a  shadow 
with  a  lamp,  and  it  immediately  be- 
came the  fashion  throughout  France 
to  have  one's  profile  "a  la  Pompa- 
dour." 

It  was  about  this  time  that  Etienne 
de  Silhouette,  financial  minister  of 
Louis  XV,  inaugurated  his  rigid  sys- 
tem of  economy  which  came  so  near 
to  parsimony  that  his  name  was  used 
as  an  appellation  for  everything  cheap 
or  shabby.  The  plain  black  profiles 
were  so  inexpensive  and  so  common 
among  all  classes  of  people  that  the 
aristocracy  finally  exclaimed  in  dis- 
dain :  "It's  too  Silhouette." 

The  first  silhouettest  to  begin  busi- 
ness in  America  was  Charles  Wilson 
Peale  in  Philadelphia,  more  than  a 
century  ago,  and  here  American  soci- 
ety gathered  to  sit  for  portraits.  The 
distinguished  men  of  the  day  also 
patronized  Peale  and  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  his  silhouettes  is  that  of 
George  Washington. 

One  of  the  most  noted  silhouettists 
to  come  to  America  was  James  Hu- 
bard,  an  English  youth  of  seventeen 

3*7 


(Salbrg  0f  Jamnus  Ammratta 


ILHOUETTE  of  Daniel 
Webster  taken  in  the 
zenith  of  his  greatness 
in  the  United  States 
Senate,  when  he  was 
about  fifty-seven  years 
of  age.  Webster  was 
much  pleased  with  this  portrait  and 
wrote  to  Brown,  the  silhouettist : 
"My  friends  unite  in  saying  that  the 
one  you  took  of  myself  is  a  striking 
likeness.  I  cannot,  however,  see  its 
resemblance  to  the  original,  as  I  do 
in  all  the  others.  It  is  an  old  and 
very  true  saying  'that  if  we  could  see 
ourselves  as  others  see  us,'  etc." 
Brown  in  his  notes  gives  these  im- 
pressions of  Webster:  "He  is  rather 
above  the  ordinary  stature.  His  fore- 
head high  and  broad,  resting  as  it 
were  upon  a  lowering  brow,  is  strik- 
ing and  peculiar.  His  eyes  are  dark 
and  deep-set,  his  lips  rather  thin  and 
generally  compressed.  His  whole 
countenance  is  grave,  and  marked 
with  the  impress  of  dignity  and  close 
thought.  His  hair  is  black  and  his 
complexion  rather  dark.  To  stran- 
gers, his  general  appearance  is  stern 
and  forbidding,  yet  when  speaking  in 
public,  his  countenance  is  occasion- 
ally pleasing  and  attractive.  In  con- 
versation he  is  at  times  free  and  com- 
municative, but  more  generally,  re- 
served and  attentive  to  the  sentiments 
of  others.  He  is  polite  and  solid 
when  conversing  with  those  with 
whom  he  is  not  well  acquainted,  and 
when  among  those  whom  he  knows 
well,  he  is  sometimes  humorous,  but 
never  without  manly  dignity."  Hft 
was  born  in  Salisbury,  New  Hamp- 
shire, January  18,  1782,  on  a  farm  in 
the  forests.  He  began  the  practice  of 
law  at  twenty-three  years  of  age,  and 
was  elected  to  Congress  at  thirty 
years,  where  he  became  a  star  in  the 
"American  galaxy,"  passed  to  the 
Senate  chamber,  and  was  appointed 
secretary  of  state  in  the  cabinets  of 
William  Henry  Harrison  and  John 
Tyler.  He  died  at  the  age  of  sev- 
enty years,  October  23,  1852,  at  his 
home  in  Marshfield,  Massachusetts. 


ILHOUETTE  of  Andrew 
Jackson,  taken  in  Wash- 
ington at  the  time  of 
his  inauguration  as  sev- 
enth president  of  the 
United  States.  He  was 
then  sixty-two  years  of 
age.  Silhouettist  Brown  inscribed 
these  notes  regarding  the  personal 
appearance  of  the  eminent  general: 
"President  Jackson  is  tall,  and  re- 
markably erect  and  thin.  His  frame, 
in  general,  does  not  appear  fitted  for 
the  trials  such  as  it  has  borne.  His 
features  are  large;  his  eyes  are  blue, 
with  a  keen  and  strong  expression, 
his  complexion  is  that  of  a  war-worn 
soldier.  His  demeanor  is  easy  and 
gentle;  in  every  station,  he  has  been 
found  open,  and  accessible  to  all,  and 
those  who  have  lived  and  acted  with 
him,  bear  ample  testimony  to  the  gen- 
eral mildness  of  his  carriage,  and  the 
kindness  of  his  disposition."  An- 
drew Jackson  was  born  March  15, 
1767,  in  Union  County,  North  Caro- 
lina, less  than  a  quarter  mile  from  the 
South  Carolina  line.  He  always 
called  himself  a  South  Carolinian. 
His  parents  had  immigrated  to  Amer- 
ica from  Ireland  in  1765.  At  the  age 
of  fourteen  years  he  joined  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution.  When  twenty 
years  of  age  he  obtained  a  license  to 
practice  law,  and  at  twenty-two  re- 
moved to  Nashville  where  his  life  of 
public  service  began  with  his  election 
as  attorney-general,  as  a  member  of 
the  convention  to  frame  a  constitu- 
tion for  the  state,  and  thence  to 
Congress,  the  United  States  Senate, 
and  the  presidency.  Upon  retiring 
from  the  highest  honor  in  possession 
of  the  American  people,  President 
Jackson  returned  to  his  estate,  the 
"Hermitage,"  near  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee, and  lived  hospitably  in  the 
manner  of  a  substantial  farmer.  One 
who  visited  him  in  his  last  days  said: 
"His  amusements  consist  in  the  man- 
agement of  his  domestic  concerns." 
General  Jackson  died  in  1845,  a&e 
seventy-eight,  having  distinguished 
himself,  fearless  in  war  and  in  peace. 

369 


portrait  <£all?rg  nf  Jfamnua 


ILHOUETTE     of     John 
Randolph,   of   Roanoke, 
Virginia,  as  he  appeared 
when  embarking  as  Min- 
ister to  Russia  in  1830. 
Silhouettist    Brown    re- 
fers to  him  as  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  men  of  his  age,  and 
makes   these   comments:   "Mr.    Ran- 
dolph's peculiar  personal  appearance, 
his  unique  style  of  dress,  and  utter 
disregard  of  the  customs  of  society, 
together  with  his  eccentric  manners, 
his  peculiar  expressions,  and  singular 
habits,    rendered    him    an    object    of 
wonder  and  curiosity.      In    1830  he 
passed  through  Baltimore  in  an  old- 
fashioned  English  coach  of  Revolu- 
tionary times,  drawn  by  four  horses, 
with  a  postillion  mounted  on  one  of 
the  leaders,  and  John,  one  of  his  fav- 
orite servants,  on  the  box.     On  his 
mission  to  Russia  he  wore  a  large 
white   hat,   much   too   large   for   his 
head,  which  he  kept  in  its  place  by 
means  of  a  huge  bandana  handker- 
chief   stuffed    between    his    forehead 
and  the  front  part  of  his  hat,  a  long 
green    coat,    knee   breeches   and   top 
boots.     Americans,  English  and  Rus- 
sians proceeded  to  witness  the  land- 
ing of  the  new  American  Minister. 
He  accosted  the  emperor  with  great 
familiarity  and  told  him  he  wished  to 
see  'madam/  and  when  presented  to 
the  empress  he  continued  to  address 
her   with   that   appellation.     He   was 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  politicians  of 
his  age  and  an  orator  of  wonderful 
magnetism."      America     has     never 
known  a  public  character  so  unique 
in  its  strength.    John  Randolph  was 
born   at   Mattox,   Virginia,   in  June, 
1773,  and  proud  of  his  descent  from 
Pocohontas.     He  was  elected  to  Con- 
gress at  twenty-six  years  of  age,  and 
for  the  next  thirty  years,  with  but 
three  short  intervals,  during  one  of 
which  he  was  United  States  senator, 
his  powers  of  eloquence,  at  times  in 
speeches    occupying    an    entire    day, 
rang  through  the  House  of  Represen- 
tatives.    He  died  May  24,   1833,  at 
sixty  years  of  age,  in   Philadelphia. 


370 


Portrait 


nf 


Am*riran*s 


ILHOUETTE  of  the  first 
duly  consecrated  Prot- 
estant Episcopal  Bishop 
of  America,  the  Right 
Reverend  William 
White,  D.D.,  of  Penn- 
sylvania. The  artist's 
notes  describe  him  as  "of  venerable 
form,  rendered  infirm  by  age,  with 
his  long  locks  flowing  down  to  his 
shoulders.  The  general  respectful 
and  affectionate  salutations  with 
which  he  was  greeted  manifested  the 
veneration  and  respect  which  a  long 
life  of  excellence  and  piety  had  in- 
spired in  the  breasts  of  his  country- 
men. No  gloom  hung  upon  his  brow, 
nor  did  his  frown  rest  upon  the  inno- 
cent pursuits  and  pleasures  of  life. 
His  countenance  wore  always  the 
same  serene  expression.  Ardently 
sincere  himself,  in  his  belief,  and  pos- 
sessed of  an  expanded  and  well- 
stored  mind,  with  urbanity  of  man- 
ners, and  a  heart  overflowing  with 
benevolence  and  good  will  to  all,  he 
was  an  object  of  much  esteem  with 
every  class  and  every  denomination. 
He  was  a  man  who  respected  the 
rights  and  opinions  of  others,  and 
thereby  entitled  his  own  opinions  to 
the  respect  of  mankind.  He  was  ever 
studiously  careful  to  guard  against 
the  slightest  infraction  of  Christian 
courtesy,  in  wounding  the  feelings  of 
others.  Bishop  White  was  not  elo- 
quent. He  did  not  study  to  please 
the  ear  and  captivate  the  mind  by  the 
beauties  of  rhetoric.  His  sermons 
were  of  a  dignified,  argumentative 
character,  pervaded  by  a  tone  of  com- 
mon sense."  Bishop  White  was  born 
in  Philadelphia,  April  4,  1748.  At 
the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  inclined 
toward  the  ministry  and  at  eighteen 
years  prepared  to  preach.  He  was 
admitted  to  the  priest's  orders  in  Lon- 
don at  twenty-three  years  of  age, 
three  years  before  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  and  at  the  close  of  the 
American  Revolution  attempted  to 
establish  the  freedom  of  religion  side 
by  side  with  civil  liberty.  He  died 
July  17, 1836,  in  his  eighty-ninth  year. 

37« 


WILL      OF      MARY      WASHINGTON      IN      1788 

MOTHER  OF  TIIE  FIRST  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES 

Transcribed   from    Clerk's   Office    at   Fredericksburg,    Virginia,    by 
MRS.  HELEN  COOK  PORTER,  of  Baltimore,  Maryland 

IN  the  name  of  God !    Amen !    I,  Mary  Washington,  of  Fredericksburg,  in  the 
County  of  Spotsylvania,  being  in  good  health,  but  calling  to  mind  the  uncer- 
tainty of  this  life,  and  willing  to  dispose  of  what  remains  of  my  worldly  estate, 
do  make  and  publish  this,  my  last  will,  recommending  my  soul  into  the  hands  of 
my  Creator,  hoping  for  a  remission  of  all  my  sins  through  the  merits  and  medi- 
tation of  Jesus  Christ,  the  Saviour  of  mankind ;  I  dispose  of  my  worldly  estate  as 
follows : 

Imprimis. — I  give  to  my  son,  General  George  Washington,  all  my  land  in 
Accokeek  Run,  in  the  County  of  Stafford,  and  also  my  negro  boy  George  to  him 
and  his  heirs  forever.  Also  my  best  bed,  bedstead,  and  Virginia  cloth  curtains 
(the  same  that  stands  in  my  best  bed-room),  my  quilted  blue  and  white  quilt  and 
my  best  dressing-glass. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  son,  Charles  Washington,  my  negro  man  Tom, 
to  him  and  his  assigns  forever. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  daughter,  Bettie  Lewis,  my  phaeton  and  my 
bay  horse. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  daughter-in-law,  Hannah  Washington,  my 
purple  cloth  cloak  lined  with  shag. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  Corbin  Washington,  my  negro 
wench  old  Bet,  my  riding  chair,  and  two  black  horses,  to  him  and  his  assigns  for- 
ever. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  Fielding  Lewis,  my  negro  man, 
Frederick,  to  him  and  his  assigns  forever,  also  eight  silver  tablespoons,  half  of  my 
crockery  ware  and  the  blue  and  white  tea  china,  with  book  case,  oval  table,  one 
bedstead,  one  pair  sheets,  one  pair  blankets  and  white  cotton  counterpain,  two 
table  cloths,  red  leather  chairs,  half  my  peuter  and  one-half  of  my  kitchen  furni- 
ture. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  Lawrence  Lewis,  my  negro  wench 
Lydia,  to  him  and  his  assigns  forever. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  granddaughter,  Bettie  Carter,  my  negro 
woman,  little  Bet,  and  her  future  increase,  to  her  and  her  assigns  forever.  Also 
my  largest  looking-glass,  my  walnut  writing  desk  and  drawers,  a  square  dining 
table,  one  bed,  bedstead,  bolster,  one  pillow,  one  blanket  and  pair  sheets,  white 
Virginia  cloth  counterpains  and  purple  curtains,  my  red  and  white  tea  china,  tea- 
spoons, and  the  other  half  of  my  peuter  and  crockeryware,  and  the  remainder  of 
my  iron  kitchen  furniture. 

Item. — I  give  and  devise  to  my  grandson,  George  Washington,  my  next  best 
glass,  one  bed,  bedstead,  bolster,  one  pillow,  one  pair  sheets,  one  blanket  and 
counterpain. 

Item. — I  devise  all  my  wearing  apparel  to  be  equally  divided  between  my 
granddaughters,  Bettie  Carter,  Fannie  Ball  and  Milly  Washington, — but  should 
my  daughter,  Bettie  Lewis,  fancy  any  one,  two  or  three  articles,  she  is  to  have 
them  before  a  division  thereof. 

Lastly,  I  nominate  and  appoint  my  said  son,  General  George  Washington, 
executor  of  this,  my  will,  and  as  I  owe  few  or  no  debts,  I  direct  my  executor  to 
give  no  security  or  appraise  my  estate,  but  desire  the  same  may  be  alloted  to  my 
devises,  with  as  a  little  trouble  and  delay  as  may  be  desiring  their  acceptance 
thereof  as  all  the  token  I  now  have  to  give  them  of  my  love  for  them. 

In  witness  thereof,  I  have  hereunto  set  my  hand  and  seal  the  zoth  day  of 
May,  1788. 

MARY  WASHINGTON. 
Witness,  JOHN  FERNEYHOUGH. 

Signed,  sealed,  and  published  in  the  presence  of  the  said  Mary  Washington 
and  at  her  desire. 

JNO.  MERCER. 
JOSEPH  WALKER. 


&i0rfe0  of  (Gallant  Ammonia 


3lnhtt  ©hnnutH-Otolmtfl  of  ftpartanburg 


3anr 


*   damans  Sti* 


BY 


MRS.  ROBERT  J.  HERNDOX 

YOKKVILLE,  SOUTH  CAROLINA 


Tho*  we  must  die,  let  me  not  die 

In  ignominious  strife, 
With  fate  invincible,  and  sigh 

To  linger  out  my  life; 
With  powers  decayed,  enfeebled  mind 

And  slowly  slackening  breath, 
Burden  of  pity  to  my  kind, 

And  dead  before  my  death. 
No,  let  me  perish,  sword  in  hand, 

At  Honor's  sudden  call, 
Guarding  my  menaced  Motherland 

And  for  her  safety  fall. 
Or  mount  the  scaffold  with  firm  gaze, 

Martyr  to  some  great  cause, 
And  end  my  not  inglorious  days 

For  Freedom's  outraged  Laws. 


What  is  this  life  except  a  trust 

For  nobleness  and  right, 
The  torch  which,  while  we  may,  we  must 

Still  bear  and  keep  alight; 
And  when,  from  our  exhausted  will 

It  flickers,  hand  it  on, 
That  it  may  burn  and  beckon  still, 

Till  Time  itself  be  gone. 
But  if,  in  unheroic  days, 

No  great  deed  may  be  done, 
Let  me  at  least  deserve  this  praise: 

"He  lived  and  died  as  one 
Who  looked  on  Life  with  fearless  eyes, 

And  with  intrepid  mind; 
So  leaves,  where  now  he  silent  lies, 

An  honored  name  behind." 

— Selected. 


MONG  the  names  of  heroes 
and  heroines  whose 
magnificent  courage 
has  added  such  glpri- 
ous  chapters  to  the 
history  of  South  Caro- 
lina during  the  period 
of  the  American  Revolution,  there  is 
none  to  surpass  in  patriotisrh  and  de- 
votion to  country,  Colonel  John  P. 
Thomas.  His  service  and  leadership 
in  the  cause  of  liberty  and  independ- 
ence, and  the  exploits  of  the  men  and 
women  of  his  family  are  deeds  of 
chivalry. 

The  youth  of  the  country  were 
chiefly  indebted  to  him  for  their  first 
military  discipline,  and  in  the  public 
affairs  of  his  district  he  became  an 
acknowledged  leader.  He  raised  the 
standard  of  independence  among  his 
people,  and  with  strong  appeals 

373 


aroused  his  fellow-countrymen  against 
oppression. 

The  father  of  Colonel  Thomas  was 
English,  and  an  officer  in  the  King's 
army.  During  the  oppression  of  the 
Presbyterians  in  England,  he  re- 
moved to  Wales,  where  Colonel 
Thomas  was  porn;  and  some  years 
later  in  company  with  his  brother, 
Reverend  John  Thomas,  a  noted 
Presbyterian  minister,  and  other 
friends,  came  to  America  and  settled 
in  Chester  County,  Pennsylvania. 

Colonel  Thomas  was  brought  up  in 
this  country  and  educated  in  England. 
He  married  Jane  Black,  a  sister  of 
the  Reverend  John  Black,  the  first 
president  of  Dickinson  College,  Car- 
lysle,  Pennsylvania.  It  is  said  that 
she  was  a  woman  of  rare  intelligence 
and  varied  accomplishments,  possess- 


nf 


ing  many  charms  of  mind  and  heart. 
She  was  a  superb  horsewoman,  of 
which  she  gave  practical  proof  of  her 
skill  and  endurance  the  day  she  made 
the  famous  ride  from  Ninety  Six  to 
Cedar  Springs,  which  I  will  refer  to 
later. 

The  colonel  removed  to  South  Car- 
olina and  resided  on  a  commanding 
eminence  in  the  beautiful  region  of  a 
bold  and  lovely  stream  which,  when 
the  travelers  beheld  it  in  all  its 
beauty  of  forest  and  flower  and  gold- 
en sunlight  and  sparkling  cascades, 
surrounded  by  grand  hills  with  their 
coronets  of  pines,  one  of  them  ex- 
claimed: "What  a  fair  forest  this!" 
which  still  bears  the  name  of  Fair 
Forest  Creek. 

Here  he  was  residing  before  hostil- 
ities commenced  with  the  mother 
country.  He  was  a  militia  captain 
and  a  magistrate  under  the  royal  gov- 
ernment. He  was  enterprising,  intel- 
ligent and  patriotic,  owned  large  pos- 
sessions in  land,  slaves,  horses  and 
cattle,  and  was  highly  distinguished 
for  his  devotion  to  the  public  welfare. 
He  is  described  as  being  a  man  of 
splendid  appearance,  above  the  aver- 
age stature.  His  features  were  reg- 
ular, his  nose  straight,  his  head  finely 
formed,  and  set  firmly  upon  his  shoul- 
ders. He  had  dark  blue  eyes,  which 
in  moments  of  action,  gleamed  with 
fire  and  emotion. 

Colonel  Thomas's  death  occurred 
soon  after  the  close  of  the  war.  His 
lonely  grave  lies  not  far  from  the  city 
of  Spartanburg,  in  the  fair  valley  of 
White  Stone  Springs.  Near  by  can 
still  be  seen  four  rooms  of  the  house 
in  which  he  died.  And  over  and 
above  all  rises  the  granite  hills  upon 
whose  summits  the  battles  for  liberty 
were  fought,  and  victorious  armies 
shouted  their  battle  cry.  Here  amid 
the  silence  of  centuries  dreams  this 
knightly  soldier. 

Upon  the  refusal  of  Colonel 
Fletcher  to  acept  a  position  under  the 
authority  of  the  province,  John 
Thomas  was  unanimously  chosen 


colonel  of  the  Spartanburg  regiment, 
having  previously  resigned  the  com- 
missions he  held  under  the  royal  gov- 
ernment. He  directed  the  movements 
of  this  regiment  until  the  fall  of 
Charleston. 

Soon  after  he  was  taken  prisoner 
by  a  Tory  captain  by  the  name  of 
Brown,  and  confined  at  Ninety  Six 
and  at  Charleston  until  near  the  close 
of  the  war. 

This  Brown,  with  his  Tory  band, 
returned  to  the  home  of  Colonel 
Thomas  and  carried  off  his  negroes 
and  horses,  and  destroyed  much  of 
his  property  and  family  treasures. 
Colonel  Thomas  had  four  sons,  of 
whom  two  watered  the  tree  of  liberty 
with  their  blood.  Robert  was  killed 
at  Roebuck's  defeat;  Abram  was 
wounded  and  taken  prisoner  at 
Ninety  Six,  and  died  in  confinement. 
John  succeeded  his  father  in  com- 
mand of  the  Spartanburg  regiment, 
and  made  his  mark  in  many  a  well- 
fought  battle,  and  was  deeply  beloved 
by  his  men  for  his  daring  spirit  and 
generosity. 

He  was  one  of  the  four  prominent 
colonels  selected  to  confer  with  Gov- 
ernor Rutledge  and  to  make  a  full 
representation  of  the  condition  of  the 
brigade  and  their  reasons  for  refusing 
to  accept  Williams  as  their  com- 
mander. 

Colonel  Thomas  had  four  daugh- 
ters. The  husband  of  each  espoused 
the  Whig  cause,  and  all  held  commis- 
sions in  the  army,  and  rendered  their 
country  most  substantial  service  in 
securing  victory  and  freedom. 

The  women  of  South  Carolina 
were,  and  are  until  the  present  day, 
proverbial  for  being  brave  and  patri- 
otic, but  the  zeal  and  fidelity  of  Mrs. 
Thomas  and  her  daughters  will  com- 
pare favorably  with  the  brightest  of 
that  bright  galaxy  that  adorns  his- 
tory. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  War  for 
American  Independence,  Governor 
Rutledge  had  sent  a  quantity  of  arms 
and  ammunition  to  the  frontier  for  the 


nf 


use  of  the  Whigs.  These  had  been 
deposited  in  the  house  of  Colonel 
Thomas,  and  kept  under  the  protec- 
tion of  a  guard  of  twenty-five  men. 
Colonel  Moore  of  North  Carolina, 
with  three  hundred  Tories,  was  ap- 
proaching to  take  possession  of  the 
magazine.  Colonel  Thomas  deemed 
his  force  inadequate  to  a  successful 
defence  of  his  home  and  retired.  The 
guard  having  taken  off  and  concealed 
as  much  of  the  military  stores  as  time 
admitted,  Captain  Josiah  Culbertson, 
a  son-in-law  of  Colonel  Thomas,  re- 
fused to  leave  the  house.  He  had 
been  brought  up  on  the  frontier,  and 
was  thought  to  be  one  of  the  finest 
marksmen  in  the  army.  (He  it  was 
who  fired  the  first  shot  at  the  battle 
of  Cowpens.) 

So  with  William  Thomas,  a  lad, 
and  the  women  of  the  family,  he  re- 
mained, and  as  soon  as  the  Tories 
came  in  gun-shot,  they  all  opened  fire 
upon  the  British  invaders  with  such 
vigor  that  the  band  soon  withdrew 
from  the  conflict. 

Some  time  after  the  fall  of  Charles- 
ton, Mrs.  Thomas  was  on  a  visit  to 
her  husband  and  sons  at  Ninety  Six. 
They  were  prisoners  of  the  British  at 
that  post.  While  there  she  heard  two 
women  in  conversation,  and  one  re- 
marked to  the  other:  "On  to-morrow 
night  the  Loyalists  intend  to  surprise 
the  rebels  at  Cedar  Springs."  This 
was  interesting  news  to  her.  Cedar 
Springs  was  within  a  few  miles  of  her 
home.  Colonel  John  Thomas,  jun- 
ior, her  son,  was  in  command  of  the 
post,  and  with  him  were  several  of 
her  children  and  friends.  She  there- 
fore determined  without  delay  to  ap- 
prise them  of  the  attack,  though  the 
distance  was  at  least  sixty  miles. 

Without  loss  of  time,  she  made 
ready  for  the  dangerous  journey,  and 
with  courage  as  cool  as  it  was  deter- 
mined, very  early  the  following  morn- 
ing she  mounted  her  horse  and  rode 
away.  On  and  on  she  rode  through 
the  dark  forests  and  lonely  highways, 
with  spirit  undaunted,  never  falter- 


ing until  she  reached  the  camp  of  her 
sons,  where  she  informed  them  of 
their  great  danger  in  time  for  them  to 
provide  for  safety. 

When  the  enemy  rushed  on  in  easy 
confidence  of  victory,  instead,  how- 
ever, of  butchering  a  slumbering  foe, 
they  received  the  skilful  blows  of 
their  intended  victims.  On  that  night 
victory  perched  upon  the  standard 
of  liberty,  and  this  faithful  wife  and 
devoted  mother  quietly  repaired  to 
her  home,  conscious  of  having  done 
her  duty. 

In  the  midst  of  turmoil  and  strife, 
with  unparalleled  industry,  she  pre- 
pared clothes  for  the  needy,  food  for 
the  starving,  nursed  the  wounded, 
prayed  beside  the  dying,  and  buried 
the  dead  throughout  the  country  in 
which  she  was  an  angel  of  goodness 
and  mercy. 

In  is  not  definitely  known  at  this 
time  where  her  grave  is,  but  it  is 
thought  more  than  probable  that  she 
lies  buried  in  the  Mcjunkin  burying 
ground,  a  few  miles  from  Union,  near 
by  the  old  highway  which  leads 
through  Fair  Forest  to  Tiger  river. 
The  descendants  of  Colonel  Thomas 
and  his  wife  are  widely  dispersed 
over  many  countries.  Some  are  offi- 
cers in  the  United  States  Navy. 
Others  occupy  positions  of  trust  and 
honor  in  other  avocations  of  life. 
Some  have  distinguished  themselves 
in  the  wars  of  the  present  generation, 
bearing  their  country's  banner  into 
distant  lands  across  the  waters,  gladly 
dying  for  its  glory. 

And  still  there  are  others  quietly 
sleeping  near  their  old  home  in  the 
beautiful  Fair  Forest  they  all  loved 
so  well,  under  the  shadows  of  the  tall 
pines  which  stand  like  ghostly  sen- 
tinels keeping  eternal  watch  over  the 
graves  of  the  dead  heroes. 

Thus  the  names  of  Colonel  John 
Thomas  and  his  peerless  wife  shall 
shine  on  untarnished  on  the  rolls  of 
devotion  to  country,  the  example  of 
each  distant  age  adding  new  luster  to 
the  nation's  history. 


375 


antfc 


nf 


(gaur  $ta  3tadty  anb  thru  ifia  Eifr 
the   (£cutsr   of  American 


BT 

MRS.  SARA  B.  FRANCIS 

PHILADELPHIA,  PENNSYLVANIA 


He  was  a  glorious  old  patriot.  With 
what  vividness  does  such  a  memento  bring 
back  the  nature  and  reality  of  sufferings 
and  sacrifices  which  are  becoming  to  us 
top  much  like  a  tale  that  is  told.  Every 
glimpse  which  we  thus  get,  into  the  fading 
story  of  the  old  time,  goes  to  prove  that  it 
is  no  fiction,  founded  in  local  or  family 
pride,  that  attributes  to  those  who  laid  the 
foundation  of  our  prosperity,  an  earnest- 
ness, courage,  and  pure  elevation  of  char- 
acter which  places  them  in  the  first  rank 
among  heroes  and  patriots. 

SENATOR  DAWES. 


is  the  true  story  of 
one  who  gave  his  life 
and  worldly  accumula- 
tions  to  the  cause  of 
American  independence. 
Captain  David  Noble 
was  born  in  Westfield, 
Massachusetts,  January  25,  1732.  The 
surname  of  Noble  is  one  of  great  an- 
tiquity in  Great  Britain.  Lower,  in 
his  "Surnames,"  refers  its  origin 
"either  to  the  physical  structure,  or  to 
the  rank,  of  the  primitive  bearer." 
As  a  surname  it  appears  in  the  rolls 
and  records  of  the  court  held  before 
the  King's  justices  at  the  close  of  the 
reign  of  King  Richard  I,  in  the  year 
1199. 

Captain  David  Noble  was  of  the 
fourth  generation  from  Thomas  No- 
ble who  is  mentioned  as  having  been 
admitted  a  citizen  of  that  place  Janu- 
ary 5,  1653.  In  the  same  year,  1653, 
he  removed  to  Springfield.  Massachu- 
setts. He  appears  as  a  resident  of 
Westfield,  Massachusetts,  as  early  as 
January  21,  1669,  where  lands  were 
granted  to  him  in  the  year  1666. 

Captain  David  Noble  was  "one  of 
the  early  settlers  of  Pittsfield,  Massa- 
chusetts, who  organized  and  led  the 
company  of  minute  men  which 
marched  from  Pittsfield  to  Boston  on 
the  news  of  the  battle  at  Lexington. 
June  24,  1774,  his  name  appears  as 


one  of  the  ten  signers  of  the  petition 
to  the  selectmen  of  Pittsfield  asking 
them  to  call  a  town  meeting  "to  act 
and  do  what  the  town  think  proper 
respecting  the  circular  letter  sent  out 
by  the  town  of  Boston  and  other 
towns  in  this  province;  and  such 
other  matters  as  the  town  shall  think 
proper  in  regard  to  the  invaded  liber- 
ties of  this  country."  In  response  to 
that  petition  a  town  meeting  was  held 
June  30,  1774,  when  Captain  Noble 
was  appointed  a  member  of  the 
"standing  committee  to  correspond 
with  the  correspondent  committees  of 
this  and  other  provinces." 

The  following  letter  is  copied  from 
the  original,  at  one  time  in  the  pos- 
session of  the  late  Honorable  Henry 
L.  Dawes,  formerly  United  States 
Senator  from  Massachusetts.  It  is 
of  striking  interest  as  a  record  of  the 
faithfulness  and  self-devotion  of  the 
Revolutionary  heroes  in  "the  times 
that  tried  men's  souls." 

MRS.  RUTH  NOBLE,  PITTSFIELD,  per  favor  of 
MR.  CHAMBERLAIN. 

CROWN  POINT,  JULY  i,  1776. 
DEAR  WIFE:  I  would  inform  you  that 
through  Divine  goodness  I  am  alive  but 
not  very  well,  for  by  reason  of  hard  fatigue 
before  I  had  the  small-pox,  by  marching 
and  unsuitable  diet,  the  distemper  has  left 
me  in  a  poor  state  of  health,  though  I  had 
it  very  light.  Ten  days  ago  I  was  sent 
with  the  sick  from  Isle  Auxnaux  to  this 
place,  and  have  grown  more  poorly  than 
better  since  I  came  here.  Our  army  is 
very  distressed  by  reason  of  the  small- 
pox; we  have  had  four  thousand  sick  at 
once;  I  have  not  lost  one  of  my  company 
yet,  though  some  have  had  it  very  severe; 
Sergeant  Colfix  is  now  very  bad  and  it  is 
doubtful  whether  he  ever  recovers.  I 
had  two  men  taken  by  the  Indians  in  Ma- 
jor Sherbern's  party,  which  are  redeemed; 
and  one  Samuel  Merry  of  my  Company  is 
either  killed  or  taken  by  the  regulars  going 
down  on  a  raft  from  Montreal  to  Sorrel. 
The  distresses  of  our  sick  is  so  unaccount- 
able that  I  cannot  paint  it  out  by  pen  and 
ink.  (All  my  company  have  had  it.)  If 

376 


nf    Gallant    Am*rirana 


it  was  not  for  the  danger  of  the  small-pox 
I  should  be  glad  to  have  Brother  James  or 
David  come  up  and  see  me,  and  bring  my 
horse,  for  I  intend  to  try  to  come  home  if 
I  remain  so  poorly.  I  believe  that  one  of 
them  may  come  safe  by  taking  good  care 
-when  he  gets  here.  I  suppose  that  there  is 
about  four  thousand  of  the  well  of  our 
army  at  the  Isle  Auxnaux,  and  whether 
they  will  stay  there  or  come  here  I  do  not 
know.  Tell  Croner's  wife  that  he  has  had 
the  small-pox,  and  has  got  well  over  the 
distemper,  but  he  has  had  the  misfortune 
to  have  it  fall  into  one  of  his  eyes  so  that 
I  am  afraid  he  will  lose  the  sight  of  one 
eye.  He  remembers  his  kind  love  to  her 
and  child.  He  intends  to  try  to  come 
home  when  I  come;  he  cannot  write  for 
want  of  paper.  It  is  very  hard  living; 
wine  one  dollar  per  quart;  spirits  one  dol- 
lar per  quart;  loaf  sugar  three  shillings 
per  pound ;  butter  one  shilling  and  six 
pence — nor  to  be  had  for  that;  no  milk. 
All  the  above  articles  hardly  to  be  had. 
Vinegar  three  shillings  per  quart.  I  shall 
write  no  more  at  present,  but  remain  your 
loving  husband, 

DAVID  NOBLE,  Captain. 


The  condition  of  the  American 
army  at  Crown  Point  is  also  referred 
to  in  a  letter  of  John  Adams,  dated 
July  7,  1776,  in  which  he  says:  "Our 
army  at  Crown  Point  is  an  object  of 
wretchedness,  enough  to  fill  a  human 
mind  with  horror;  -no  clothes,  beds, 
blankets,  no  medicine,  no  victuals  but 
salt  pork  and  flour.  I  hope  that  meas- 
ures will  be  taken  to  cleanse  the  army 
at  Crown  Point  from  the  small-pox; 
and  that  other  measures  will  be  taken 
in  New  England  by  tolerating  and 
encouraging  inoculation  to  render  the 
disease  less  terrible." 

Captain  Noble's  letter  was  written 
"but  a  few  days  before  his  death,  and 
alludes  to  the  sickness  which  proved 
fatal  to  him. 

Captain  Noble  sacrificed  his  entire 
property,  as  well  as  his  life,  in  the 
service  of  his  country.  On  the  first 
alarm  which  spread  through  the 
country,  after  the  battles  of  Concord 
and  Lexington,  he  raised  a  company 
of  volunteeers  in  Berkshire  county, 
Massachusetts,  and,  with  his  own 
means,  "purchased  one  hundred  and 
thirty  stands  of  arms,  new,  for  the 
supply  of  his  company;  drilled  them 

377 


through  the  next  winter;  clothed 
them  with  regimentals,  their  breeches 
being  made  of  buckskin,  their  coats  of 
blue  turned  up  with  white ;  sent  from 
Cambridge,  whither  he  had  gone,  for 
all  the  goods  that  remained  in  his 
store  at  home,  both  linen  and  wool- 
ens, that  would  answer  for  soldier's 
clothing." 

"We  harvested,"  says  his  son,  now 
deceased,  in  a  letter  written  in  1836, 
"thirty  acres  of  wheat,  which  was 
floured  and  sent  to  Cambridge  the 
next  winter,  all  excepting  what  our 
families  used.  My  father  sold  two 
farms  in  Stephentown,  in  the  state  of 
New  York,  and  one  or  two  in  Pitts- 
field  about  the  same  time.  Those  in 
the  state  of  New  York  were  sold  in 
1774,  which  enabled  him  to  supply  his 
company  with  their  arms  and  cloth- 
ing. The  reason  of  my  recollecting 
the  circumstance  of  my  father  selling 
the  farms  in  the  state  of  New  York 
is,  that  the  men  who  bought  them 
(their  names  were  Jones  and  David 
Green)  brought  their  money  in  gold, 
quilted  around  every  piece  of  their 
underclothes,  which  took  my  aunt 
some  time  to  rip  the  gold  pieces  out. 
He  then  went  to  Philadelphia  and 
bought  the  deer-skins  of  leather,  and 
at  the  same  time  hired  a  breeches- 
maker,  and  the  breeches  were  all 
made  up  at  our  house." 

About  the  time  of  Captain  Noble's 
death,  which  occurred  in  Skeensbor- 
ough,  now  Whitehall,  New  York, 
August  5,  1776,  his  residence,  tan- 
nery, store  and  other  buildings  were 
burned,  as  was  supposed,  by  the  To- 
ries. Neither  Captain  Noble  nor  his 
family  were  ever  reimbursed  by  the 
government  for  the  expenses  and 
losses  incurred  by  him  in  its  behalf; 
nor  did  his  widow  and  orphan  chil- 
dren receive  even  the  seven  years' 
half-pay  pledged  by  the  government 
to  the  families  of  officers  who  died  in 
the  service. 

There  are  few  illustrations  of  truer 
service  and  more  conscientious  pur- 
pose in  American  history. 


fir  JFonglji  Ut  the  Amrrtrau  firttoltttUm  and 
00  br  "fflaaxrft  to  (So  Somr"  in  tftr  War  uf  1812 

ANECDOTE    CONTRIBUTED   BT 

CARRIE  J.  DOAXK  OF   ARLINGTON,  IOWA 


are  two  traditions 
in  my  family  that  have 
been  handed  down 
ll  through  the  generations. 
I  cannot  vouch  for  their 
authenticity  although 
they  have  always  been 
regarded  by  us  as  true. 
^  My  great  grandfather,  Phineas 
Slayton,  served  his  country  as  minute 
man.  At  one  time,  during  the  Battle 
of  Lexington,  he  was  with  those  who 
guarded  the  ammunition  and  ambu- 
lance wagon.  A  cannon  ball  killed 
the  driver.  The  guards  all  fled  but 
Slayton  who  threw  the  dead  body  of 
the  driver  onto  the  wagon  and  jump- 
ing into  the  driver's  place  started  the 
horses  on  a  run,  passing  directly  be- 
tween two  trees  with  sufficient  room 
only  for  the  horses.  The  wagon.must 
have  stalled  but  another  cannon  ball 
from  the  British  struck  the  lesser 
tree,  cutting  it  squarely  off  and  lift- 
ing it  above  the  wheels  so  that  escape 
was  effected. 

At  another  time  he  was  sent  with  a 
squad  of  men  to  guard  a  bridge.  The 
road  traversed  a  side  hill.  Near  the 
bridge  on  the  upper  side  was  a  rail 
fence  covered  by  shrubbery  and  green 
leaves.  Behind  this  rail  fence  was  a 
squad  of  unobserved  British  soldiers 
who  were  sent  for  the  same  purpose. 
As  the  Americans  approached,  the 
British  captain  called  out  to  Slayton: 
"Surrender  or  die."  Slayton  pointed 
his  sword  toward  a  stone  wall  below 
the  road  and  leaped  over  the  wall,  fol- 
lowed by  his  men,  in  barely  tinie 
enough  to  escape  the  British  bullets. 
Then  the  shooting  became  general. 
Few  were  hurt  as  the  stone  wall 
proved  a  good  shield,  with  the  shrub- 
bery and  rail  fence  on  other  side. 
Slayton,  seeking  to  get  some  advan- 
tage, crawled  upon  a  stone  that  stood 
near  a  large  chestnut  tree  well  hid- 


den by  leaves.  Somehow  the  British 
discovered  the  man  near  the  tree  and 
called :  "Don't  shoot  at  the  stone  wall ! 
Shoot  at  the  tree!" 

"Shoot  and  be  d-a-r-n-e-d,"  said 
Slayton  in  his  Yankee  twang.  Just 
then  the  British  raised  up  in  plain 
sight  and  a  volley  from  behind  the 
stone  wall  killed  or  wounded  half  of 
those  behind  the  fence.  The  balance 
fled,  but  returned  under  a  flag  of 
truce  and  removed  the  dead  and 
wounded. 

At  another  time  Slayton  was  sent 
to  relieve  some  starving  soldiers  held 
by  the  British  in  a  floorless  log  house. 
Some  of  them  had  died  with  pieces 
of  brick  and  earth  in  their  mouths,  so 
dreadful  were  the  pangs  of  hunger. 
Neighboring  women  secretly  tried  to 
take  some  kettles  of  hasty  pudding  to 
them,  for  a  temporary  relief,  which 
the  British  officer  lost  no  time  in  kick- 
ing over  upon  the  filthy  earth  floor. 
It  is  said  that  the  poor  patriots  laid 
upon  their  stomachs  and  licked  it  up 
like  dogs.  Still  they  could  have  been 
relieved  if  they  would  only  promise 
not  to  take  up  arms  against  the  king. 
But  they  chose  the  painful  death 
which  was  facing  them  when  Slayton 
came  to  their  rescue. 

When  the  War  of  1812  was  de- 
clared, Slayton,  with  whitened  head 
and  furrowed  cheeks,  but  full  of  pa- 
triotism, took  his  gun  and  started  for 
the  nearest  recruiting  station  to  enlist 
as  a  volunteer.  The  officer  at  the 
post  laughed  at  him,  telling  him  he 
could  not  shoot  anything.  A  col- 
loquy ensued  followed  by  an  arrange- 
ment that  five  of  the  new  recruits 
should  try  the  old  man  at  a  mark. 
The  result  was  that  the  venerable 
recruit  beat  the  best  shot  by  half  an 
inch.  Then  the  crowd  cheered  and 
the  old  man  was  coaxed  to  go  home 
and  rest  upon  his  laurels. 

37« 


orarg  3ty0tt01|t  to 

£lir  JJrraa  of  ilj*  Erjrabltc  ia  tl|f  dttuulfcr  r  of 
Pnblir    ©ptnlon  —  tiff   Erafcrr  and   tfotnrtnr 


CALIFORNIA 


MAINE 


MUST     AMERICAN     PROSPERITY 
BE    RETARDED 


BT   J01IN   P.   YOUNG 
•  DITOHIAI.    IV 

CHMOVIOLK 


Periods  of  depression  followed  years  of 
prosperity  with  such  regularity  that  ob- 
servance of  the  fact  gave  birth  to  a  theory 
which  has  been  almost  superstitiously  re- 
garded by  men.  The  vast  superstructure 
of  credit  of  modern  times  is  reared  upon  a 
foundation  of  promise,  and  until  very  re- 
cently that  foundation  was  not  strong 
enough  to  carry  the  load  imposed  upon  it 
by  the  careless  builders.  They  kept  on 
rearing  the  lofty  edifice  until  it  became  so 
heavy  that  it  was  crushed  by  its  own 
weight 

This  process  was  usually  designated  as 
overtrading,  but  that  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  that  men  bought  more  than  they 
could  pay  for;  in  other  words,  they  prom- 
ised to  redeem  certain  obligations,  but 
when  redemption  day  came  they  could  not 
make  good  because  there  were  so  many  in 
the  same  condition  that  there  was  not 
enough  of  that  which  is  demanded  in  the 
last  resort  to  go  around.  The  history  of 
every  depression  in  this  country  and  in 
England  conclusively  establishes  that  lack 
of  basic  money  was  at  the  bottom  of  the 
difficulty.  The  talk  of  over-production  is 
twaddle.  The  world  has  never  yet  pro- 
duced more  than  its  inhabitants  can  con- 
sume, and  when  it  happens  that  the  pro- 
ducer turns  out  more  products  than  he  can 
sell  it  will  always  be  found  that  there  is  an 
obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  consumer  get- 
ting the  things  produced  and  that  he  does 
•not  refrain  from  taking  them  because  he 
does  not  need  or  is  unable  to  use  them. 
.  .  .  The  credit  system  is  still  abnor- 
mally developed,  but  the  volume  of  prom- 
ises compared  with  the  ability  to  redeem 
them  is  growing  relatively  less.  .  .  . 
The  vast  addition  to  the  world's  stock  of 
basic  money  renders  it  moderately  cer- 
tain that  the  enterprises  of  mankind  will 
not  soon  be  checked  by  want  of  the  tools 
to  prosecute  them.  Money  is  the  mechan- 
ism of  exchange  and  it  looks  as  if  there 
would  be  enough  of  it  produced  in  the 
future  to  remove  all  apprehension  of  the 
disasters  which  flow  from  the  lack  of  it. 
Modern  ingenuity  has  achieved  the  tri- 
umph of  bringing  the  production  of  basic 
money  under  the  operation  of  the  law  of 
supply  and  demand 

379 


ARE  THESE  AMERICA'S  NEEDS 
A  GREAT  PROBLEM 


BT    OEOHOK    W.    NORTON 

EI'I   I  »H1  A  I        XV 
TXJE     POKTLA.JTD     BTBjriHO     KXPBBBS 

President  Roosevelt  ...  is  not  car- 
rying on  a  war  against  corporations  be- 
cause they  are  corporations,  and  he  dis- 
criminates between  the  right  doing  and  the 
wrong  doing  corporation,  as  he  does  be- 
tween individuals.  But  he  says  the  best 
way  to  cure  the  complaints  which  give 
rise  to  Socialistic  ideas,  is  to  cure  the  evils 
which  do  exist  which  give  any  ground  for 
these  complaints.  He  would  not  think  it 
a  fair  estimate  of  his  position  to  say  that 
his  idea  is  that  the  way  to  cure  Socialism 
is  to  grant  to  the  Socialists  a  part  of  the 
things  for  which  they  clamor.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  observe  that  the  president  is  still 
of  the  opinion  that  "swollen  fortunes"  are 
a  menace  to  our  welfare,  and  he  would 
have  the  swelling  reduced  through  the  me- 
dium of  an  inheritance  tax  plaster  to  be 
applied  to  the  locality  in  which  the  disturb- 
ance appears.  He  also  thinks  that  it  is 
possible  that  an  income  tax  law  may  be  so 
drawn  as  to  avoid  the  rocks  of  unconsti- 
tutionality,  upon  which  the  Democratic  in- 
come tax  boat  was  wrecked  in  the  Cleve- 
land administration,  and  he  thinks  it  would 
be  wise  to  try  it  The  president's  ideas 
concerning  many  topics  of  national  interest 
are  of  importance,  particularly  those  deal- 
ing with  the  control  of  corporations  doing 
an  interstate  business,  concerning  which 
he  declares  against  the  government  owner- 
ship idea  made  prominent  by  Mr.  Bryan, 
of  marriage  and  divorce  which  he  would 
have  controlled  by  national  legislation,  of 
the  shipping  interests,  and  the  currency 
problem,  of  the  Philippine  tariff,  which  he 
would  have  entirely  removed,  and  the  Jap- 
anese question,  in  which  he  stands  for  the 
defense  of  the  treaty  rights  of  aliens.  He 
thinks  still  that  "the  United  States  Navy 
is  the  surest  guarantor  of  peace  which  this 
country  possesses."  All  he  wants  is  that  it 
be  maintained  at  its  present  strength.  As 
a  matter  of  fact  Mr.  Roosevelt  is  not 
"afraid  for  the  terror  by  night  nor  for  the 
arrow  that  flieth  by  day." 


<E0tti?mp0rarg 


in     Amertra 


KENTUCKY 


VIRGINIA 


OMENS   OF  FIERCEST    CONFLICT 
KNOWN    TO    HISTORY 


BDITOHIAL     -W'KITKK 
THK      LOUIHVILLB 


Qose,  indeed,  is  the  understanding  be- 
tween France  and  England.  It  is  neces- 
sary for  both  nations.  There  is  Germany 
at  the  doors  of  France,  seeking  for  trouble 
such  as  would  justify  an  invasion  of 
French  soil  and  the  dismemberment  of  the 
French  Republic.  That  dismemberment 
were  sure  to  be  followed,  if  not,  indeed, 
accompanied,  by  the  seizure  of  Belgium 
and  Holland,  giving  the  Kaiser  the  front 
windows  of  the  Continent  to  look  out  onto 
King  Edward's  white-cliffed  island.  The 
Moroccan  trouble  almost  brought  matters 
to  a  head.  Germany  found  no  support  at 
Algeciras  to  justify  war,  or  even  suggest, 
in  that  event,  anything  like  certainty  of 
success.  She  accordingly  decided  to  keep 
her  purposes  for  some  time  longer  in  abey- 
ance. A  Paris  correspondent  now  writes: 
"Matters  had  reached  such  a  stage  during 
the  Morocco  crisis  that  England's  physical, 
as  well  as  diplomatic,  support  was  certain 
had  the  sword  been  unsheathed.  At  that 
time  military  and  naval  authorities  of  the 
two  countries  were  in  communication,  and 
after  the  crisis  had  passed  they  proceeded 
to  work  out  'in  a  purely  technical  fashion' 
plans  of  co-operation  by  land  and  sea  to 
meet  certain  eventualities." 

At  every  point  King  Edward  has  skil- 
fully blocked  his  ambitious  nephew.  The 
establishment  of  the  new  —  or  rather  re- 
vival of  the  old  —  kingdom  of  Norway  un- 
der practically  British  auspices  is  a  wall 
against  German  schemes  on  that  side.  The 
marriage  of  the  Princess  Victoria  of  Bat- 
tenburg  to  the  King  of  Spain  makes  the 
latter  government  friendly  to  Britain  on  a 
critical  portion  of  the  map.  The  Kaiser 
will  have  to  wait  If,  however,  he  decides 
to  make  a  break,  the  conflict  will  be  the 
fiercest  known  in  history. 


NORTH  AND   SOUTH  ARE  UNITED 
FOREVER 


XDITOJUAX.      -WHITKJZ      TIT 
THK      BICHMOND      TIM  K  K'lJ  IK  PATCH 

If  Southern  Democrats  desire  to  name 
the  next  presidential  candidate  they  must 
agree  on  the  man  before  they  go  to  the 
convention;  they  must  go  to  the  conven- 
tion with  a  solid  South.  It  may  be  argued 
that  this  would  appear  to  the  North  as  a 
revival  of  the  Southern  Confederacy, 
would  alarm  the  people  of  that  section  and 
drive  them  into  the  Republican  party. 
That  would  depend  on  the  temper  of  the 
conference.  If  it  should  be  composed  of 
hot-headed  men,  and  if  hot-headed  resolu- 
tions should  be  adopted  and  a  hot-headed1 
Southerner  nominated,  the  North  would 
probably  be  "alarmed."  But  is  there  dan- 
ger that  the  conference  would  be  so  com- 
posed, and  that  it  would  take  that  turn? 
Can  we  not  trust  our  own  leaders?  If 
not,  we  ought  not  to  take  chances,  and  we 
ought  to  give  up  all  idea  now  of  nominat- 
ing a  Southern  man.  But  if  representative 
Democrats  from  every  Southern  state- 
would  assemble  in  the  "capital  of  the  Con- 
federacy," and  by  their  deliberations  and' 
conclusions  convince  the  North  that  they 
were  altogether  safe  and  sane  and  patriotic,, 
then  concentrate  on  a  Southern  Democrat 
who  was  himself  safe,  sane  and  patriotic^, 
the  net  result  of  the  conference  would  be  to* 
give  the  Southern  Democracy  enormous 
prestige  in  national  politics  to  nominate  the 
man  of  their  choice,  and  in  all  probability 
to  elect  him.  Time  was  when  the  word" 
"Southern"  was  a  term  to  arouse  prejudice;: 
nowadays  it  is  a  word  to  conjure  with.. 
That  is  certainly  true  in  the  business  and' 
financial  world;  why  not  in  the  political" 
world  as  well?  For  our  part,  we  believe- 
that  prejudice  against  the  South  has  so  far 
disappeared  that  a  majority  of  Democrats 
of  the  North  and  West  would  be  delighted 
to  see  true  Southern  Democracy  once  again 
in  control  in  Washington. 


<E0nt*mp0rarg 


tn     Amrrtra 


SOUTH  CAROLINA 


DIST.  OF  COLUMBIA 


HUMAN  BROTHERHOOD  HANDS 
ACROSS  THE  SEA 


KDITOKIAL     -WHITE!*    IV 
TH«     01IAK1.KBTON-    NKWS     AXIJ     COUKTK* 

Every  evening  a  great  throng  of  people 
gather  under  the  dome  of  the  Ho- 
tel in  Paris.  They  come  from  every  nation 
and  tribe  and  tongue  and  kindred  in  the 
world.  ...  It  is  all  life  and  beauty 
and  motion,  the  prince  and  the  commoner 
jostling  each  other  in  good-natured  spirit 
as  they  mingle  together  in  a  delightful 
comradeship  to  be  found  nowhere  else. 
.  .  .  Symphonies  exquisitely  rendered, 
waltzes  and  marches  and  ballads,  solos  and 
<iuets  and  sextettes,  and  descriptive  pas- 
sages from  the  greatest  and  most  familiar 
grand  operas,  and  great  because  they  are 
familiar,  follow  in  delightful  order  until 
suddenly  with  magical  effect  the  whole 
dome  blazes  with  its  myriad  lights  and  the 
orchestra  plays  "Hands  Across  the  Sea," 
and  all  the  crowd,  whatever  its  language  or 
race,  breaks  into  the  most  enthusiastic  ap- 
plause. .  .  .  Great  musicians  would 
probably  regard  the  incident  as  reflecting 
upon  both  the  intelligence  and  sense  of  ap- 
preciation of  the  ever-changing  audience. 
They  would  say  doubtless  that  it  was  inar- 
tistic, that  it  was  not  in  keeping  with  the 
best  traditions  of  the  schools,  that  the 
trained  musical  mind  could  not  applaud  the 
cheap,  but  catchy  two-step  style  of  Sousa, 
and  they  would  be  exactly  right;  but  the 
human  race  is  not  artistic,  except  by  care- 
ful culture,  and  the  heart  is  moved  by  hu- 
man sympathy,  whether  it  be  excited  by  the 
cry  of  an  infant  in  distress  or  the  harmony 
of  sounds  which  touch  the  hidden  springs 
of  emotion.  Strange  as  it  may  seem  to  the 
educated  mind,  there  is  in  "Hands  Across 
the  Sea"  just  that  little  telepathic  touch 
which  places  us  in  communication  with 
those  who  are  at  a  distance,  whether  they 
are  still  with  us  in  this  experimental  exist- 
ence, or  whether  they  have  passed  on  into 
the  light  of  another  more  exalted  state. 
The  hands  of  those  who  were  here  for  a 
little  while  are  reaching  out  to  those  whom 
they  left  behind  across  the  sea  that  sepa- 
rates us  from  the  infinite  and  eternal  that 
lies  beyond  the  bounds  of  time  and  sense. 


MAN'S  AMBITION-QUEST  OF  THE 
NORTH  POLE 


BDITOKIAL     WHITES    IV 
THB     WAHHI3TOTOST     POST 

A  number  of  reputable  and  presumably 
influential  newspapers  are  uttering  protests 
against  further  attempts  to  reach  the  North 
Pole.  They  point  to  a  long  list  of  failures, 
most  of  them  involving  dreadful  tragedies, 
and  they  all  agree  that  the  discovery  of  the 
pole  could  not  be  materially  beneficial  to 
mankind.  This  is  precisely  what  The  Post 
did  for  a  long  time.  While  admiring  and 
commending  the  courage  and  fortitude  ex- 
hibited in  this  quest,  The  Post  showed  that 
the  game  was  not  worth  the  candle  and 
sought  earnestly  to  discourage  it  But 
when  it  became  evident  that  its  protests 
against  efforts  to  reach  the  pole,  no  mat- 
ter how  disastrous  they  may  be,  no  matter 
how  awful  the  reports  of  privation,  suffer- 
ing, death,  and  worse  than  death  might 
corne  out"  of  the  frozen  north,  were  utterly 
futile,  The  Post  called  a  halt  on  its  humane 
efforts.  The  Post  does  not  believe  that  as 
a  business  enterprise  the  effort  to  reach  the 
pole  is  worth  considering.  No  one  has 
any  reason  to  believe  that  its  successful 
accomplishment  would  be  an  achievement 
of  commercial  value.  Nevertheless,  it  is 
vain  to  cry  out  against  it.  So  long  as  any 
part  of  this  globe  remains  unexplored,  no 
matter  how  apparently  inaccessible  it  may 
be,  there  will  always  be  men  to  volunteer 
for  its  exploration  and  capital  to  fit  out  ex- 
peditions. This  arises  from  the  same 
cause  that  has  been  pushing  the  human 
family  along  in  all  the  ages.  It  is  the 
product  of  discontent  The  human  mind  is 
constitutionally  incapable  of  contentment 
or  rest  so  long  as  nature  hides  secrets  or 
art  can  find  possibilities  of  further  con- 
quest Therefore,  the  North  Pole  quest 
will  go  on  even  if  scores  or  hundreds  of 
victims  are  added  to  the  number  of  those 
who  have  laid  down  their  lives  in  the  hith- 
erto vain  endeavor.  And  perhaps  science 
in  this  field  is  less  unreasonably  employed 
than  it  is  in  speculating  on  Martian  canals 
or  in  attempts  to  wrest  from  the  Creator 
the  secret  of  life. 


THE   LAST   LEAF 


The  key  of  Yesterday 
I  threw  away, 
And  now,  too  late, 
Before  tomorrow's  close- 
locked  gate 


Helpless  I  stand— in  vain  to 

pray! 

In  vain  to  sorrow ! 
Only  the  key  of  yesterday 
Unlocks  to-morrow ! 


BDITORIAL,     COMMENT 


This  last  leaf  is  inscribed  to  all  Ameri- 
cans who  are  serving  their  country.  Not 
alone  those  who  have  made  self-sacrifices 
in  war  and  in  peace,  but  to  the  Greater 
American  People  who  are  serving  their 
country  by  each  day's  work,  well  and  con- 
scientiously done.  The  world  is  a  great 
workshop  in  which  we  are  all  artisans  ply- 
ing one  of  the  trades  and  deftly  adding  our 
own  workmanship  to  the  edifice  of  Truth 
and  Justice  which  the  generations  are 
building.  The  structure  of  the  future 
American  Republic  is  being  modeled  by 
you  and  your  friends  and  their  friends' 
friends.  Its  strength  and  its  weakness 
will  be  commensurate  with  the  strength 
and  weakness  of  its  people.  Bliss  Car- 
men, the  poet  and  aesthete,  once  said  that 
it  matters  little  whether  a  man  draws,  or 
digs,  or  makes  music,  or  builds  ships — in 
the  work  of  his  hands  is  the  delight  of  his 
heart,  and  in  that  joy  of  his  heart  lurks 
his  kinship  with  his  own  Creator.  Liberty 
means  not  license,  but  largeness  and  bal- 
ance of  manhood,  that  men  go  right,  not 
because  they  are  told  to,  but  because  they 
love  that  which  is  right  The  heart  of 
self-government  is  the  earnestness,  the 
self-respect,  the  industry  of  its  people—- 
and in  j  ust  such  proportions  as  these  quali- 
ties are  inculcated  into  the  American  peo- 
ple will  they  be  found  in  the  Republic. 


The  millions  who  have  gone  before  have 
countless  stories  to  tell — true  stories  of 
noble  impulses,  and  sweet  benevolences 
that  strengthen  one's  faith  in  humanity. 
While  gallantry  in  war  will  always  meet 
laudations  by  those  who  record  history, 
there  is  a  greater  army  of  Common  Sol- 
diers in  the  Common  Cause  of  Right 
whose  names  are  never  emblazoned  on  the 
scrolls  of  conflict  or  inspiring  victory. 
Their  service  to  their  country  is  their  sim- 
ple, good  lives.  They  were  not  epoch- 
makers.  They  did  not  jolt  the  great  world 
along  in  a  single  blow.  But  this  they  did — 
they  lived  honorably,  they  worked  indus- 
triously. To  them  the  American  Republic 
owes  the  sacredness  of  its  homes,  the  in- 
tegrity of  its  institutio  s,  the  stability  of 
its  citizenship;  its  foundation  and  its  ex- 
istence; its  past,  its  present,  and  its  fu- 
ture. The  men  knighted  by  history 
owe  much  to  the  manhood  of  the  silent 
men  in  the  ranks.  It  is  an  Americanism 
that  this  is  a  land  of,  for,  and  by  the  peo- 
ple. Inasmuch  as  it  is  the  individual  citi- 
zen who  contributes  to  the  great  body  of 
American  citizenship,  molding  its  charac- 
ter, which  in  turn  is  but  a  composite  of  the 
individual  citizens,  the  History  of  a 
Republic,  unlike  that  of  the  monarchy, 
must  be  written  by  every  man  and  woman 
who  lives  and  labors  under  its  ensign. 


The  pages  of  this  book  are  but  the  sto- 
ries that  the  workmen  tell  after  the  day^s 
work  is  done,  inviting  you  to  joy  in  their 
good  fortunes,  to  laugh  with  them  in  their 
jpvialty,  to  lend  a  hand  of  brotherly  affec- 
tion in  their  sorrows.  It  is  here  that  one 
may  sit  with  the  toilers  about  the  evening 
fire  and  listen  to  their  narrations  of  the 
long-gone  days,  of  the  roads  they  traveled 
and  the  tales  they  told  along  the  way — 
simple  stories  of  human  lives,  of  physical 
courage  and  of  moral  worth.  To  hear 
them  relate  their  experiences  is  like  stand- 
ing on  the  mountain  heights  where  the 
vision  of  the  world  below  is  clear,  and  to 
look  down  on  the  generations  of  men  and 
women  who  have  come  and  gone.  There 
in  the  fields  is  the  multitude  of  workers; 
in  the  meadows  are  the  little  ones,  who, 
now  in  the  playtime  of  life,  are  so  soon  to 
take  up  the  tools  of  labor  as  they  fall  from 
the  hands  of  the  workers ;  there  on  the  hill- 
sides are  the  young  men  and  women, 
climbing,  climbing  the  steeps  that  they  may 
catch  a  glimpse  of  the  golden  light  before 
the  set  of  sun.  On  the  hilltop  one  sees 
against  the  skyline  the  bent  figures  of  the 
aged,  their  silvered  hair  glistening  in  the 
sunlight,  and  their  gnarled  hands  lifted, 
with  their  faces  toward  the  Promised 
Land.  This  is  the  beautiful  unfolding  of 
the  past 


A  few  days  ago  the  eminent  Dr.  Lyman 
Abbott  remarked  that  we  are  now  passing 
through  as  great  a  revolution  as  that 
through  which  our  forefathers  passed,  and 
that  to-day  our  Government  does  a  thou- 
sand and  one  things  never  anticipated  by 
its  founders.  To  understand  the  progress 
of  these  events  we  must  know  first  what 
the  first  citizens  really  intended.  While 
the  demands  of  the  age  are  so  great 
that  only  the  few  can  pursue  historical  re- 
searches, the  hearts  of  the  American  peo- 
ple to-day  are  more  patriotic  than  ever  be- 
fore. They  absorb  knowledge  with  a  ver- 
satility that  the  world  has  never  before 
known.  This  is  an  epoch,  too,  when  men 
cannot  be  narrowed  down  to  treatises  and 
doctrines.  They  must  think  for  them- 
selves. They  prefer  to  commune  directly 
with  the  men  who  know  because  they  were 
there.  It  is  the  privilege  of  these  pages  to 
record  the  first-hand  narratives  of  such 
men  that  we  may  form  our  own  conclu- 
sions on  "the  progress  of  events"— conclu- 
sions based  whenever  possible  on  the  testi- 
mony of  eye-witnesses — to  receive  the  tes- 
timony of  those  who  witnessed  the  laying 
of  the  foundation,  of  those  who  are  to-day 
setting  the  keystone,  and  of  those  who 
will  have  life-stories  to  inscribe  of  events 
in  years  to  come — to  all  Americans — 
North  and  South,  East  and  West 


Journal 


Ammran 


. 


ROBERT  FULTON,  THE  FATHER  OF   STEAM    NAVIGATION 
Painting  by  his  intimate  friend  and  fellow-artist,  Benjamin  West— Original 
now    in    the    possession   of    Fulton's  grandson,  Robert   Fulton  Ludlow,    of 
Claverack,  New  York  —  Centenary  reproduction    in    the  Journal  of  American 
History  by  permission  of  the  Fulton  family  and  by  courtesy  of  the  Nautical  Gazette 


Journal  *f 


SItfr  ^taroa  0f  JK?n  twin 
iljat  Ijatt?  ^nter^Ii  tnin  t^ 
luil&ing  nf  ttj?  Wwtern  Qlnntut^nt 


REPRODUCTIONS  FROM  RARE 

PRINTS  AND  WORKS  OF  ART 

(AMERICANA) 


ttriginal  Rrararrhra  into  Autl|0rttattur  ^ourrrs  —  Autrrlrau,  Srittalj  and 
Euruprau  Arrhiura  —  Private  inurnala.  Biarira  and 


Rrminlarntrra     and     iHrmoira  — 
Julklurc  anh  u/ra&itiuna 


f  ubltalf^rH  nf  Am^riran 


by  thr  Aaaoriatrii  Pnblialjrra  of  Autrriran  Rrrorba.  3nr. 

in  thr  Anrirnt  JHuotripaltty  of  Nrm  fjaurn.  (Coutntoninralth  of  (Con- 

nrrtirnt.  in  QuartrrlQ  Art  EMttona.  four  hooka  to  thr  uolumr 

at  3faio  Bollara  annually.  3Ftfty  (Crnta  a  ropy  .*  (Com  u  i  lri» 

in  (Collaboration  with  thr  (Connrrtirnt   iflanaEinr- 

$Jrotrrtro  by  ropyright  and  JJrintru  from  jirraa 

of  thr  fiorman  Cithngrapl|ing   (Company 

Publication  rutrrrii  at  thr 

(£ff irr  at  Krut   fiaurn  aa  mail 

mattrr  of  th.r  arrono  rlaaa 

Htertmt 

and  S»rtirn 


SForrtgn 
e-hrrr  dollara  annually  &  ^rtirntu-ftur  rrnta  a  ropy 

LONDON     .    .    .    .  B.  F.  Stevens  A  Brown  ST.  PETERSBURG  Watkins  and  Company 

4  Trafalgar  Square,  W.  C.  Marskata  No.  36 

PARIS Brentano's  CAIRO F.  Diemer 

37,  Avenue  de  1'Opera  Shepheard's  Building 

BERLIN      ....  Asher  and  Company  BOMBAY Thacker  and  Company  Limited 

Unter  den  Linden  56  Esplanade  Road 

DUBLIN     ....  Combrldge  and  Company  TOKIO Methodist  Publishing  House 

18  Grafton  Street  2  Shichome,  Giz  Ginza 

EDINBURGH    .    .  Andrew  Elliott  MEXICO  CITT     .    .  American  Book  &  Printing  Co. 

17  Princess  Street  1st  San  Francisco  No.  12 

MADRID     ....  Libreria  Internacional  de  Ad-       ATHENS Const.  Electheroudakis 

rian  Romo,  Alcala  5  Place  de  la  Constitution 

ROME L.  Piale  BUENOS  ATRES    .  John  Grant  &  Son 

1  Piazza  di  Spagna  Calle  Cangallo  469 


of  thr  Julian  iJgmortal  Number 

FIRST   \  •>!.!•  M  i:  THIRD  NUMBER 

Collecting  the  Various  Phases  of  History,  Art,  Literature, 
Science,  Industry,  and  Such  as  Pertains  to  the  Moral,  Intellectual 
and  Political  Uplift  of  the  American  Nation — Inspiring  Nobility 
of  Home  and  State — Testimonial  of  the  Marked  Individuality 
and  Strong  Character  of  the  Builders  of  the  American  Republic 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION — Coat-of-arms  of  the  Fulton  Family  In  America — Illumi- 
nated especially  as  a  Memorial  to  Robert  Fulton,  the  promoter  of  steam  naviga- 
tion, on  this  Centenary  of  his  achievement — Emblazoned  in  six  colors 

By  Charles  L.  N.  Camp 

PAINTING  OF  ROBERT  FULTON— By  his  intimate  friend  and  fellow-artist.  Benjamin 
West — Original  now  in  the  possession  of  Fulton's  grandson,  Robert  Fulton  Ludlow, 
of  Claverack,  New  York — Centenary  reproduction  in  sepia-tone  in  the  "Journal  of 

American  History"  by  permission  of  Fulton  family 392 

THE  MESSAGE  TO  THE  AMERICANS — Poem By  Judge  Daniel  J.  Donahoe  393 

THE  ANNIVERSARY  OF  AMERICAN  COMMERCE — Ter-Centenary  of  the  building 
of  the  "Virginia,"  the  First  Ship  Constructed  on  the  Western  Continent — Centen- 
nial of  the  "Clermont,"  First  Steamboat  in  the  World — The  Rise  of  the  American 
Merchant  Marine  and  the  Development  of  a  Century  of  Navigation  since  Robert 
Fulton — Illustrated  with  many  rare  blue-prints  and  engravings 

By  C.  Seymour  Bullock  395 

ROBERT  FULTON  AS  AN  ARTIST — Reproduction  in  sepia-tone  of  his  painting  of  Joel 
Barlow,  the  poet  and  diplomat,  who  was  Fulton's  most  intimate  friend  when  the 
Inventor  proposed  to  Napoleon  the  power  of  steam  as  a  destroyer  of  the  navies  of 
the  world  but  met  with  rebuff — Original  Is  now  In  possession  of  the  Barlow  family 
In  New  York  and  a  replica  is  owned  by  Fulton's  grandson,  Robert  Fulton  Ludlow 
of  Claverack,  New  York 401 

FIRST    COLLECTION    OF    STEAMBOAT    PAINTINGS    IN    THE    WORLD — Blue-print 
reproductions  of  James  Bard's  Famous  Canvasses  of  Early  American  Marine  Archi- 
tecture    413 

MAP  OF  NEW  YORK  A  CENTURY  AGO  when  first  successful  steamboat  in  the  world, 
the  "Clermont,"  sailed  up  the  Hudson  river — The  city  then  had  about  83.000 
Inhabitants  and  was  concentrated  below  Spruce  Street — It  was  then  planned  to 
preserve  a  system  of  boulevards  along  the  water-front  and  construct  harbors 
rather  than  piers  for  shipping  purposes — Modern  commerce  made  this  aestheticism 
impractical  and  the  rise  of  steam  navigation  sacrificed  municipal  art  to  the  greater 
demand  of  public  utility 416 

A  CENTURY  OF  STEAM  NAVIGATION — A  series  of  sixteen  of  the  first  steamboats  to 
sail  Inland  waters  from  the  port  of  New  York — With  double-page  natural-color 
reproduction  of  the  modern  "Hendrlck  Hudson" 423 

FACSIMILE  OF  LETTER  WRITTEN  BY  ROBERT  FULTON  in  which  he  confided  his 
doubts  in  the  problem  of  steam  navigation — Original  in  the  archives  of  Lenox 
Library,  In  New  York 433 

AMERICAN  PROGRESS  IN  THE  MIDDLE  WEST — Voice  of  the  people  as  expressed 
through  the  Governors  of  the  American  Commonwealth  and  the  "Journal  of  Amer- 
ican History" By  Honorable  Albert  B.  Cummins,  Governor  of  Iowa  433 

•WE  WANT  PATRIOTS  IN  E VERY-DAY  LIFE" — Excerpt  from  speech  made  by 

Honorable  Charles  E.  Hughes,  Governor  of  New  York  434 

AMERICAN  PROGRESS  IN  THE  GREAT  SOUTHWEST.  .By  Hon.  Thomas  M.  Campbell 

Governor  of  Texas  435 

THE  MILLENIUM  OF  AMERICAN  CITIZENSHIP By  Hon.  Curtis  Guild,  Jr. 

Governor  of  Massachusetts  436 

BOUNDLESS  RICHES  OF  THE  AMERICAN  INTERIOR By  Horn.  George  L.  Sheldon 

Governor  of  Nebraska  437 

THE  RISE  OF  THE  BOUNTEOUS  SOUTH — Excerpt  from  speech  by 

Honorable  Claude  A.  Swanson,  Governor  of  Virginia  433 

INDEX  CONTINUED  (OTER> 


untlf  iEngratnngg   aub 


THIRD  QUARTER  NINETEEN  SEVEN 

Chronicles  of  Those  Who  Have  Done  a  Good  Day's  Work  — 
Rich  in  Information  upon  Which  May  Be  Based  Accurate 
Economic  and  Sociologic  Studies  and  of  Eminent  Value  to 
Private  and  Public  Libraries  —  Beautified  by  Reproductions  of 
Ancient  Subjects  through  the  Modern  Processes  of  American  Art 

CONTINUATION  OF  INDEX 

THE  AMERICAN  SPIRIT  IN  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY  .....  By  Hon.  Joseph  W.  Folk 

Governor  of  Missouri  439 

TRADE  OF  A  MULATTO  BOY  IN  1765  —  Accurate  Transcript  from  Original  Document 

in  Possession  of  ...........................  Mary  R.  Woodruff,  Orange,  Connecticut  440 

AN  AMERICAN'S  EXPERIENCE  IN  THE  BRITISH  ARMY—  Manuscript  of  Colonel 
Stephen  Jarvis,  Born  in  1756  in  Danbury,  Connecticut,  Revealing  the  life  of  the 
Loyalists  who  refused  to  renounce  allegiance  to  the  King  and  fought  to  save  the 
Western  Continent  to  the  British  Empire  —  Original  Manuscript  now  in  possession 
of  .........................  Honorable  Charles  M.  Jarvis,  New  Britain,  Connecticut  441 

SONNET  ..........................................................  By    Horace    Holley  464 

PILOT  OF  FIRST  WHITE  MEN  TO  CROSS  THE  AMERICAN  CONTINENT—  Identifica- 
tion of  the  Indian  Girl  who  Led  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition  Over  the  Rocky 
Mountains  in  their  Unparalleled  Journey  into  the  Mysteries  of  the  Western  World 

—  Recognition  of  Sacajawea  as  the  Woman  who  Guided  the  Explorers  to  the  New 
Golden  Empire  —  With  nine  reproductions  from  sculpture  and  rare  prints 

By  Grace  Raymond  Hebard,  Ph.D.,  of  the  University  of  Wyoming  467 

THE  NOBLER  RACE—  Poem  ..................................  By  Frank  P.  Foster,  Jr.  484 

LIFE  ON  AN  AMERICAN  TRADING  VESSEL—  Adventures  on  the  High  Seas  in  the 
First  Days  of  American  Commerce  when  Privateering  was  a  Prosperous  Occupa- 
tion and  Daring  Men  Chose  the  Hazards  of  Seamanship  —  Journal  of  Samuel  Hoyt, 
an  Early  American  Sea  Captain,  Born  in  1744  —  Transcribed  by  Julius  Walter  Pease  485 

IN  THE  FIRST  HOMES  IN  AMERICA—  With  reproductions  of  antique  furniture 

By  Clara  Emerson  Bickford  494 

SECRET  SERVICE  OF  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION—  Incidents  in  which  Imminent  De- 
feat was  turned  to  Glorious  Victory  —  Repressing  the  Ravagers  of  Property  on  the 
Outskirts  of  the  Army  —  Anecdotes  of  Colonel  Henry  Ludington,  Born  1739,  and  the 
Heroism  of  his  Daughters  who  Saved  him  from  Capture  and  Execution  —  Related 
by  ..............................................................  Louis  S.  Patrick  497 

OATH  OF  ALLEGIANCE  TO  KING  GEORGE  III—  Sworn  to  by  Colonel  Henry  Luding- 
ton on  March  12,  1763,  in  Dutchess  County  in  the  Province  of  New  York,  before 
being  allowed  to  take  office  as  Sub-Sheriff  —  Accurate  Transcript  ..................  501 

AN  AMERICAN'S  OATH  OF  ABJURATION  IN  1763—  Sworn  to  by  Colonel  Henry  Lud- 
ington when  appointed  to  the  office  of  Sub-Sheriff  —  Accurate  Transcript  from 
originals  in  collection  of  Poughkeepsie,  New  York  Literary  Club  ..................  501 

PLEDGE  OF  THE  PATRIOTS  TO  FREE  AMERICA—  Signed  by  Americans  in  1776  — 
Transcript  from  Original  in  Possession  of  the  Misses  Patterson  of  Patterson, 
New  York  —  Colonel  Henry  Ludington  Renounced  his  former  oaths  and  signed  this 
document  at  the  beginning  of  the  American  Revolution  ..........................  503 

PLEA  FOR  PROTECTION  FROM  THE  ENEMY—  Accurate  Transcript  from  Original 
letter  written  by  Colonel  Henry  Ludington  after  he  had  espoused  the  cause  of 
American  Independence  and  his  oaths  to  the  King  ................................  503 

HERITAGE  OF  YEARS  —  Poem  ............................  By  Howard  Arnold  Walter  508 

WILLIAM  PYNCHON  —  An  Immigrant  to  the  New  World  in  1630  —  An  Oxford  Graduate 
who  came  to  the  Western  Continent  as  an  Indian  Trader  and  settled  on  the  trail 

—  He  accumulated  wealth  and  founded  a  family  which  has  contributed  liberally 
to    American    Progress  —  Nathaniel    Hawthorne's    Controversy    with    the    Pynchon 
family  over  his  novel  —  Heirlooms  of  the  early  American  pioneers  —  Described  by 

Blanche  Nichols  Hill  509 

BOOK  PLATE  OF  REVEREND  THOMAS  RUGGLES  PYNCHON,  President  of  Trinity 

College,  Hartford,  Connecticut  —  Descendant  of  William  Pynchon,  1630  ............   516 


It? 


frnm    Anrunt    inrumntta 


.Ifl.V  AUGUST  HBPTEUHKH 

This  opportunity  is  taken  to  thank  the  many  eminent  scholars 
from  both  Continents  who  have  so  kindly  sent  expressions  of 
appreciation  to  this  new  American  journal.  The  generous 
sentiments  of  Americans,  and  its  immediate  recognition  by  the 
leading  American  and  foreign  libraries,  is  most  gratifying 

CONCLUSION  OF  INDEX 

PROGENY  OF  SAXON  KINGS  IN  AMERICA— Unbroken  Line  of  Descent  from  Egbert. 
First  King:  of  all  England — 800-838,  to  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  Abbey  who  came 
to  America  in  1620 — Royal  Lineage  Sustained  through  Thomas  Tracy  of  Connecti- 
cut, 1636 — Illustrated  with  eighteen  Rare  Reproductions  from  Ancient  Documents 

Dwight  Tracy.  M.D.,  D.D.S.  517 

FATHER  OF  BIBLICAL  CULTURE  IN  AMERICA— Reminiscences  of  the  First  Ameri- 
can Blblicist  who  found  Religious  Thought  under  Dominion  of  Iron-Bound  Meta- 
physics and  Disenthralled  it  from  its  Slavery — First  Contributions  to  Biblical 
Literature  and  First  School  for  Education  to  Ministry — Life  of  Moses  Stuart — 
Born  1780 By  John  Gaylord  Davenport,  D.D.  545 

REMINISCENCES  OF  MOSES  STUART— Born  in  1780— By  his  daughter 

Mrs.  Sarah  Robbins,  Newton  Highlands,  Massachusetts  557 

PERSONAL  LETTERS  OF  PIONEER  AMERICANS — Glimpses  into  Time-stained  and 
almost  indecipherable  Correspondence  Revealing  the  Strong  Character,  Conscien- 
tious Lives,  Domestic  Customs,  Business  Integrity  and  Courageous  Hardihood  of 
First  Citizens  of  the  Republic — Contributed  by Miss  C.  C.  Thacher  559 

FIRST  NEWS  OF  AN  AMERICAN  VICTORY— This  is  an  account  of  the  Joy  that 
reigned  throughout  America  on  the  news  of  victory,  told  by  an  eye-witness,  Stan- 
ton  Sholes,  who  was  born  March  14,  1772,  married  Abigail  Avery  on  March  14,  1793, 
and  died  February  7,  1865,  at  Columbus,  Ohio,  in  his  ninety-third  year — Accurate 
transcript  from  Original  Manuscript — Contributed  by 

Sarah  Elizabeth  Sholes  Nighman,  great-granddaughter  of  the  narrator 

Bayonne,  New  Jersey  563 

LIFE  STORIES  OF  GALLANT  AMERICANS — The  Lanes — Cavaliers  of  the  South— In 

the  Wars  of  Early  America. .  .By  Mrs.  Louisa  Kendall  Rogers,  Barnesvllle,  Georgia  565 

THE    HISTORIAN— Poem By    Herbert    Hughes  567 

FAIR,  COOLING  SPRAY.  O  LOVELY  SEA! By  Dr.  Frederick  H.  Williams  568 

ON  THE  HILLTOPS By  Josephine  Canning  568 

COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  AMERICA — Series  of  blue-prints  of  summer  landscape  views 569 

ESTATE  OF  "A  WELL-TO-DO"  VIRGINIAN  IN  1674— Transcribed  from  the  Original 
by  Dr.  Joseph  Lyon  Miller,  grandson  of  the  Seventh  Generation.  Thomas,  West 
Virginia 578 

CONTEMPORARY    THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA— The    Press    of    the    Republic    is    the 

Moulder  of  Public  Opinion — the  Leader  and  Educator 575 

THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  MUST  LEAD  VAN  OF  PROGRESS — Editorial  writer  In  the 

"Denver    Republican" 576 

CIVILIZATION'S    GREAT    WORK    IS    IN    ITS    BEGINNING — Editorial    writer    In    the 

"Toledo    Blade" 675 

AN  ATTEMPT  TO  SOLVE  THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  PLANETS — Editorial  writer  in  the 

"Philadelphia     Inquirer" 576 

AMERICAN  SCIENTISTS  BELIEVE  JAPANESE  ARE  CAUCASIANS — Editorial  writer 

in  the  "Indianapolis  Star" 67« 

WILL  MAN  HARNESS   POWERS   OF   SUN.   MOON   AND   TIDE?— Editorial   writer   in 

the  "Baltimore  Sun" 577 

UTILIZATION  OF  INVENTION  OF  GENIUS  OF  MAN— Editorial  writer  in  the  "Pater- 
son  Morning  Call" 577 

THE  LAST  LEAF— Editorial  Comment 578 


Journal 


VOLUME  I  NUMBER  III 

EDITKD    BT    FKAMCIJS    TBKVKLTAK    MH.LKK 
XIlfKTKKJT     8KVK2T  THIBD    Qt'AMTK* 


to       Ammratta 


BT 
JUDGE  DANIEL,  J.  DONAHOE 

PAUSE,  Omy  Brothers,  in  your  maddening  strife; 
Pause,  and  behold  the  folly  of  your  haste! 
The  voice  that  ye  have  honored  as  of  God, 
And  in  your  anxious  fear,  strive  to  obey,  — 
The  master  who  hath  stamped  upon  your  souls 
As  holy  doctrine  that  outworn  decree, 
"Each  for  himself,"  is  false  to  God  and  you. 
Cease  from  your  strife,  and  lift  your  souls  aloft 
Among  the  sunny  clouds,  where  the  sweet  air 
Shall  fill  your  lives  with  joy  and  deathless  truth. 

Behold,  O  Toilers,  all  this  beauteous  world, 

That,  with  the  air  and  ocean,  comes  to  you, 

Children  of  love,  free  as  the  spacious  heavens, 

The  gift  of  everlasting  Charity! 

See  how  it  lies  before  you,  all  unmarred 

By  evil  or  by  foul  deformity, 

A  wondrous  gift  from  God,  your  generous  Sire, 

To  you,  O  Brothers,  children  of  His  love. 

The  concave  heaven,  where  all  night  long  the  stars 
Move  with  calm  faces,  and  all  day  the  clouds 
Are  blown  in  ever-changing  loveliness; 
The  pulsing  ocean,  kissing  the  white  beach 


With  ever-rolling  billows;  and  the  earth 
With  her  wide  inland  seas,  her  flooding  ways, 
And  roaring  mountain  torrents, — these  are  yours; 
Yours — and  the  voice  that  dares  deny  your  claim 
Shall  fall  dishonored  by  the  works  of  God. 

Pause,  listen  and  behold!  The  skies  proclaim 

Man's  majesty;  the  air  bows  to  his  rule; 

Earth  with  her  mountain  floods,  forest  and  mines, 

Stoops  to  his  conquering  might ;  and  ocean's  waves 

Bend  in  fierce  storms  obedient  to  his  will. 

Yea!  unto  you,  Majestic  Brotherhood, 

The  everlasting  Love  hath  given  the  rein 

O'er  nature's  wondrous  forces. 

Not  to  one, 

Nor  to  a  few,  nor  the  surviving  fit, — 
Detested  word,  meet  but  for  murder's  tongue, — 
Are  God's  great  mercies  measured ;  but  to  all, 
To  each  and  all,  one  general  Brotherhood, 
He  giveth  of  His  everlasting  love 
In  everlasting  measure;  to  man's  race 
He  giveth  soul  and  sense  ami  a  sweet  home, 
Wherein  to  live  and  love  and  bless  His  name. 

Yours  is  the  air,  with  all  its  wondrous  powers; 
Yours  is  the  earth,  with  all  its  teeming  wealth; 
Yours  is  the  water;  flowing  round  the  globe; 
And  yours  the  power  to  curb  and  conquer  all. 

But  yours  must  be  the  might  that  bindeth  fast 
Each  unto  each ;  for  every  man  shall  know 
His  brother's  welfare  and  his  own  is  one; 
Shall  feel  forevermore,  o'er  all  the  earth, 
The  gentle  love  that  sees  a  Fatherhood 
In  God's  all-powerful  being,  and  in  Man 
The  sweetness  of  one  general  Brotherhood. 

Such  love  will  fill  your  souls  with  wisdom's  might; 

Will  show  the  vanity  of  selfish  strife, 

And  the  sweet  joy  of  one  united  will. 

The  cruelty  and  greed  of  natural  man 

Shall  thaw  and  melt  away  in  its  mild  warmth, 

And  grace  shall  rule  the  heart  with  serene  power. 

Hark  to  the  message,  while  the  morn  is  young! 
Lift  up  your  souls  unto  the  sunny  clouds, 
And  learn  the  living  wisdom  of  God's  love. 


of  Ammnm  (Eommme 


ftrr-QJrntrnarg 

of  thr  ViiUttng  of  thr 

"BirgUtta."  tlj*  ^trut  &b.t|i  CBnnntrttrt*& 

on  th.*  HI*  nt*nt  <Banttn*ni  ^  (ErnJr  nntal  of  tb.*  "  (Elrntumt," 

JFiral  &t*ambcat  in  thr  IDurliJ  fc*  i£hr  Star  of  thr  American  fflmhant 

Jfeurtn*  anft  tb,*  Htvtiopmsnt  nf  a  Ofcnturfl  nf  Navigation  atnrr  Robrrt 


C.  SEYMOUR  BULLOCK 

AUTHOR  or   "Tax   MIUACLB  or  TUB  FIBST  STEAMBOAT,"    "  FIRST  STEAMSHIPS  TO  Cno»s  THE  OCEAN,"   AXD  A 
RKCOOMZKD  AUTHORITT  ON  TUB  SUBJECT  or  STEAX  NAVIGATION 


^^^^HIS  is  the  three  hundredth 
y  anniversary  of  the  build- 

*  ing  of  the  first  ship  on 

All.  the  American  continent, 
^^^^Jr  and  the  one  hundredth 
anniversary  of  the  first 
practical  steamboat  in  the 
world.  The  former  will  be  observed 
in  Maine  where  the  little  two-masted 
bark,  "Virginia,"  was  built  on  the 
Kennebec  river  in  1607 — the  birth  of 
the  American  merchant  marine.  The 
latter  will  be  celebrated  throughout 
the  civilized  world,  receiving  special 
recognition  in  France  and  America. 

The  Americans  are  preparing  to 
pay  the  tribute  of  a  loving  people  to 
one  of  their  own  fellowmen  who  gave 
to  all  races  and  all  nations  the  secret 
of  the  world's  material  progress, 
commerce.  When  the  "Clermont" 
steamed  up  the  Hudson  river  on  that 
day  in  August,  1807,  the  people 
laughed  it  to  scorn  as  "Fulton's 
Folly."  The  legislature  could  not  be 
impressed  with  the  sincerity  of  its 
promoters  and  ridiculed  the  petitions 
for  exclusive  right  of  navigating 
steam  vessels  in  the  waters  of  New 
York. 

A  few  days  ago,  one  hundred  years 
having  intervened,  the  legislators  of 
this  same  commonwealth  conferred  a 
rich  grant  at  the  gate  of  the  Western 
Continent,  covering  two  blocks  in  the 

345 


harbor  of  the  American  metropolis, 
extending  from  One  Hundred  and 
Fourteenth  street  to  One  Hundred 
and  Eighteenth  street,  New  York, 
and  extending  to  a  depth  of  forty  feet 
in  the  Hudson  river.  Here  will  be 
constructed  a  water-gate,  through 
which  all  the  ships  of  the  world  may 
approach,  a  magnificent  memorial  to 
the  memory  of  Robert  Fulton — a 
treasure-house  of  all  that  pertains  to 
steam  navigation,  containing  a  mu- 
seum and  reception  hall.  The  rela- 
tives of  Robert  Fulton  have  granted 
permission  to  remove  his  remains 
from  the  present  resting-place  in  the 
Livingston  vault  in  Trinity  church- 
yard to  this  place  of  state  overlooking 
the  river  which  he  loved  and  on  which 
he  endowed  mankind  with  his  genius. 
One  hundred  years  ago  this  strug- 
gling inventor  roamed  two  continents 
to  find  a  few  paltry  dollars  with  which 
to  improve  the  navigation  of  the  seas 
and  revolutionize  the  world's  trade. 
To-day  more  than  a  half  million  dol- 
lars are  willingly  and  lovingly  offered 
as  tribute  to  his  memory  by  a  grateful 
people.  It  is  the  wonderful  story  of 
his  struggles  that  is  here  told,  taking 
one  back  through  the  century  to  the 
man  himself  and  that  August  day 
when  the  world  was  awakened  from 
its  slumbers  by  the  dawn  of  a  new 
epoch. 


Ififlf— ukr-Qfctttenarg   nf  Ammran   Qfommm* 


®          world    absolutely    re- 
fused to  accept  the  theory 
that  ships  could  be  pro- 
pelled  against   wind   and 
tide    by    a    subtle  power 
known    as    steam.      The 
men    who    tried    to    per- 
suade the  people  of  several  nations  to 
give  them  an  opportunity  to  prove  it 
is   a   list   of   fatalities — of  tragedies. 
Jonathan  Hulls,  the  Englishman,  and 
John  Fitch  and  James  Rumsey,  Amer- 
icans, offered  the  great  secret  to  their 
fellowmen   only  to   receive   their   re- 
buffs and  ridicule.     Other  men  with 
ideas   founded  upon  the  theories  of 
these     first     martyrs     to     invention 
stepped  into  the  same  pit  of  public 
disapproval  until  at  last  there  came 
one,    Robert     Fulton,    a    persistent, 
prodigious,     indomitable    man,     who 
forced  the  world  to  listen.     It  is  on 
this    hundredth    anniversary    of    his 
achievement  that  I  ask  the  respectful 
hearing  of  all  Americans. 

Wearied  with  his  uneven  fight 
against  the  prejudices  and  the  indif- 
ference of  a  world  to  whose  service  he 
had  thought  to  bridle  the  very  waters 
of  the  sea,  John  Fitch  had  retired  to 
his  lands  in  Kentucky  and  there,  after 
an  illness  of  many  weeks,  died.  A 
short  time  before  his  death  he  wrote 
to  Dr.  William  Thornton,  whose 
friendship  for  Fitch  and  confidence  in 
the  practicability  of  his  ideas  seems 
never  to  have  wavered,  the  following 
pathetic  letter: 

BARDSTOWN,  NELSON  COUNTY,  IST,  FEBY, 

1798. 
"My  WORTHY  FRIEND 

I  am  going  fast  to  my  mother  clay.  Yes- 
terday I  executed  my  last  will  which  I  ever 
mean  to  make.  My  property  hear  will  be 
much  more  than  I  ever  expected.  .  .  . 
Address  letter  for  me  to  Mr.  John  Rowan, 
Bardstown.  If  I  am  hear  I  can  pay  the 
postage,  if  not  he  will  have  enough  in  his 
hands.  I  shall  transact  no  more  business 
of  myself  but  leave  it  altogether  to  him. 

my  worthy  friend  I  have  many  more 
things  to  inform  you  and  Mr.  Vail  but  be- 
ing fatigued  shall  only  say 

that  I  am 

and  shall  die 
a  friend  to  both  of  you 
JOHN  FITCH 


DR.  WILLIAM  THORNTON,  ESQ. 

P  S  if  possible  let  me  receive  one  letter 

more  from  you  J  F" 

Fitch  had  but  recently  returned 
from  his  fruitless  trip  to  England  and 
France,  where  it  was  hoped  to  build 
a  larger  boat  than  any  that  had  been 
attempted  on  the  Delaware,  but 
France  had  just  put  to  her  best  life 
the  knife  of  suicide  and  the  people 
were  too  busy  thinking  out  schemes 
for  getting  rid  of  one  another  to  con- 
cern themselves  in  the  plans  of  any 
stranger  with  a  project  for  utilizing 
the  untried  force  of  steam.  After  a 
brief  stay  with  the  United  States' Min- 
ister Vail  at  L'Orient,  Fitch,  in  spite 
of  his  earlier  leanings  toward  skepti- 
cism, turned  his  back  upon  the  people 
who  were  wearing  miniature  guillo- 
tines about  the  neck  just  as  beauty  now 
adorns  itself  with  chain  and  locket, 
and  started  for  London  where  he 
sought  out  his  friend  Leslie,  of  Phila- 
delphia, through  whom  he  was  intro- 
duced to  the  Earl  of  Stanhope,  one  of 
the  most  eminent  engineers  of  the  day, 
and  to  William  Symington,  builder  of 
the  "Charlotte  Dundas,"  England's 
first  successful  steamboat,  which  was 
launched  in  1801  and  used  to  tow 
boats  upon  the  canal  in  1802.  It  was 
laid  aside  after  the  death  of  the  Duke 
of  Bridgewater,  which  caused  a  lack 
of  funds  necessary  to  make  changes 
so  that  the  waves  caused  by  the  boat 
would  not  wash  down  the  banks  on 
either  side.  This  was  in  1793  and 
from  this  time  dates  the  first  corre- 
spondence between  these  early  investi- 
gators and  experimentors  and  Robert 
Fulton  upon  which  it  is  thought  to 
base  a  claim  for  priority  of  sugges- 
tion in  the  use  of  steam  for  naviga- 
tion. 

"Sir:  I  have  received  yours  of  the  30th 
of  September,  in  which  you  propose  to 
communicate  to  me  the  principles  of  an  in- 
vention which  you  say  yo»  have  discov- 
ered, respecting  the  moving  of  ships  by 
means  of  steam.  It  is  a  subject  on  which 
I  have  made  important  discoveries.  I  shall 
be  glad  to  receive  the  communication 
which  you  intend,  as  I  have  made  the 
principles  of  mechanics  my  particular 
study."  *  *  * 

306 


nf 


^J&OJTT          *-«i 

ACENTORYS 

.  1807;  133  TEET 

PROGRESS 
IN 


HUDSON 


18OJBET 

5TEAMBOJSI 

con- 

,   1856.  203TEET 

SIWTION 


DHNIEL  XKETW.  ISfeO.   251  F££T 


ALBANY.  18?1.  325  FEET 


WIVYOFK.   18  8  r,  J50TEET 


HBNDRICK  HUDSON.  1906.  4-00 FEET 


DESIGN    BY    "THE    NAUTICAL   GAZETTE," 
the  Authoritative  Journal  of  Navigation  In  America 

When  Fitch  left  France  for  Eng- 
land all  the  drawings  and  specifica- 
tions that  he  had  taken  with  him  from 

397 


this  country  were  left  in  the  hands  of 
the  United  States  Minister,  who  had 
been  a  member  of  the  original  com- 
pany for  building  steamboats  on  the 
Delaware  with  the  hope  that  he  would 
be  able  to  interest  the  French  engi- 
neers in  the  project  after  they  had 
taken  time  to  investigate  it  more  fully. 
The  flag,  too,  that  Governor  Mifflin 
of  Pennsylvania  had  placed  on  the 
original  boat  was  left  with  him. 
Later  on  these  drawings  were  turned 
over  to  Chancellor  Livingston,  and 
became  the  basis  for  his  more  intelli- 
gent study  of  a  theme  to  which  he  had 
already  given  considerable  attention 
and  in  which  he  had  made  a  number 
of  fruitless  experiments.  The  Chan- 
cellor then  urged  Fulton  to  take  up 
the  project  of  steamboats,  which  he 
seems  to  have  dropped  after  his  cor- 
respondence in  1793.  In  this  he  was 
seconded  by  Joel  Barlow,  who,  after 
the  expiration  of  his  term  of  sen-ice 
as  consul,  had  taken  up  his  home  in 
Paris.  The  flag  was  afterward  given 
into  the  keeping  of  General  Pinkney, 
then  minister  of  the  Court  of  St. 
James,  and  through  him  it  came  into 
the  hands  of  Rufus  King,  his  succes- 
sor at  the  court,  by  whom  it  was  re- 
turned to  this  country. 

I  have  already  written  fully,  in  the 
pages  of  this  most  valued  journal,  of 
the  pioneer  John  Fitch  and  would  not 
abate  one  word  of  the  praise  given 
him,  but  I  would  not,  even  for  his 
sake,  take  one  leaf  from  the  crown 
with  which  the  years  have  honored 
Robert  Fulton  for  his  part  in  the  de- 
velopment of  that  one  force  which, 
more  than  all  others,  has  been  potent 
in  changing  the  trend  of  civilization. 
To  Robert  Fulton  belongs  the  glory 
of  having  built  and  navigated  the  first 
steamboat  on  the  Hudson,  the  boat 
from  which  has  been  developed  those 
magnificent  floating  palaces,  i:ne- 
qualled  in  grace  of  line,  point  of  com- 
fort, attainment  of  speed,  or  reliabil- 
ity of  service  by  the  water-craft  of 
any  other  country  in  the  world. 


Ififlf— 3ter-<Jktttenarg   vf  Ammran   (Enmmm? 


Who  was  this  man  who  rose  from 
the  multitude  and  opened  the  door  of 
a  new  epoch,  greater  than  the  world 
could  conceive,  and  the  prophecy  of 
which  it  repudiated  as  the  folly  of  a 
dreamer?  In  searching  through  the 
British  Records  I  find  a  Reve- 
rend Dr.  Robert  Fulton  of  Scot- 
land, who  was  appointed  by  the  Privy 
Council  September  8,  1614,  to  serve 
as  chaplain  to  the  Lady  Arabella 
Stuart,  first  cousin  of  King  James  the 
First  of  England.  The  Lady  Ara- 
bella was  at  that  time  imprisoned  in 
the  Tower  of  London  for  having 
assisted  her  husband,  William  Sey- 
mour, afterward  first  Marquis  of 
Hertford,  in  his  escape  to  France. 

There  is  romance  and  chivalry  in 
this  story  that  I  would  like  to  narrate, 
but  I  must  here  confine  myself  to  that 
which  relates  only  to  the  progenitor 
of  commerce.  In  conversing  a  few 
days  ago  with  the  descendants  of  this 
Dr.  Fulton,  they  assured  me  that  the 
American  genius  of  steam  navigation 
13  in  lineal  descent  from  this  friend 
and  spiritual  adviser  of  the  unfortu- 
nate Lady  Stuart.  Dr.  Fulton  settled 
in  Kilkenny,  Ireland,  in  the  time  of 
Cromwell  and  several  of  his  descend- 
ants came  to  America.  One  of  them, 
bearing  his  name,  Robert,  settled  in 
Philadelphia.  It  is  in  this  city  at  this 
same  time  that  a  tailor  of  the  same 
name  resided  and  it  is  claimed  that  he 
was  the  American  heir  of  Dr.  Fulton 
of  Kilkenny. 

This  Philadelphia  tailor,  who  had 
married  Mary  Smith,  by  some  of  Ful- 
ton's biographers  said  to  have  been 
the  daughter  of  a  respected  Pennsyl- 
vania family,  and  by  others  conceded 
to  be  an  open  question  with  no  way  of 
deciding  whether  or  not  the  marriage 
occurred  in  Scotland,  moved  into 
Lancaster  township,  where,  in  1759, 
they  bought  a  home  which  was  sold 
six  years  later,  and  on  the  same  day 
they  purchased  a  farm  in  Little  Britain 
township.  It  was  on  this  farm  that 
Robert  Fulton,  destined  to  revolution- 
ize the  world's  trade,  was  born  in 
I765- 


Some  of  his  biographers  have  said 
that  the  date  of  his  birth  was  not  re- 
corded, but  as  I  find  it  mentioned 
in  one  of  his  letters  that  he  wanted 
to  be  with  certain  friends  on  the 
fourteenth  of  November,  his  "birth- 
day," it  is  hard  to  see  why  there  should 
be  raised  any  question  as  to  the  date. 

Two  girls  had  already  come  to 
the  Fulton  home,  and  after  the 
coming  of  Robert,  another  girl  and 
a  boy  arrived  to  complete  the 
family  circle.  In  1766,  this  farm  was 
sold  to  the  Swifts  and  the  family  once 
more  moved  back  to  Lancaster  where 
the  father  died  and  was  buried  with- 
in the  wall-encircled  burying-ground 
near  the  little,  old,  limestone  church 
that  he  had  helped  to  build,  helping 
also  to  organize  its  society,  of  which 
he  was  one  of  the  deacons.  Among 
the  slender  marble  slabs  and  the  crum- 
bling red  sandstone  panels  that  marked 
the  resting-places  of  the  dead,  all  of 
which  were  removed  a  few  years  ago 
to  make  room  for  a  new  building,  there 
probably  stood  one  that  told  where 
the  first  of  the  Fulton  family  in  Amer- 
ica found  a  sleeping-place  till  the 
"morn  breaketh  and  the  shadows  flee 
away." 

The  boy,  Robert  Fulton,  mastered 
his  "three  R's"  at  home  and  then  took 
up  his  other  studies  at  a  school  kept  by 
a  Quaker  in  a  building  that  stood  on 
the  northeast  corner  of  East  King 
street  and  the  center  "Square"  in  Lan- 
caster. A  schoolmate  of  those  early 
days  wrote : 

"His  mother  was  a  widow  in  strait- 
ened circumstances.  I  had  a  brother  who 
was  fond  of  painting.  The  Revolutionary 
war  made  it  difficult  to  obtain  materials 
from  abroad,  and  the  arts  were  at  a  low 
ebb  in  the  country.  My  brother  conse- 
quently prepared  and  mixed  colors  for  him- 
self, which  he  usually  displayed  on  mussel 
shells.  His  cast-off  brushes  and  shells  fell 
to  my  lot,  some  of  which  I  occasionally 
carried  to  school.  Fulton  craved  a  part 
and  I  divided  my  treasure.  He  soon  from 
this  beginning  so  shamed  my  performance 
by  his  superiority,  that  I  voluntarily  sur- 
rendered the  heirship  of  all  that  came  into 
my  possession.  Henceforth  his  book  was 
neglected  and  he  was  often  severely  chas- 
tised by  the  schoolmaster  for  his  inatten- 


PAINTING   BY  ROBERT   FULTON 

The  subject  is  Pulton's  fellow  aesthete  and 

utilitarian,  Joel  Barlow  the  poet  and  diplomat  who  was 

Fulton's  most  intimate  friend  when  the  inventor  proposed   to 

Napoleon  the  power  of  steam  as  a  destroyer  of  the  navies  of  the  world 

but  met  with  rebuff —Original  is  now  in  possession  of  the  Barlow  family  in   New 

York  and  a  replica  is  owned  by  Fulton's  grandson,  Robert  Fulton  Ludlow  of  Clavermck,  New  York 


of 


tion.  His  friends  removed  him  to  Phila- 
delphia where  he  was  apprenticed  to  a  sil- 
versmith; but  his  mind  was  not  in  his 
trade  and  in  his  eighteenth  year  he  estab- 
lished himself  as  a  painter  in  that  city." 

Fulton  was  apprenticed  to  a  silver- 
smith, and  for  some  time  followed 
that  vocation.  Later  he  turned  to 
miniature  painting  and  in  1785-6 
when  John  Fitch  put  his  first  success- 
ful steamboat  on  the  Delaware,  Fulton 
had  a  studio  at  the  corner  of  Second 
and  Walnut  streets,  Philadelphia. 

It  was  while  returning  to  Philadel- 
phia from  a  visit  to  his  mother  that  he 
met  at  the  warm  springs  of  Pennsyl- 
vania the  friends  who  chanced  to  see 
some  of  his  paintings  and  advised  him 
to  go  to  London  and  complete  his  art 
studies  under  Benjamin  West,  who 
had  already  gained  some  celebrity  and 
was  then  on  the  way  to  fame.  Both 
Fulton  and  West  were  born  in  the 
wilds  of  Pennsylvania,  and  their  fath- 
ers were  well  acquainted. 

In  speaking  of  this  beginning  of 
American  art  which  seems  to  be  con- 
temporary with  American  commerce, 
I  must  say  that  had  not  Fulton's  abili- 
ties been  turned  to  more  material 
things  American  art  would  have  been 
the  richer  to-day.  To  some  extent 
this  is  also  true  of  his  friend,  West, 
who  was  tainted  by  patronage.  Unfor- 
tunately for  him  and  for  the  world, 
West  became  a  favorite  of  George  III, 
to  whom  he  had  been  presented  by  the 
Archbishop  of  York,  and  painted,  to 
the  infinite  satisfaction  of  the  king,  an 
almost  endless  list  of  historical  and 
classical  pictures — stiff,  forced  and 
formal,  each  a  little  lower  in  merit 
than  the  one  that  had  preceded  it,  and 
all  marking  a  line  of  sharp  retrogres- 
sion from  the  "Departure  of  Regulus" 
to  the  "Fall  of  Wolfe."  Evidence  of 
a  new  start  when,  after  the  illness  of 
the  king,  he  was  thrown  again  upon 
his  own  resources  and  was  once  more 
free  to  follow  his  own  inspirations,  is 
shown  in  his  "Christ  Healing  the 
Sick"  and  his  "Death  on  the  Pale 
Horse,"  which  are  still  valued  for 
more  than  respectable  coloring  and 
clever  drawing.  Through  the  ad- 

390 


mirable  foresight  of  Robert  Fulton, 
who  purchased  several  of  his  choicest 
pieces,  we  now  have  in  the  United 
States  the  most  praiseworthy  of  his 
productions. 

Fulton  was  received  with  open  arms 
by  West  and  for  several  years  was  as 
one  of  the  family  in  this  delightful 
home.  West  painted  a  portrait  of  his 
friend,  Fulton,  which  is  possibly  the 
height  of  his  genius  as  a  portrait 
painter.  A  few  days  ago,  at  the  home 
of  Fulton's  grandson,  Robert  Fulton 
Ludlow,  I  looked  upon  the  rich  can- 
vas, and  felt  the  full  power  of  these 
two  strong  men. 

Fulton  later  spent  two  years  in 
Devonshire,  near  Exeter,  where  he 
met  the  Duke  of  Bridgewater,  famous 
for  his  interest  in  canals,  and  Lord 
Stanhope,  celebrated  for  his  love  uf 
science,  especially  along  mechanical 
lines.  It  is  claimed  by  some  of  his 
biographers  that  Fulton  at  this  time 
met  James  Watt,  the  eminent  engi- 
neer. But  a  letter  from  Joel  Barlow 
to  Dr.  William  Thornton,  which  is 
here  printed  for  the  first  time,  shows 
that  this  is  not  so.  Dr.  Thornton 
purposed  visiting  England.  He  had 
written  Fitch  (February  21,  1794) : 

"Let  me  advise  you  to  get  no  steam  en- 
gine made  except  by  Watt  and  Boulton 
and  with  a  copper  boiler  without  any  wood 
round  it  and  very  strong  copper,  "it  will 
never  be  a  loss,  for  when  worn  out  it  will 
sell." 

He  now  proposed  a  personal  visit 
and  wrote  for  a  letter  of  introduction 
to  which  he  was  given  the  following 
answer : 

DEAR  SIR  : 

Mr.  Fulton  informs  me  that  he  does  not 
know  either  Mr.  Watt  or  Mr.  Bovilton, 
that  when  he  purchased  the  Steam  engine 
he  dealt  with  their  agent  in  London,  which 
I  now  recollect  was  the  case. 

I  should  suppose  that  no  letter  of  rec- 
ommendation to  them  can  be  necessary 
for  you — your  name  and  character  are  too 
well  known  as  a  mechanician  and  architect, 
as  well  as  for  general  science,  that  it  is 
impossible  it  should  be  unknown  to  them. 

Yr  fd 
servt 

J.  BARLOW. 
TO  DOCTOR  THORNTON. 


nf  American   (ftummm? 


However,  Fulton  had  visited  the 
works  of  Boulton  and  Watt,  for  in  his 
diary,  now  in  the  possession  of  Mr. 
Robert  Fulton  Ludlow,  his  grandson; 
we  find  an  entry  as  follows : 

Feby  the  5,  1804  travelling  from  London 
to  Birmingham  and  back  again  to 
order  the  Steam  Engine £8.0.0 

Farther  on  we  read : 

Jan.  21,  1805  To  Messrs  Boulton  Watt  & 
Co.  for  cylinder  and  parts  of  the 
engine £548.0.0 

March  the  i8th  To  Messes  Cave  and  Son 
for  copper  boiler  weighing  4399  Ibs,  at 
25.  2d.  the £476.11.2. 

There  is  another  entry  in  the  diary 
that  we  must  include  with  these,  all  of 
which  now  appears  in  print  for  the 
first  time,  as  it  throws  light  on  the  de- 
bated question  as  to  how  Fulton  got 
the  engine  out  of  England.  Under 
the  date  of  March  22d,  1805,  he 
writes : 

Fee  at  the  Treasury  on  receiving  permis- 
sion to  ship  the  Engine  to  Amer- 
ica  £2,  145,  6d 

I  have  found  few  instances  in  the 
world's  work  where  an  intense  artistic 
temperament  is  almost  instantane- 
ously transformed  into  practical  me- 
chanics. Fulton,  however,  either  by 
foresight  or  intuition  looked  into  the 
centuries  and  discerned  the  power 
that  was  to  revolutionize  the  earth. 
When  twenty-nine  years  of  age,  in 
1794,  he  obtained  a  patent  for  a 
double  inclined  plane,  to  be  used 
in  connection  with  canals,  and  for  sev- 
eral years  thereafter  he  was  actively 
engaged  in  projects  for  the  improve- 
ment of  inland  navigation.  In  1794, 
he  submitted  to  the  British  Society  for 
the  Promotion  of  Arts  and  Commerce 
a  new  method  for  sawing  marble,  for 
which  the  society  gave  him  a  vote  of 
thanks  and  an  honorary  medal,  and 
some  time  later  he  patented  devices 
for  spinning  flax  and  for  making  rope. 
Several  contrivances  for  digging  ca- 
nals and  aqueducts  were  brought  out 
by  him  at  this  time,  besides  an  iron 
bridge  built  upon  new  lines,  and  there- 
after he  proclaimed  himself  a  civil  en- 
gineer, under  which  title  he  produced 
his  work  on  canals  and  published  sev- 


eral articles  in  the  London  Morning 
Star.  In  1796,  he  published  his 
"Treatise  on  the  Improvement  of  Ca- 
nal Navigation,"  copies  of  which  were 
sent  to  the  governor  of  Pennsylvania 
and  to  General  George  Washington, 
from  whom  he  received  a  very  flatter- 
ing acknowledgment. 

With  a  greater  civilizer  in  his  grasp 
than  the  planet  had  yet  seen,  the 
young  inventor  naturally  turned 
toward  the  center  of  civilization. 
America  was  a  struggling,  bankrupt 
republic,  experimenting  with  the  the- 
ory of  self-government.  England 
was  occupied  with  problems  that  in- 
volved her  future  as  an  empire. 
France,  the  gathering-place  of  art 
and  letters  and  science,  dreamed  of 
days  when  she  would  be  the  diadem 
in  the  crown  of  the  world's  powers — 
when  England  and  America  and  half 
the  civilized  globe  would  bow  to  her 
mandates.  Like  many  another  youth 
before  and  since,  Fulton  went  to 
France  to  introduce  his  improvements 
in  canal  transportation.  The  French 
people  had  not  been  long  enough 
freed  from  the  madness  in  which 
they  had  thought  to  dethrone  God  by 
vote,  and  rule  Him  out  of  His  own  uni- 
verse, to  care  much  more  for  improve- 
ments in  canals  than  they  had  previ- 
ously cared  for  steam  navigation 
when  suggested  by  John  Fitch.  But 
when  Fulton  proposed  a  panorama, 
the  first  that  had  ever  been  seen 
in  Paris,  he  was  hailed  as  a  public 
benefactor,  for  here  was  something 
that  might  deepen  the  dimple  of  a 
smile  in  which  could  be  caught  the 
tear  of  a  never  absent  though  re- 
pressed sorrow. 

France  will  be  France  as  long  as 
the  world  lasts!  The  same  versatile, 
blase,  gala-day  nation  that  Napoleon 
wooed — this  is  the  France  that  Ful- 
ton found — a  people  trying  to  forget 
the  cares  of  life,  ever  willing  to  be  en- 
tertained and  eager  to  applaud.  It 
brought  him  back  to  his  first  love — 
Art.  He  knelt  again  at  her  feet  and 
worshiped.  Aesthete  that  he  was, 
psychologist  that  he  must  have  been, 


0f  Steam  Nautgatinn— 1907 


he  lifted  the  veil  and  beneath  it  he 
found  the  tear-stains  and  the  laughing 
eyes  still  wet  with  weeping. 

Life  among  the  French  so  im- 
pressed Fulton  that  he  turned  to  the 
study  of  political  economy  and  pub- 
lished a  treatise  addressed  to  "The 
Friends  of  Mankind"  in  which  he 
pointed  out  the  effect  that  education 
and  internal  improvements  must  have 
upon  the  happiness  of  a  nation.  He 
wished  not  only  for  a  free  and  speedy 
communication  between  the  different 
parts  of  a  large  country,  but  a  univer- 
sal free  trade  between  all  nations.  In 
one  of  his  phrases  he  coined  into  beau- 
tiful English  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant truths  ever  expressed  in  litera- 
ture: ''The  liberty  of  the  seas  will  be 
the  happiness  of  the  earth."  It  was 
about  this  time  that  he  met  Joel  Bar- 
Icw,  who  had  but  recently  returned 
from  Algeria,  to  which  country  he 
had  been  appointed  by  Washington  in 
J795  to  redeem  the  captives  taken  by 
pirates  and  to  negotiate  a  treaty  of 
peace.  Barlow  was  not  only  a  diplo- 
mat but  a  poet.  He,  too,  had  become 
imbued  with  the  French  spirit  and 
was  a  rollicking  litterateur,  especially 
skilful  with  the  mighty  sword  of 
satire.  Withal,  Barlow  was  well-bal- 
anced and  he  was  as  adept  with  the 
bludgeon  of  Mammon  as  he  was  with 
the  needle  point  of  literary  irony. 

He  had  succeeded.  Reaching  Paris, 
after  some  successful  speculations  that 
yielded  large  returns,  he  purchased 
the  hotel  of  Count  Clermont  de  Ton- 
nerre  where  he  lived  as  was  becoming 
to  his  wealth.  Fulton  was  introduced 
to  him  and  in  a  few  weeks  became  a 
member  of  his  household  as  he  had 
formerly  been  a  member  of  West's 
home-circle  in  London  and  for  a  short 
time  returned  to  his  art,  painting  easel 
pictures.  Here  were  two  men  of  con- 
genial minds  and  they  at  once  began 
experimenting  with  a  machine  that 
Fulton  devised  for  exploding  a  large 
quantity  of  gun-powder  under  water. 
It  was  the  very  thing  that  David 
Bushnell,  of  New  London,  Connecti- 
cut, had  proposed  when  scarce 

401 


through  his  course  at  Yale  College, 
twenty  years  before.  With  Bushnell 
it  was  a  success — destroyingone  of  the 
tenders  of  the  British  frigate  "Cer- 
berus" as  it  lay  in  Long  Island  Sound, 
but  with  Fulton  and  Barlow  it  was  a 
failure.  However,  when  the  device 
was  more  perfectly  worked  out,  Ful- 
ton appealed  to  the  French  Directory 
for  aid  and  was  at  first  given  to  un- 
derstand that  the  aid  sought  would 
be  forthcoming  but  later  he  was  told 
that  his  plans  had  been  totally  reject- 
ed. Nothing  daunted,  Fulton  pre- 
pared a  model  of  his  invention  and 
when  the  kaleidoscope  of  the  ever- 
changing  French  people  again  showed 
a  new  list  of  directors,  he  presented 
them  with  a  memorial,  seeking,  a  sec- 
ond time,  their  investigation.  Another 
commission  was  appointed  and  after 
three  months  more  of  waiting  Fulton 
was  told  that  his  plans  had  been  again 
rejected. 

But  the  hour-glass  turned  again. 
Napoleon  was  made  First  Consul.  It 
was  on  the  eve  of  his  great  dream 
when  his  mighty  hand  should  sway 
the  peoples  of  the  earth  and  he  should 
sit  enthroned  over  the  Old  World 
with  a  New  World  as  plaything  to  be 
tossed  about  at  will  and  ultimately 
proclaimed  as  his  own.  Sporting 
with  thrones  and  powers  as  a  child 
plays  with  the  petals  of  a  broken 
flower,  all  men  were  to  him  but  pup- 
pets and  if  this  young  visionist  from 
the  coveted  America  could  be  but  an 
atom  in  the  Great  Scheme,  Napoleon 
would  give  him  heed.  Fulton  at  once 
waited  upon  him  and  so  won  his  inter- 
est that  a  committee  was  appointed 
from  the  Academy  of  Sciences  to  ex- 
amine into  the  merits  of  the  new  in- 
vention. Upon  their  report  a  grant 
was  made  by  which  Fulton  was  ena- 
bled to  put  some  of  his  ideas  into 
actual  practice. 

In  the  spring  of  1801  Fulton  re- 
paired to  Brest  where  he  experiment- 
ed with  a  diving  boat  constructed  the 
preceding  winter,  a  crude  affair  as  all 
first  attempts  must  necessarily  be,  but 
the  demonstration  was  pronounced  a 


Ififlf— ufcr-Qfctttnrarg   nf  Amrriran   (Enmmm? 


success  and  was  so  reported  by  the 
committee  appointed  to  follow  his  ex- 
periments. Through  July  and  Au- 
gust Fulton  continued  his  work  in  a 
vain  hope  that  some  of  the  English 
ships  just  off  the  coast  would  come 
in  near  enough  to  allow  him  to  show 
exactly  what  could  be  done  in  the  way 
of  destruction  by  a  submarine  mine. 
The  sailing  of  the  fleet  carried  with 
it  Fulton's  opportunity  and  the 
French  officials  refused  to  make  any 
further  advances  for  such  a  mode  of 
warfare. 

The  British  government  had  some 
intimation  as  to  what  Fulton  was  do- 
ing, and  at  the  suggestion  of  the  Earl 
of  Stanhope,  it  was  decided  to  induce 
him  to  leave  France,  if  possible,  and 
continue  his  investigations  and  experi- 
ments in  England.  The  correspond- 
ence that  followed  had  its  desired 
effect  and  in  May,  1804,  Fulton  ar- 
rived in  London  and  was  at  once 
given  an  audience  with  Mr.  Pitt  and 
Lord  Melville.  Both  men  saw  the 
value  of  such  an  engine  of  destruction 
and  when,  on  October  15,  1805,  Ful- 
ton blew  up  the  strongly-built  Danish 
brig  of  two  hundred  tons  that  had 
been  provided  for  the  occasion,  there 
was  no  longer  any  question  as  to  its 
possibilities.  But  the  British  govern- 
ment had  no  real  intention  of  adopting 
his  plans,  it  was  rather  a  ruse  to  keep 
him  from  the  service  of  France  and 
when  the  purpose  had  fulfilled  itself, 
Fulton  was  quietly  allowed  to  drop 
out  of  their  consideration.  Here  was 
a  youth  with  a  knowledge  of  a  power 
that  could  cause  the  rise  and  fall  of 
nations — a  knowledge  shared  by  other 
young  Americans — but  neither  the 
foresight  of  a  Napoleon  nor  the 
shrewdness  of  a  Nelson  could  com- 
prehend it. 

Some  of  the  correspondence  that 
had  passed  between  Fulton  and  the 
representatives  of  the  French  govern- 
ment seems  to  show  that  it  was  Ful- 
tcn's  plan  to  build  a  powerful  steam- 
propelled  boat  that  could  tow  barges 
upon  which  the  French  army  could  be 
loaded  and  ferried  across  the  channel. 


A  still,  calm  night  was  to  be  chosen, 
when  the  fleet  of  Nelson  would  be 
powerless  to  interfere,  and  the  invin- 
cible French  were  to  land  on  the 
shores  of  England.  Had  such  a  pro- 
ject met  with  approval  all  the  history 
of  the  last  hundred  years  might  have 
been  written  differently.  If  it  had 
been  possible,  as  is  often  claimed  by 
Fulton  biographers,  for  Napoleon  to 
have  seen  from  the  isle  of  his  banish- 
ment a  steamship  sailing  against  both 
wind  and  wave  he  must  have  realized 
the  folly  that  led  him  to  listen  to  the 
opinions  of  others  and  thrust  from 
him  the  service  of  that  potent  force  by 
which  he  might  have  changed  the  face 
of  the  then  known  world.  But  why 
deal  in  conjectures?  The  "Savan- 
nah" did  not  cross  the  ocean  till  1819 
and  the  "Royal  William"  did  not  sail 
upon  her  trans-Atlantic  trip  till  more 
than  twelve  years  had  passed  and  it 
was  seven  years  more  before  any 
other  steamcraft  ventured  far  from 
shore.  It  is  not  at  all  probable  then, 
Fulton's  biographers  to  the  contrary, 
that  Napoleon  in  his  wisdom  ever 
saw  a  steamship,  for  death  came  to 
bring  him  release  in  1822,  years  be- 
fore a  steamship  went  near  to  the  isle 
of  St.  Helena. 

While  Fulton  was  absorbed  in  the 
science  of  dynamics  he  turned  always 
to  Art  for  his  recreation. 

Before  Fulton  left  France  it  had 
been  decided  that  Barlow  would 
bring  out  a  new  edition  of  his  "Vis- 
ion of  Columbus"  and  that  it  should 
be  illustrated  with  drawings  suggested 
and  superintended  by  Fulton.  Bar- 
low did  not  remain  long  in  Paris  and 
soon  after  his  return  to  this  country, 
the  poem,  enlarged  and  re-christened 
"The  Columbiad,"  was  brought  out  in 
sumptious  style  in  Philadelphia — a 
quarto  with  plates  designed  by  the 
English  artist,  Smuke,  and  executed 
by  the  best  English  engravers.  The 
subjects  for  the  designs  were  all 
pointed  out  by  Fulton,  who  had  the 
costly  engravings  made  at  his  own 
expense.  A  painting  of  Barlow  by 
Fulton  added  to  the  value  of  the  work. 


BIRTHPLACE  OF  ROBERT  FULTON 

Fulton  Farm  in  Little  Britain  township  in  the  dense  forests 

of    Pennsylvania,   where,  in   1756,   the  lad  was  born  who  was  destined  to 

revolutionize  the  world's  trade— From  an  old  print  designed  by  Reigart,  one  of  Fulton's  biographers 


PULTON'S  GIFT  TO  HIS  MOTHER 

Homestead  in  Washington  County,  Pennsylvania,  which  Pulton 

purchased  for  his  widowed  mother  and  sisters  on  his  twenty-first  birthday  with  money  be 

had  accumulated  in  Philadelphia  by  painting  portraits  and  landscapes,  and  making  drawings  of  machinery 


TO  DESTROY  THE  NAVIES  OF  THE  WORLD 

When  the  European  Continent  was  under  the  spell  of  the  Great  Napoleon, 

the  young  Fulton  devised  a  torpedo  which  would  annihilate  the  fleet  of  the  enemy— 

In  1805  he  demonstrated  its  possibilities  by  blowing  up  a  strongly-built  Danish  brig— From  an  old  print 


EARLY  DAYS  ON  THE  HUDSON  RIVER 

Society  gathered  near  Peekskill  to  witness  the  shell-boat  regattas 

•which  have  since  been  adopted  by  American  Universities  and  have  become 

annual  events  in  this  country— This  old  print  by  Whitefield  shows  the  first  steamboats  on  the  gala  course 


of  &feam  Namgation-lHflr 


This  painting  is  now  in  possession  of 
the  Barlow  family  in  New  York  city 
and  a  replica  is  owned  by  Fulton's 
grandson  at  Claverack,  New  York. 
From  Fulton's  will  it  is  seen  that 
the  engravings  and  the  press-work 
cost  $5,000,  mention  of  which  he  nec- 
essarily makes  in  resigning  all  his 
property  rights  in  the  production  to 
the  widow  of  his  friend  who  survived 
her  husband  some  six  years.  The 
will  also  disposes  of  his  valuable  col- 
lection of  paintings,  including  West's 
"Ophelia"  and  "King  Lear,"  which 
are  now  in  the  Boston  Athenaeum. 

The  arrival  of  Chancellor  Living- 
ston in  Paris,  1802,  as  Minister  of  the 
United  States,  turned  Fulton's  inter- 
ests toward  steamboat  building,  to 
which  he  had  before  given  but  little  if 
any  thought.  Chancellor  Livingston 
had  sailed  from  New  York  to  Green- 
wich upon  Samuel  Morey's  steamboat 
on  Long  Island  Sound  and  was  on  the 
boat  that  John  Fitch  sailed  about  the 
Collect  Pond,  where  the  Tombs  Prison 
and  adjacent  buildings  now  stand, 
using  both  paddle-wheels  and  screw- 
propeller,  and  besides  this  had  spent 
no  little  money  and  given  no  small 
share  of  his  time  to  experimenting 
with  a  horizontal  wheel  under  the  bot- 
tom of  a  boat,  an  Englishman  named 
Nesbit  co-operating,  so  that  he  was 
full  of  enthusiasm  on  the  subject.  The 
plans  were  all  worked  out  together  and 
in  1802  Fulton  left  Paris  for  the  vil- 
lage of  Plombieres,  through  which 
there  runs  a  little  stream,  and  contin- 
ued his  experiments  which  resulted  in 
the  building  during  the  next  winter  of 
a  steamboat.  Just  as  it  was  proposed  to 
test  the  strange  thing,  one  of  the  watch- 
men who  had  been  left  to  guard  it, 
came  rushing  in  with  the  news  that 
she  had  broken  in  two  in  the  middle 
and  sunk  to  the  bottom  of  the  stream. 
Nothing  daunted  Fulton  began  at 
once  upon  a  new  hull  and  within  a  few 
weeks  he  addressed  a  letter  to  the 
French  National  Institute,  inviting 
them  to  witness  a  trial  of  his  boat  and 
this  time  the  trial  proved  to  be  a  suc- 
cess. It  is  hard  to  see  why  Fulton, 


after  his  trial  of  a  boat  at  Plombieres 
built  on  the  lines  of  other  boats, 
should  have  adopted  the  crude  wedge- 
shape  hull  that  he  ordered  for  the 
"Clermont."  It  is  also  hard  to  under- 
stand why  John  Fitch,  after  having 
used  the  paddle-wheels  suspended 
over  the  sides  of  a  boat,  should  have 
given  away  to  the  arguments  of  others 
and  incorporated  a  series  of  swinging 
paddles  along  the  sides  as  a  method  of 
propulsion. 

It  is  because  of  this  anticipatory 
steamboat  that  the  French  people  are 
having  now  at  Bordeaux  a  Fulton 
centennial  to  which  the  maritime  in- 
terests of  the  world  have  contributed, 
our  own  government  sending  models 
of  early  boats. 

Barlow  wrote  to  Fulton  while  he 
was  at  Plombieres: 

...  "I  had  a  great  talk  with  Living- 
ston. He  says  he  is  perfectly  satisfied  with 
your  experiments  and  calculations,  but  is 
always  suspicious  that  the  engine  beating 
up  and  down  will  break  the  boat  to  pieces. 
He  seems  to  be  for  trying  the  horizontal 
cylinder,  or  for  returning  to  his  mercurial 
engine.  I  see  his  mind  is  not  settled,  and 
he  promises  now  to  write  you,  which  he 
says  he  should  have  done  long  ago,  but  he 
thought  you  were  to  be  back  every  fort- 
night He  thinks  the  scale  you  talk  of  go- 
ing on  is  much  too  large,  and  especially 
that  part  which  respects  the  money.  You 
converted  him  as  to  the  preference  of  the 
wheels  above  all  other  modes,  but  he  says 
they  cannot  be  patented  in  America  because 
a  man  (I  forget  his  name)  has  proposed 
the  same  thing  there.  You  will  soon  get 
his  letter.  Parker  is  highly  gratified  with 
your  experiments;  he  wishes,  however, 
something  further  to  remove  his  doubts — 
about  keeping  the  proportions  and  as  to  the 
loss  of  power  in  different  velocities.  He 
wishes  to  have  another  barrelier  made,  four 
times  as  strong  as  this  or  thereabouts,  to 
see  whether  the  proportional  velocity  would 
be  the  same  when  moving  by  the  paddles 
as  when  moving  by  the  fixture  on  shore 
I  should  like  to  see  this  top.  If  you  de- 
sire it,  I  can  take  this  barrelier  to  Cala  and 
see  whether  he  can  make  another  of  the 
same  volume  four  times  as  strong,  and 
know  what  it  will  cost  The  relative  veloc- 
ities can  be  tried  in  Perrier's  pond  on  the 
hill." 

In  another  letter  to  Fulton  Barlow 
wrote  that  he  had  just  visited  the  Na- 
tional Depot  of  Machines  and  had 


405 


100r— 


Ammran   (Enmmm? 


seen  there  the  model  of  a  new  steam- 
boat.    Continuing,  he  says: 

"In  all  its  parts  and  principals  a  very 
elegant  model.  It  contains  your  wheel- 
oars  precisely  as  you  have  placed  them  ex- 
cept that  it  has  four  wheels  on  each  side 
to  guide  round  the  endless  chain  instead  of 
two.  The  two  upper  wheels  seem  to  be 
only  to  support  the  chain;  perhaps  it  is  an 
improvement.  The  model  of  the  steam- 
engine  is  in  its  place,  with  a  wooden  boiler, 
cylinder  placed  horizontal,  everything  com- 
plete. I  never  saw  a  neater  model.  It  be- 
longs to  a  company  at  Lyons,  who  got  out 
a  patent  three  months  ago.  I  shall  say 
nothing  to  Livingston  about  this  model." 

It  became  apparent  to  Fulton  that 
the  center  of  civilization  was  chang- 
ing, that  America  was  to  be  the  pivot 
rather  than  the  Old  World  nations. 
Invention  was  receiving  the  patronage 
in  America  while  France  and  England 
were  indifferent  to  mechanical  pur- 
suits. America  was  in  itself  an  in- 
novation. Americans  were  origina- 
tors and  disdained  imitation  of  the 
older  civilization.  It  was  a  new  land 
with  new  ideas  and  new  impulses. 
Fulton  realized  that  the  great  future 
of  invention  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
western  civilization ;  that  it  was  a 
world  of  opportunity. 

Having  demonstrated  to  his  own 
satisfaction,  and  to  the  satisfaction  of 
both  Chancellor  Livingston  and  Joel 
Barlow,  that  a  steamboat  could  be  so 
built  as  to  be  usable,  Fulton  was  anx- 
ious to  get  back  to  his  own  land  and 
claim  the  benefits  given  to  Chancellor 
Livingston  by  the  legislature  of  New 
York;  he  accordingly  left  France  for 
England  where  he  was  to  order  the 
engine  for  a  boat  that  should  be  built 
at  once  for  the  Hudson.  Barlow 
wrote  him  while  yet  at  Plombieres : 

"Your  reasoning  is  perfectly  right  about 
inventions  and  the  spirit  of  the  patent  laws, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  it  may  be  secured  in 
America.  .  .  .  My  project  would  be 
that  you  should  pass  directly  over  to  Eng- 
land, silent  and  steady,  make  Chapman  con- 
struct an  engine  of  twelve  inches,  while  you 
are  building  a  boat  of  a  proportionate  size. 
Make  the  experiments  on  that  scale,  all 
quiet  and  quick.  If  it  answers,  put  the  ma- 
chinery on  board  a  vessel  and  go  directly 
to  New  York  (ordering  another  engine  as 
large  as  you  please  to  follow  you),  then 
secure  your  patent  and  begin  your  opera- 


tion, first  small  and  then  large.  I  think 
I  will  find  you  the  funds  without  any  noise 
for  the  first  operation  in  England,  and  if 
it  promises  well  you  will  get  as  many  funds 
and  friends  in  America  as  you  want.  I 
should  suggest  a  small  operation  first,  for 
several  reasons :  it  can  be  made  without 
noise.  There  must  be  imperfections  in  the 
first  trial  which  you  can  remedy  without 
disgrace  if  done  without  noise;  you  can 
easier  find  funds  for  a  small  experiment, 
etc.  ...  I  have  talked  with  P.  on  your 
observations  about  great  boats  with  mer- 
chandise." 

In  September,  Fulton,  then  in  Lon- 
don, wrote  to  Barlow  who  had  sailed 
for  America,  November  2,  1804,  and 
arrived  in  New  York  after  a  passage 
of  fifty-two  days  (Livingston  follow- 
ing soon  after),  that  he  was  about 
ready  to  start  for  America,  stating 
that  he  had  an  income  of  £500  sterling 
a  year,  with  a  steam  engine  and  pic- 
tures worth  £2000;  and  in  October, 
1806,  he  found  shipping  by  the 
way  of  Halifax.  While  the  ship 
on  which  he  was  a  passenger  lay 
at  the  dock  there  Fulton  painted 
the  portraits  of  some  natives  who 
crowded  about  for  barter.  These  pic- 
tures are  also  now  in  the  possession  of 
his  grandson  at  Claverack,  New  York, 
whose  home  is  a  veritable  Fulton  mu- 
seum. 

Fulton  went  at  once  to  Kalorama, 
the  home  of  Joel  Barlow,  near  Wash- 
ington, and  began  experimenting  with 
a  small  engine  which  he  had  brought 
with  him  from  England  on  the 
waters  of  Rock  Creek,  at  a  point 
designated  now  by  a  government  me- 
morial, with  different  shapes  and  sizes 
of  wooden  blocks  to  determine  just 
what  shape  and  what  proportions 
would  offer  the  least  resistance  when 
drawn  through  the  water.  The  data 
of  Bouyfoy  was  used  in  these  experi- 
ments and  was  included  later  by  Ful- 
tcn  in  his  application  for  a  patent. 

It  was  from  Kalorama  that  Fulton 
wrote  to  Dr.  William  Thornton  the 
letter  which  is  here  produced  for  the 
first  time  in  fac-simile  questioning  the 
possibility  of  ever  building  a  steam- 
boat that  could  travel  six  miles  an 
hour,  although  in  one  of  his  letters  to 


FIRST  STEAMBOAT  IN  THE  WORLD  TO  ESTABLISH  PERMANENT  TRAFFIC-Model  of  the 
"Clermont"  in  the  National  Museum  at  Washington  showing  a  craft  totally  dissimilar  to  the  accepted  illustra- 
tions of  this  historic  vessel— This  model  repudiates  the  prints  in  nearly  all  the  histories  of  steam  navigation 
but  Is  absolutely  correct  according  to  the  descriptions  left  by  Fulton  and  his  colleagues— This  reproduction 
is  from  a  plate  loaned  by  the  courtesy  of  Samuel  Ward  Stanton,  an  authority  on  marine  architecture 


coMl'ASS  L'SKD  BY  PILOT  ACKER  O^  THE  "CLERMOXT"  IN  IHOT-It  came  into  the  possession  of 
Christian  Cooper  through  Mrs.  Acker  and  was  presented  by  the  latter,  April  8ind,  1891,  to  Robert  Pulton 
Ludlow,  grandson  of  inventor  of  the  "Clermont"— The  compass  bears  the  name  of  its  maker,  John  H.  Wheeler 


FIRST  STEAM  FERRIES  IN  WATERS  OF  NEW  YORK 

The  "Brooklyn"  built  after  plans  by  Robert  Fulton  and  running  across  the  East  River 


HARBOR  OF  AMERICA'S  METROPOLIS  ABOUT  1807 

Old  print— A  remarkable  contrast  with  the  scenes  about  New  York  to-day 


THE  AMERICAN  RHINE  -THE  HISTORIC  HUDSON 
Old  Engraving  of  beautiful  waterway  through  which  the  "Clermont"  sailed  in  1807 


OLD  NEW  YORK  AS  ROBERT  FULTON  KNEW  IT 

Rare  Engraving  of  Broadway  at  City  Hall  Park  about  one  hundred  years  ago 


STEAM     BOAT 
Designed    by  Robert  Futfon 

1308 


12315          10        15        20        25  25        20        15         10        5*32 1 

Model  in  the  National  Museum  at  Washington 


Model  of  the  engine  of  the  "Clermont"  of  1807 

Now  in  National  Museum  at  Washington 

Plates  loaned  by  the  Nautical  Gazette 


nf  &i*am 


Barlow  while  they  were  in  France,  he 
had  predicted  a  speed  of  sixteen  miles 
an  hour,  to  which  Barlow  had  an- 
swered: "I  see  without  consulting 
Parker  you  are  mad." 

All  along  historians  have  said  that 
Chancellor  Livingston  was  the  pocket- 
book  of  the  enterprise.  What  if  it 
should  turn  out  that  the  money  that 
went  into  the  "Clermont"  came  from 
Barlow  instead? 

I  merely  give  this  as  a  hint.  HiV 
tory  has  done  more  strange  things  and 
not  the  strangest  is  its  inclination  to 
give  credit  where  credit  does  not  be- 
long and  to  obstinately  refuse  to  give 
credit  where  credit  does  belong.  I 
might  mention  a  hundred  instances, 
and  it  is  a  pleasure  to  find  that  many 
of  the  wrongs  are  being  righted  in  the 
pages  of  this  journal. 

The  engine  for  the  proposed  boat 
lay  six  months  in  the  Custom  House 
till  the  necessary  money  could  be  got- 
ten together  to  pay  what  charges  had 
been  made  against  it,  and  during  this 
time  Fulton  endeavored  to  lessen  his 
share  of  the  burden  by  offering  one- 
third  of  the  rights  in  the  boat  for  a 
proportionate  contribution  to  the  ex- 
pense. It  was  generally  known  that 
this  offer  was  made  but  no  one  was 
willing  to  put  any  money  into  such  a 
fool  undertaking. 

The  difficulties  with  which  Fulton 
contended  do  not  speak  well  for  the 
far-sightedness  of  capital.  As  a  pro- 
moter he  had  many  of  the  dire  experi- 
ences of  his  predecessor,  John  Fitch. 
Fulton,  however,  was  a  promoter, 
while  Fitch  was  but  an  inventor  with 
a  characteristic  incapacity  for  organi- 
zation. A  few  years  ago  I  heard  an 
anecdote  regarding  Fulton  which 
later  appeared  in  the  New  York 
Times.  It  was  told  by  an  old  gentle- 
man who  was  born  in  the  first  decade 
of  the  first  century  of  steam  naviga- 
tion which  is  about  to  be  celebrated. 
He  said : 

"My  father  and  Fulton  were  intimate. 
Fulton  was  in  the  habit  of  coming  to  see 
my  father,  and,  having  steamboat  on  the 
brain,  he  probably  talked  my  father,  John 
McKesson,  to  death.  It  was  always  end- 


less chains  or  something  or  other.  My 
father  was  a  patient  listener,  and  that's  a 
talent  One  day  during  office  hours  Fulton 
came  to  see  my  father. 

"'John,'  said  he,  'I  have  got  it  sure.  I 
can  make  her  go.' 

"'I  am  too  busy  to  listen  to  you  now, 
Fulton.  I  tell  you  what  you  do,  come 
round  to  my  house  to-night 

"'I  can't,'  said  Fulton.  'What  I  want 
to  see  you  about  is  this:  I  must  have 
$1,000.' 

"'Well,  I  have  n't  got  it  to  give  you. 
But  anyhow,  come  to  the  house  all  the 
same.  You  can  take  tea  with  us.  Then 
you  can  talk  with  me  up  to  ten  o'clock  at 
night;  then  if  you  are  not  through  I  shall 
go  to  sleep.  I  always  go  to  bed  at  ten.' 

"Fulton  seemed  to  hesitate  for  a  while, 
and  at  last  said  he  would  come.  Fulton 
did  come  round,  and  took  tea  with  father. 
Fulton  told  him  about  the  paddle-wheel. 
Father  thought  that  a  paddle-wheel  would 
never  do.  You  see,  in  those  times  they 
were  cocksure  that  the  power  used  to  lift 
up  the  water  by  the  wheel  would  about 
neutralize  the  propelling  force.  Ha!  ha! 
those  old  fellows  were  smart  We  always 
are  in  our  generation. 

"'Well,'  father  said.  'Robert  Fulton,  your 
wheel  is  no  good.  It  would  never  work. 
You  talk  abou^  making  the  boat  go  four 
miles  an  hour!  That's  an  unheard  of 
speed.  No,  sir.  With  a  wheel  on  your 
boat  she'd  stand  stock  still.' 

"Then  Robert  Fulton  argued  it  out  with 
father,  and  ten  o'clock  came,  and  father 
was  getting  sleepy.  Just  then  maybe  Ful- 
ton got  more  excited,  or  father  more  atten- 
tive, and  it  was  eleven  o'clock  and  they 
were  talking  over  it  still. 

"'It  is  time  for  you  to  go  home,  Robert,' 
said  my  father,  'unless  you  would  like  to 
have  a  bed  here,  and  you  might  as  well  do 
that.' 

'"If  I  do,'  answered  Fulton,  'I  only  ad- 
journ the  talk  until  to-morrow,  for  you 
must  get  me  the  $1.000.'  Maybe  Fulton 
buttonholed  father  before  breakfast  Any- 
how, Fulton's  persuasive  powers  overcame 
father's  doubts,  and  he  agreed  that  he 
would  do  his  best  to  raise  the  $1,000  for 
Fulton.  Right  after  breakfast  father  went 
out,  and  the  first  man  he  met  was  Robert 
Lenox.  'See  here,  Mr.  Lenox,'  said  father. 
'I  want  some  money  from  you  to  help  one 
of  Fulton's  schemes.  You  may  not  believe 
it  ever  will  be  done,  but  the  man  fancies 
that  he  can  make  a  boat  go  four  miles  an 
hour.  I  think  he  intends  using  steam,  and 
a  wheel,  or  something.  I  am  going  to  let 
him  have  $100.  Would  you  mind  putting 
down  your  name  for  the  same  sum?' 

"'It  seems  quite  preposterous,'  said  Mr. 
Lenox  to  my  father,  'and  I  have  no  reason 
to  belive  that  Mr.  Fulton's  boat  will  ever 
accomplish  what  he  thinks  it  will.  Still,  if 


IBflf— 


of  Ammran   (£0mmm? 


your  name  is  down,  you  may  let  him  have 
$100  from  me.' 

"'Then,'  said  my  father,  'I  will  write 
down  "Robert  Lenox,  $100."' 

"'No,  no,'  answered  Mr.  Lenox,  'just 
put  down  the  $100  with  no  name  to  it,  be- 
cause I  shouldn't  like  the  people  who  come 
after  me  to  learn  that  I  was  such  a  dunce 
as  to  think  that  Fulton  or  anybody  else 
ever  could  make  a  boat  go  with  steam  or 
wheels  four  miles  an  hour/ 

"That's  the  story  my  father  told  me. 
You  never  can  exactly  tell  what  does  come 
from  an  invention.  I  wonder  what  Fulton 
would  have  to  say  could  he  learn  how  those 
rocks  at  Hell  Gate  had  to  be  blown  up  be- 
cause they  bothered  that  fleet  of  steamers 
which  had  to  pass  there  every  day." 

The  hull  of  the  "Clermont,"  which 
was  ordered  soon  afterward,  differing 
from  everything  that  was  ever  called 
a  boat,  was  built  by  Charles  Brownne 
whose  ship-yard  was  at  Corlears 
Hook  on  the  East  River.  Two  hun- 
dred years  had  gone  by  since  the  first 
boat  of  any  size  built  in  the  New 
World  was  launched  at  Popham 
Beach,  Maine,  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Kennebec,  of  which  event  the  people 
of  that  state  are  so  proud,  and  justly, 
that  they  are  now  making  prepara- 
tions to  celebrate  its  three  hundredth 
anniversary.  This  first  boat  was 
named  the  "Virginia"  and  the  materi- 
als for  its  construction  were  shipped 
over  from  England  with  the  colonists 
on  "The  Gift  of  God"  and  "The  Mary 
and  John,"  sailing  from  Plymouth, 
England,  June  I,  1607,  and  arriv- 
ing August  19  of  the  same  year. 
Work  was  begun  on  the  boat  the  next 
day  after  the  arrival  of  the  settlers. 
The  builder  was  a  Mr.  Digby,  a  mas- 
ter shipbuilder  of  London.  The 
launching  took  place  the  following 
spring.  The  boat  was  a  pinnace  of 
thirty  tons,  navigated  with  oars  and 
two  small  sails.  Light  of  draft  and 
easy  to  handle  it  was  of  great  service 
to  the  colonists  in  exploring  the  neigh- 
boring waterways  and  trading  with 
the  Indians.  Besides  its  many  expedi- 
tions of  this  kind  it  made  two  trips 
across  the  ocean,  going  to  England 
with  the  colonists  when  they  aban- 
doned the  settlement  in  the  autumn  of 
1608,  and  returning  with  Sir  George 


Somers'  expedition  in  1609.  This  lit- 
tle craft  which  seems  insignificant  to 
us  in  this  day  of  floating  palaces  and 
colossal  freighters,  compared  favora- 
bly in  size  with  the  vessels  built  in 
that  day. 

The  launching  of  the  "Clermont," 
just  one  hundred  years  ago  this  sum- 
mer, was  the  third  important  event  in 
the  annals  of  the  American  Republic. 
The  Declaration  of  Independence  pro- 
claimed the  birth  of  a  new  people ;  the 
Constitution  established  a  new  politi- 
cal power ;  the  inauguration  of  steam 
navigation  threw  wide  open  the  gates 
of  the  world  and  linked  the  races  and 
climates  and  products  of  the  earth 
into  a  great  and  practical  whole.  And 
yet  it  hardly  created  honorable  atten- 
tion. It  aroused  nothing  more  than 
curiosity.  Men  of  acknowledged  bus- 
iness-standing looked  upon  it  as  the 
awe-inspiring  feat  of  some  foolhardy 
adventurer  who  prized  notoriety  as 
dearer  to  him  than  the  safety  of  life. 
The  only  ones  who  seemed  to  have 
noticed  the  boat  at  all  were  the  up- 
river  packet-men  who,  as  if  under 
some  premonition  as  to  what  her 
building  really  meant  to  them,  tried 
repeatedly  to  destroy  her.  Twice 
during  the  June  following  her  launch- 
ing Fulton  wrote  of  this  in  his  diary : 

June  7:  To  the  Men  For  Guarding  the 
boat  two  nights  and  a  day  after  the 
vessel  ran  against  her $4 

June  13:  Pay  to  the  men  who  guard  the 
boat $20.00 

I  have  looked  through  the  files  of 
the  newspapers  of  one  hundred  years 
ago,  preserved  by  the  New  York  His- 
torical Society,  and  in  the  Lenox 
Library,  to  ascertain  just  what  im- 
pression the  beginning  of  the  world's 
commerce  made  upon  the  press  and 
the  public.  Although  the  population 
of  New  York  numbered  upwards  of 
eighty-three  thousand  and  there  were 
more  than  twenty  papers  published, 
half  of  them  having  daily  editions,  be- 
sides several  weekly  and  monthly  mag- 
azines, there  is  no  mention  of  it  and 
when  the  boat  really  began  to  run  upon 
her  route  regularly  the  only  account 


FIRST  STEAMBOAT  PAINTINGS  IN  THE  WORLD 
Reproductions  from  rare  canvases  by  James  Bard,  the  marine  painter 
whose  brush  perpetuated  the  architecture  of  the  first  boat  to  be  propelled  by 
steam  —  Bard's  painting  of  the  "North  American,"  a  marvel  of  the  Hudson  River 


"WHY  SLEEP  ON  THE  EDGE  OP  A  VOLCANO" 
This  was  the  advertisement  introducing  the  "Commerce,"  which 
towed  barges  containing  sleeping  apartments  for  its  passengers— This  boat  was 
designed  for  rich  travelers  on  the  Hudson  who  desired  to  avoid  the  danger  of  sleeping  over  steam 
boilers— Reproduction  from  canvas  by  James  Bard  and  believed  to  the  oldest  steamboat  painting  in  the  world 


FIRST  BOAT  BUILT  FOR  HUDSON  RIVER  DAY  LINE  SERVICE 

The  "City  of  Albany"  reproduced  from  the  original  Bard  canvas  painted  for  Commodore  Van 

Sanvoord,  a  leading  personality  in  the  first  years  of  steam  navigation  following  its  inauguration  by  Fulton 


FIRST  FOUR-PIPE  STEAMBOAT  IN  THE  WORLD 

The  "Champlain"  of  1828  from  rare  canvas  owned  by  Captain  Roe 

of  Albany.  New  York,  who  for  more  than  sixty  years  was  a  prominent  figure 

on  the   Hudson   river  and  whose  family  Is  one  of  the  oldest  in  river  navigation 


—  Qfctttomtal 


Jfamgaium—  19flr 


given  of  her,  or  of  her  performances, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  paid  advertise- 
ments of  the  company  or  in  personal 
letters  written  either  by  Fulton  him- 
self or  by  friends  on  board. 

The  initial  trip  was  made  from 
Paulus  Hook  Ferry,  now  Barclay 
street  (by  some  confounded  with 
Paulus  Hook  itself,  now  known  as 
Jersey  City),  on  Monday,  August  17, 
from  a  ferry-house  that  was  but  re- 
cently removed  in  numbered  sections 
and  set  up  on  Starin's  Glen  Island  in 
Long  Island  Sound.  The  first  trip  is 
described  by  Fulton  in  a  letter  to  Joel 
Barlow  and  in  another  to  the  Citizen. 
In  the  former  he  said : 

"My  steamboat  voyage  to  Albany  and 
back  has  turned  out  rather  more  favorable 
than  I  had  calculated.  The  distance  from 
New  York  to  Albany  is  one  hundred  and 
fifty  miles :  I  ran  it  up  in  thirty-two  hours, 
and  down  in  thirty.  I  had  a  light  breeze 
against  me  the  whole  way,  both  going  and 
coming,  and  the  voyage  has  been  per- 
formed wholly  by  the  power  of  the  steam- 
engine.  I  overtook  many  sloops  and 
schooners  beating  to  windward,  and  parted 
with  them  as  if  they  had  been  at  anchor. 

"The  power  of  propelling  boats  by  steam 
is  now  fully  proved.  The  morning  I  left 
New  York,  there  were  .not  perhaps  thirty 
persons  in  the  city  who  believed  that  the 
boat  would  ever  move  one  mile  an  hour,  or 
be  of  the  least  utility;  and  while  we  were 
putting  off  from  the  wharf,  which  was 
crowded  with  spectators,  I  heard  a  number 
of  sarcastic  remarks.  This  is  the  way  in 
which  ignorant  men  compliment  what  they 
call  philosophers  and  projectors. 

"Having  employed  much  time,  money, 
and  zeal,  in  accomplishing  this  work,  it 
gives  me,  as  it  will  you,  great  pleasure  to 
see  it  fully  answer  my  expectations.  It 
will  give  a  cheap  and  quick  conveyance  to 
the  merchandise  on  the  Mississippi,  Mis- 
souri, and  other  great  rivers,  which  are 
now  laying  open  their  treasures  to  the  en- 
terprise of  our  countrymen ;  and  although 
the  prospect  of  personal  emolument  has 
been  some  inducement  to  me,  yet  I  feel  in- 
finitely more  pleasure  in  reflecting  on  the 
immense  advantage  my  country  will  derive 
from  the  invention,"  etc. 

The  letter  in  the  Citizen  is  very  lit- 
tle different  from  what  he  had  written 
to  Barlow : 

"To  THE  EDITOR  or  THE  'AMERICAN  CIT- 
IZEN; 

"Sra:— I  arrived  this  afternoon,  at  four 
o'clock,  in  the  steamboat  from  Albany.  As 
the  success  of  my  experiment  gives  me 


great  hopes  that  such  boats  may  be  ren- 
dered of  great  importance  to  my  country, 
to  prevent  erroneous  opinions  and  give 
some  satisfaction  to  the  friends  of  useful 
improvements,  you  will  have  the  goodness 
to  publish  the  following  statement  of  facts : 

"I  left  New  York  on  Monday  at  one 
o'clock,  and  arrived  at  Clermont,  the  seat 
of  Chancellor  Livingston,  at  one  o'clock  on 
Tuesday — time,  twenty-four  hours,  dis- 
tance, one  hundred  and  ten  miles.  On 
Wednesday,  I  departed  from  the  Chancel- 
lor's at  nine  in  the  morning,  and  arrived  at 
Albany  at  five  in  the  afternoon — distance, 
forty  miles,  time,  eight  hours.  The  sum 
is  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  in  thirty- 
two  hours,  equal  to  near  five  miles  an  hour. 

"On  Thursday,  at  nine  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  I  left  Albany,  and  arrived  at  the 
Chancellor's  at  six  in  the  evening:  I  started 
from  thence  at  seven,  and  arrived  at  New 
York  at  four  in  the  afternoon— time,  thirty 
hours,  space  run  through,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  miles,  equal  to  five  miles  an  hour. 
Throughout  my  whole  way,  both  going  and 
returning,  the  wind  was  ahead;  no  advan- 
tage could  be  derived  from  my  sails :  the 
whole  has,  therefore,  been  performed  by 
the  power  of  the  steam-engine. 

"I  am,  sir,  your  obedient  servant, 
ROBERT  FULTON." 

In  the  correspondence  of  a  gentle- 
man from  South  Carolina  there  is  a 
letter  published  in  the  British  Naval 
Chronicle  dated  September  8,  1807, 
descriptive  of  the  trip  and  stating  that 
"on  the  nineteenth  of  August"  he 
"was  invited  to  go  from  Clermont  to 
Albany  on  the  boat  which  had  come 
up  in  twenty-four  hours  from  New 
York."  Prior  to  this  trip  of  the 
steamboat  the  distance  covered  re- 
quired from  four  days  to  a  full  week 
on  the  sloops  and  packets  that  sailed 
between  the  two  cities. 

This  date  would  agree  with  Ful- 
ton's account  and  may  be  accepted  as 
correct,  although  there  are  as  many 
dates  given  for  the  first  trip  as  there 
are  differing  pictures  of  the  true  and 
accurate  lines  of  the  boat  itself.  I 
have  made  a  life-long  study  of  the  de- 
velopment of  steam  navigation,  inves- 
tigating the  mechanical  evolution  as 
thoroughly  as  the  historical,  and  I  re- 
gret the  necessity  of  here  stating  that 
all  the  pictures  of  Fulton  steamboats 
presented  in  two  of  his  most  widely 
accepted  biographies  are  absolutely 
untrustworthy.  They  represent  either 


Ififlf— 2fcr-QInttetuirg   of  American   Qlnmmm? 


the  imagination  or  the  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  artist  rather  than  anything 
that  Fulton  ever  planned.  I  doubt  if 
he  would  be  able  to  recognize  them  as 
his  own  "children."  It  is  unfortu- 
nate that  these  spurious  pictures  are 
used  in  nearly  all  the  books  that 
occupy  positions  of  authority  in  our 
public  libraries. 

Possibly  the  dropping  of  the  fig- 
ure "one"  before  the  "seven"  in  tran- 
scribing the  account  has  led  to  the 
naming  of  "August  7"  as  the  date  of 
the  first  trip,  and  the  careless  omission 
of  the  hook  from  the  top  of  the  figure 
"seven"  in  transcribing  some  other 
account  has  led  to  setting  the  time  on 
the  "eleventh."  Let  us  then,  for  the 
sake  of  posterity,  settle  down  upon 
the  fact  that  the  boat  left  New  York 
Monday  afternoon,  August  17,  1807, 
at  one  o'clock,  having  on  board  a  party 
of  invited  guests,  among  whom  was 
the  Dean  of  Ripon,  England,  and  ar- 
rived at  Clermont,  the  home  of  Chan- 
cellor Livingston,  Tuesday  afternoon, 
where  she  remained  until  Wednesday 
morning  at  nine  o'clock,  when  she  left 
for  Albany,  arriving  there  at  five 
o'clock,  having  made  the  longest  con- 
tinuous trip  of  any  steamboat  in  the 
world.  Later  Fulton  wrote  to  Chan- 
cellor Livingston: 

"NEW  YORK, 

"SATURDAY,  THE  2QTH  OF  AUGUST,  1807. 

"DEAR  SIR: — On  Saturday  I  wrote  you 
that  I  arrived  here  on  Friday  at  four 
o'clock,  which  made  my  voyage  from 
Albany  exactly  thirty  hours.  We  had  a 
little  wind  on  Friday  morning,  but  no 
waves  which  produced  any  effect.  I  have 
been  making  every  exertion  to  get  off  on 
Monday  morning,  but  there  has  been  much 
work  to  do — boarding  all  the  sides,  deck- 
ing over  the  boiler  and  works,  finishing 
each  cabin  with  twelve  berths  to  make  them 
comfortable,  and  strengthening  many  parts 
of  the  iron  work.  So  much  to  do,  and  the 
rain,  which  delays  the  caulkers,  will,  I 
fear,  not  let  me  off  till  Wednesday  morn- 


ing. Then,  however,  the  boat  will  be  as 
complete  as  she  can  be  made — all  strong 
and  in  good  order  and  the  men  well  organ- 
ized, and  I  hope,  nothing  to  do  but  to  run 
her  for  six  weeks  or  two  months.  The 
first  week,  that  is  if  she  starts  on  Wednes- 
day, she  will  make  one  trip  to  Albany  and 
back.  Every  succeeding  week  she  will  run 
three  trips— that  is,  two  to  Albany  and  one 
to  New  York,  or  two  to  New  York  and  one 
to  Albany  always  having  Sunday  and  four 
nights  for  rest  to  the  crew.  By  carrying 
for  the  usual  price  there  can  be  no  doubt 
but  the  steamboat  will  have  the  preference 
because  of  the  certainty  and  agreeable 
movements.  I  have  seen  the  captain  of  the 
fine  sloop  from  Hudson.  He  says  the  aver- 
age of  his  passages  have  been  forty-eight 
hours.  For  the  steamboat  it  would  have 
been  thirty  certain.  The  persons  who  came 
down  with  me  were  so  much  pleased  that 
they  said  were  she  established  to  run  peri- 
odically they  never  would  go  in  any  thing 
else.  I  will  have  her  registered  and  every 
thing  done  which  I  can  recollect.  Every 
thing  looks  well  and  I  have  no  doubt  will 
be  very  producive. 

"Yours  truly, 

"ROBERT  FULTON." 

It  is  due  time  that  an  accurate  his- 
torical record  be  made  of  the  "Cler- 
mont," the  first  steamboat  in  the  world 
to  enter  into  the  trade  of  carrying  pas- 
sengers as  a  practical  and  permanent 
business.  It  is  of  further  importance 
that  publishers  of  books  of  educa- 
tional and  historical  purport  present 
accurate  reproductions  of  the  "Cler- 
mont" and  this  applies  also  to  all  other 
prints  relating  to  the  vital  events  of 
our  national  life. 

As  shown  first  in  the  Connecticut 
Magazine,  the  "Clermont"  was  a 
wedge-shaped  boat,  with  two  masts 
and  no  bow-sprit  or  figure  head. 
According  to  Fulton's  own  state- 
ment, and  certainly  he  knew  the 
dimensions  of  his  first  steamboat,  she 
was  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  long, 
thirteen  feet  wide  and  seven  feet  deep. 
Being  flat-bottomed  she  carried  two 
"lee-boards"  to  use  as  adjuncts  for 

416 


of  Steam 


steering  when  the  sails  were  set,  to 
prevent  making  leeway;  the  bottom 
was  a  transverse  platform  and  mould- 
ed out  with  batten  and  nails.  The 
shape  of  the  bottom  being  thus  formed, 
the  floors  of  oak  and  spruce  were 
placed  across  the  bottom;  the  spruce 
floors  being  four  by  eight  inches  and 
two  feet  apart;  the  oak  floors  being 
reserved  for  the  ends;  the  oak  floors 
both  sided  and  moulded  eight  inches. 
Her  top  timbers  (which  were  of 
spruce,  and  extended  from  a  log  that 
formed  the  bridge  to  the  deck)  were 
sided  six  inches  and  moulded  at  heel, 
and  both  sided  and  moulded  four 
inches  at  the  head.  Her  draught  of 
water  was  twenty-eight  inches.  She 
had  a  copper  boiler  weighing  4,399 
pounds,  entirely  encased  with  brick, 
the  whole  being  twenty  feet  long, 
seven  feet  deep,  and  eight  feet  wide, 
above  which  there  towered  a  twenty- 
five  foot  chimney  made  of  sheet  iron 
bought  of  Mr.  Jackson  for  $26.25 ; 
her  cylinder  was  twenty-four  inches 
in  diameter,  with  four  feet  stroke ;  her 
wheels,  made  of  planks  bought 
of  John  Cunningham-  for  $23.43, 
were  fifteen  feet  in  diameter,  with 
eight  arms;  the  buckets  or  paddles 
having  a  thirty-inch  face  and  two 
feet  dip;  her  shaft  was  of  cast  iron, 
four  and  a  half  inches  in  diameter,  un- 
der the  deck,  and  had  a  fly-wheel  of 
ten  feet  diameter  outside  of  the  boat ; 
the  arms  of  the  wheel  extended  below 
the  bottom,  and  were  the  source  of 
great  inconvenience  in  shoal  water. 

In  the  Albany  Gazette  of  September 
2,  1807,  there  is  an  "ad"  reading  as 
follows : 

"The  North-River  Steamboat  will  leave 
Pauler's  Hook  Ferry  on  Friday,  the  4th  of 
September,  at  9  in  the  morning,  and  arrive 
at  Albany  on  Saturday  at  9  in  the  after- 
noon. Provisions,  good  berths,  and  ac- 
commodations are  provided. 

"The  charge  to  each  passenger  is  as  fol- 
lows: 

To  Newburg  dols.  3,  time,  14  hours. 
To  Poughkeepsie  "4,  17 

To  Esopus  "     5,       "     20 

To  Hudson  "    sX,    "     3<>      " 

To  Albany  "    7,       "     36      " 


"For  places  apply  to  William  Vander- 
voort,  No.  48  Courtlandt  Street,  on  the 
corner  of  Greenwich  Street" 

The  Connecticut  Herald,  of  Octo- 
ber 9,  1807,  has  a  letter  from  New 
York,  dated  October  3,  in  which  the 
writer  says : 

"Mr.  Fulton's  steamboat  is  handsomely 
fitted  for  the  conveyance  of  passengers  be- 
tween this  city  and  Albany.  She  left  here 
yesterday  with  ninety  passengers." 

On  October  13,  1807,  a  second  let- 
ter is  printed  in  which  the  writer 
states : 

"Mr.  Fulton's  new  invented  steam  Boat, 
which  is  fitted  up  in  a  neat  style  for  pas- 
sengers and  is  intended  to  run  from  New 
York  to  Albany  as  a  packet,  left  here  yes- 
terday with  90  passengers,  against  a  strong 
wind  and  tide.  Notwithstanding  which  it 
was  judged  she  moved  through  the  water 
at  the  rate  of  six  miles  an  hour.  Yester- 
day she  came  in  from  Albany  in  28  hours 
with  60  passengers.  Quere;  Would  it  not 
be  well  if  she  contract  with  the  Post-roaster 
General  to  carry  the  mail  from  this  city  to 
Albany  ?" 

A  letter  from  John  Lambert,  an 
Englishman  traveling  in  this  country 
in  1807-8,  has  an  excellent  reference 
to  the  "Clermont,"  although  the 
writer  was  slightly  mixed  as  to  the 
time  of  her  building;  the  letter  reads 
as  follows: 

"We  were  very  desirous  of  seeing  the 
construction  of  the  steamboat,  which  trav- 
els at  the  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour  against 
wind  and  tide.  It  was  built  about  four  years 
ago,  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Fulton,  an 
Ainerican  gentleman  of  great  mechanical 
abilities.  .  .  .  The  machine  which  moves 
her  wheels  is  called  a  twenty-horse  ma- 
chine, or  equal  to  the  power  of  so  many 
horses,  and  is  kept  in  motion  by  steam 
from  a  copper  boiler  eight  or  ten  feet  in 
length.  The  wheels  at  either  side  are  sim- 
ilar to  those  of  water-mills,  and  are  under 
cover,  they  are  moved  backward  or  for- 
ward, separately  or  together,  at  pleasure.(?) 
Her  principal  advantage  is  in  calms  or 
against  head-winds.  When  the  wind  is 
fair,  light  square  sails,  etc.,  are  employed 
to  increase  her  speed.  Her  accommoda- 
tions include  fifty-two  berths  besides  sofas, 
and  are  said  to  be  equal,  if  not  superior,  to 
any  vessel  that  sails  on  the  river.  They 
are  necessarily  extensive,  as  all  the  space 
unoccupied  by  the  machinery  is  fitted  up  in 
a  convenient  and  elegant  manner.'  Her 
route  between  Albany  and  New  York  is  a 
distance  of  160  miles,  which  she  performs 
regularly  twice  a  week,  sometimes  in  the 


Ififlf— Skr-Gknterarg   nf  Ammratt   (Enmmm? 


short  period  of  thirty-two  hours,  exclusive 
of  the  detention  by  taking  in  and  landing 
passengers.  She  carries  from  100  to  120 
people.  The  fare  from  New  York  to 
Albany  is  seven  dollars." 

This  harmonizes  perfectly  with  the 
description  of  the  boat  as  published  in 
the  Hudson  Bee  in  1808,  after  the 
boat  had  undergone  extensive  altera- 
tions in  shape  and  proportions.  Speak- 
ing of  the  wheels,  which  at  first  were 
not  covered  but  were  later  enclosed  in 
wheel-boxes,  the  Bee  says : 

"They  are  moved  backward  or  forward 
separately  or  together  at  pleasure.  The 
machine  which  moves  the  wheels  is  called, 
we  believe,  a  twenty  horse-power  machine, 
and  is  kept  in  motion  by  steam  from  a 
copper  boiler  8  or  12  feet  long.  She  sails 
at  the  rate  of  4  miles  an  hour." 

We  have  Fulton's  personal  state- 
ment as  to  the  size  of  the  boat  (given 
above)  and  also  his  notations  on  the 
back  of  a  patent  specification  intended 
for  John  Stevens,  of  Hoboken,  that 
the  bow  and  the  stern  were  sharpened 
to  angles  of  sixty  degrees.  With  this 
agrees  the  statement  of  Professor 
Renwick  in  his  letter  to  Captain  Ed- 
ward Sabine,  R.  A.,  Secretary  of  the 
Royal  Society  in  England,  which  was 
written  about  1829-30: 

"Mr.  Fulton,  in  his  earlier  boats,  had 
employed  flat  bottoms  and  prows  nearly  of 
the  shape  of  a  wedge,  with  plane  surfaces. 
I  recollect,  even  at  that  early  date,  haying 
combated  the  propriety  of  this  plan  in  a 
conversation  I  had  with  him.  The  changes 
that  he  and  his  imitators  subsequently  made 
were,  however,  rather  grounded  upon  the 
necessity  of  increasing  the  strength  of  the 
vessels  by  regular  curves  in  their  molds, 
than  from  a  conviction  of  the  error  in  the 
principle.  The  last  boats  built  under  his 
own  directions  resembled  in  form  vessels 
intended  to  be  propelled  by  sails,  but  of  a 
small  draught  of  water." 

During  the  winter  of  1807-8  the 
"Clermont"  was  so  thoroughly 
changed  that  one  would  have  been 
safe  in  declaring  that,  except  in  en- 
gine and  purpose,  she  was  not  the 
same  boat  at  all.  Professor  Renwick 
says  (though  he  is  mistaken  about  the 
name  being  "Clermont")  : 

.  .  .  "The  winter  of  1807-8  was  occupied 
in  remodeling  and  rebuilding  the  vessel, 
to  which  the  name  of  'Clermont'  was  now 


given.  The  guards  and  housings  for  the 
wheels,  which  had  been  but  temporary 
structures,  applied  as  their  value  was  point- 
ed out  by  experience,  became  solid  and 
essential  parts  of  the  boat  For  a  rudder  of 
the  ordinary  form,  one  of  surface  much 
more  extended  in  its  horizontal  dimensions, 
was  substituted.  This,  instead  of  being 
moved  by  a  tiller,  was  acted  upon  by  ropes 
applied  to  its  extremity,  and  these  ropes 
were  adapted  to  a  steering  wheel,  which 
was  raised  aloft  towards  the  bow  of  the 
vessel.  .  .  .  The  'Clermont,'  thus  con- 
verted into  a  floating  palace,  gay  with  orna- 
mental painting,  gilding  and  polished 
woods,  commenced  her  course  of  passages 
for  the  second  year  in  the  month  of  April." 

So  extensive  were  the  changes 
made  that  a  new  registration  at  the 
custom-house  was-  necessary.  This 
registration,  which  was  transcribed  by 
Mr.  John  Morrison  for  his  "History 
of  American  Steam  Navigation,"  is  as 
follows : 

"No.  108. 

"Enrollment  in  conformity  to  an  Act  of 
the  Congress  of  the  United  States  of  Amer- 
ica entitled  'An  Act  for  enrolling  and 
licensing  ships  or  vessels  to  be  employed 
in  the  coasting  trade  and  fisheries,  and  for 
regulating  the  same.' 

"Robert  R.  Livingston,  of  Clermont, 
"Columbia  County,  State  of  New  York, 
"having  taken  and  subscribed  to  the  oath 
required  by  the  said  Act  and  having  sworn 
that  he  together  with  Robert  Fulton  of  the 
City  of  New  York,  are  citizens  of  the 
United  States,  and  sole  owners  of  the  ship 
or  vessel  called  the  North  River  Steam- 
boat of  Clermont,  whereof  Samuel  Wiswall 
is  at  present  master,  and  as  he  hath  sworn 
he  is  a  citizen  of  the  United  States,  and 
that  the  said  ship  or  vessel  was  built  in  the 
City  of  New  York,  in  the  year  1807,  as  per 
enrollment  173  issued  at  this  port  on  the 
3d  day  of  September,  1807,  now  given  up, 
the  vessel  being  enlarged.  And  Peter  A. 
Schenck,  Surveyor  of  the  Port,  having  cer- 
tified that  the  said  ship  or  vessel  has  one 
deck  and  two  masts,  and  that  her  length 
is  149  ft;  breadth,  17  ft  II  in.;  depth,  7 
ft.,  and  that  she  measures  182-48-95  tons. 
That  she  is  a  square-sterned  boat  has 
square  tuck;  no  quarter  galleries  and  no 
figure-head.  Hands  and  Seals,  May  14, 
1808." 

On  May  13,  1810,  the  Hudson  Bee, 
which,  more  than  any  of  the  other  pa- 
pers of  the  time,  seems  to  have  fol- 
lowed the  movements  of  the  steam- 
boat, says: 

"The  North  River  Steamboat  (which  is 
believed  to  have  been  the  first  one  built  on 

413 


IN  MEMORY  OF  AMERICA'S  GREATEST  LEGEND 

The  "Rip  Van  Winkle, M  an  early  steamboat  that  carried  the  beloved  name  of  the  sage 

of  the  Catskills  and  sailed  the  historic  river  made  famous  in  American  literature  by  Washington  Irving 


ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  STEAMBOATS  TO  UNDERTAKE  A  LONG  Rt'N 

The  "  Fanny,"  a  staunch  little  craft  under  command  of  Captain  David  Tremper  of  Roundout, 

New  York,  one  of  the  most  popular  men  that  ever  captained  a  ship— In  1840,  after  long  service,  the 

"  Fanny''  was  offered  for  sale  as  "built  of  locust  and  live  oak  and   Jersey   plank,  thoroughly  coppered' 


SPEEDIEST  RIVER  BOATS  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS 

The  "Oseola,"  a  swift  little  craft  that  ran  to  Poughkeepsie  in  ,843— Reproduction 

from  original  painting  by  Bard  for  Captain  Allen  Degroot,  an  old-time  captain  of  the  Hudson  River 


ONE  OF  THE  MOST  POPULAR  STEAMBOATS  OF  HER  TIME 

The  "Alida,"  which  for  many  years  carried  distinguished  travelers  along  the  "American 

Rhine" — Reproduction  from  old  canvas  painted  by  Bard  for  Commodore  Van  Sanvoord  of  New  York 


of 


Natrigatum-19Dr 


the  river  and  has  lately  been  known  by  the 
name  of  'Clermont,'  that  is  in  the  books) 
Captain  Wiswall,  arrived  at  this  port  yes- 
terday afternoon  at  5  o'clock,  (Sunday, 
May  13,  1810)  being  the  shortest  trip  she 
has  ever  made.  But  for  the  necessary  de- 
tention in  the  way  of  landing  passengers,  it 
would  have  been  performed  in  19  hours." 

During  the  fall  of  that  year  some 
of  the  citizens  of  Albany  appealed  to 
the  press  to  enter  their  protest  against 
the  cutting  of  wood  on  the  city  com- 
mons for  use  on  the  steamboat  with- 
out paying  anything  for  the  privilege. 
It  is  figured  out  in  the  papers  that  the 
boat  carried  on  an  average,  eighty 
passengers  each  way  per  trip.  "At 
seven  dollars  each,"  says  the  writer, 
"the  income  of  the  company  was  up- 
wards of  $80,000  and  if  we  deduct 
one-quarter  for  expenses,  there  yet  re- 
mains $60,000  profits.  Isn't  that 
enough  to  allow  something  for  the 
wood  used  as  fuel  ?" 

The  success  of  the  great  invention 
was  speedily  followed,  January  7th, 
1808,  by  Robert  Fulton's  marriage  to 
Miss  Harriet  Livingston,  the  daughter 
of  Walter  Livingston,  Esquire,  of 
Tiviotdale,  Livingston  Manor.  It  is 
related  that  the  engage'ment  was  for- 
mally announced  by  Chancellor  Liv- 
ingston, upon  the  deck  of  the  "Cler- 
mont," during  the  interesting  hours  of 
her  first  successful  voyage.  In  a 
graceful  speech  telling  of  the  be- 
trothal, the  Chancellor  prophesied  that 
"the  name  of  the  inventor  will  de- 
scend to  posterity  as  that  of  a  bene- 
factor to  the  world,  and  that  it  is  not 
impossible  that  before  the  close  of  the 
present  century,  vessels  might  even  be 
able  to  make  the  voyage  to  Europe 
without  other  motive  power  than 
steam." 

When  the  business  world  saw  the 
Fulton  theory  of  steam  navigation  de- 
velop into  a  great  and  strong  business 
enterprise,  there  was  an  immediate 
rush  of  capital  into  its  promotion. 
The  business  world  is  imitative.  It 
lacks  courage  for  the  initiative.  It 
waits  for  someone  else  to  take  the  risk 
and  then  jostles  and  grasps  for  a 
handful  of  the  emoluments. 


In  1811  an  opposition  line,  with  the 
"Hope"  and  the  "Perseverance,"  un- 
der Captains  Sherman  and  Bunker, 
was  announced  as  ready  for  patron- 
age. These  boats  were  swifter  and 
better  in  every  way  than  the  "Cler- 
mont," even  after  the  extensive  alter- 
ations that  entitled  her  to  the  appella- 
tion: "floating  palace,  gay  with  orna- 
mental painting,  gilding  and  polished 
woods."  Captain  Bunker  had  just 
given  up  his  sailing  packet,  which,  on 
April  14,  1808,  had  been  advertised  as 
sailing  between  New  York  and  Hud- 
son. "This,"  says  the  New  York 
Press,  in  a  retrospective  edition  some 
years  after,  "was  the  first  packet 
run  on  the  river  and  as  an  in- 
ducement to  travelers,  it  was  an- 
nounced that  bed  and  bedding  would 
be  provided  for  passengers  going  that 
way.  Prior  to  this  travelers  had  to 
furnish  themselves  with  such  com- 
forts." 

The  "Hope"  was  launched  Tuesday 
evening,  March  19,  1811,  and  on  the 
trip  down  the  river,  July  27,  was 
challenged  by  the  "Clermont"  for 
a  race.  This  was  the  first  steamboat 
race  in  history.  Both  boats  left 
Albany  at  nine  o'clock  in  the  morning, 
with  the  "Hope"  a  little  in  the  lead. 
This  position  was  held  until  "the 
boats  were  about  two  miles  above 
Hudson  when  the  old  boat,  by  reason 
of  her  lighter  draught,  took  advan- 
tage of  the  shallow  and  tried  to  pass 
while  the  "Hope"  kept  to  the  channel. 
The  result  was  a  collision  in  which 
neither  boat  was  at  all  injured.  Cap- 
tain Bartholomew  on  the  "North 
River"  (or  "Clermont"),  at  once  chal- 
lenged the  doughty  Bunker  to  race  for 
$2,000  for  any  number  of  miles  but 
the  latter  refused  in  a  proper  spirit. 
Either  boat  ran  to  New  York  in 
twenty-nine  or  thirty  hours. 

Competition  was  keen  and  the  mat- 
ter soon  found  its  way  into  the  courts 
where,  after  a  long,  legal  wrangle,  the 
two  boats  of  the  monopoly  breakers 
were  confiscated  to  the  original  com- 
pany and  destroyed  at  Albany  in  the 
presence  of  their  builders. 


— Qkr-Gkntetarg   0f  Ammran   Gtommm? 


At  this  time  Fulton  had  only  the 
one  boat  running  on  the  Hudson,  but 
he  soon  added  the  "Car  of  Neptune" 
and  the  "Paragon,"  both  of  which 
were  in  every  way  better  than  his  ear- 
lier efforts — the  "Raritan"  was  at  this 
time  on  the  Raritan  river.  These 
two  boats  had  high  poop  decks,  four 
feet  above  the  main  deck,  and  the  en- 
trance to  the  cabin  was  by  the  old- 
fashioned  companionway,  not  by  a 
house  on  deck.  They  each  carried 
two  masts.  On  the  foremast  was  a 
square  sail,  two  topsails  and  a  jib,  and 
on  the  main  mast  each  carried  a 
spanker  and  a  topsail.  The  foremast 
was  hinged  by  a  heel  and  trunnions 
so  that  it  could  be  lowered  when  the 
wind  was  ahead.  When  the  weather 
was  favorable  everybody,  passengers 
and  crew  alike,  were  summoned  to 
raise  the  mast  and  hoist  sail.  When 
making  a  landing  the  pilot  blew  a 
great  tin  horn,  some  five  feet  long,  in- 
stead of  ringing  a  bell,  the  bell  being 
used  only  to  announce  meals,  which 
were  always  included  in  the  cost  of  the 
ticket. 

Writing  to  Captain  Brink,  who 
commanded  the  "North  River"  the 
second  year,  Fulton  says : 

CAPTAIN  BRINK 

SIR:  Inclosed  is  the  number  of  voyages 
which  it  is  intended  the  boat  should  run 
this  season.  You  may  have  them  pub- 
lished in  the  Albany  papers.  As  she  is 
strongly  made,  and  every  one,  except  Jack- 
son, under  your  command,  you  must  insist 
on  each  one  doing  his  duty,  or  turn  him 
on  shore  and  put  another  in  his  place. 
Everything  must  be  kept  in  order — every- 
thing in  its  place,  and  all  parts  of  the  boat 
scoured  and  cleaned.  It  is  not  sufficient  to 
tell  men  to  do  a  thing,  but  stand  over  them 
and  make  them  do  it.  One  pair  of  good 
eyes  is  worth  six  pairs  of  hands  in  a  com- 
mander. If  the  boat  is  dirty  or  out  of 
order,  the  fault  should  be  yours.  Let  no 
man  be  idle  when  there  is  the  least  thing 
to  do;  and  move  quickly. 

Run  no  risque  of  any  kind;  when  you 
meet  or  overtake  vessels  beating  or  cross- 
ing your  way,  always  run  under  their  stern, 
if  there  be  the  least  doubt  that  you  cannot 
clear  their  head  by  fifty  yards  or  more. 

Give  the  amount  of  receipts  and  expenses 
every  week  to  the  Chancellor. 

Your  Most  Obedient 

ROBERT  FULTON. 


A  few  items  here  from  Fulton's 
diary  may  add  to  the  interest  of  the 
story.  Under  the  date  of  August  10, 
1807,  he  writes : 

To  a  North  River  man  for  the  lease  of  an 

anchor $2 

For  dishes  and  plates $4 

2  Water  Casks $3 

and  under  the  fifteenth,  when  the  fin- 
ishing touches  were  given,  he  enters : 

Wine,  sugar  brandy $3 

Mr.  Johnson,  the  mason  $40    (for  bricking 

in  the  boiler  which   had  been  put  in 

place  by  Mr.  Maxwell) 
To  a  harpoon  gun  $20.    Lead  for  Bullets 

$12. 

In  October,  among  other  entries, 
we  find  the  following : 

Richards,  for  table $12 

Jacob  Winkle  for  mattresses $64.88 

As  there  are  no  original  plans  of 
the  first  boat,  the  illustration  used  here 
being  a  picture  of  the  model  in  the 
National  Museum  in  Washington, 
which,  while  agreeing  as  to  general 
outline  to  the  descriptions  given  to  the 
writer  by  two  persons  who  sailed 
upon  her  on  the  first  trip  up  the  river, 
gives  an  exaggerated  idea  as  to  the 
extreme  length  of  the  boat,  it  will 
be  worth  while  to  produce  the  plans  of 
the  "Raritan,"  designed  by  Robert 
Fulton  in  October,  1807.  It  will  be 
seen  that  at  this  early  date  he  had  dis- 
covered the  necessity  of  changing  the 
lines  of  the  hull,  going  back  to  those 
of  the  boat  he  had  built  in  France, 
although  he  wrote  to  Stevens,  of  Ho- 
boken,  in  1808,  that  "the  bows  and 
stern  (of  a  boat)  should  be  sharp  to 
angles  of  at  least  sixty  degrees.  The 
bow  should  not  be  full  like  sloops,  for 
two  reasons :  that  being  long  they  can- 
not rise  on  the  waves  like  sloops  but 
must  cut  through  them  and  being 
sharp  the  resistance  is  less."  This 
would  lead  us  to  conclude,  as  seems 
to  be  intimated  by  Professor  Renwick, 
that  the  change  in  shape  was  not 
wholly  of  his  own  deductions,  but 
rather  in  deference  to  the  opinion  of 
others. 

But  new  claimants  were  coming 
up  all  the  while,  or  new  men  with  old 
claims,  and  Fulton  was  harassed  on 


A  CENTURY  OF  STEAM   NAVIGATION 

MI:«\IS  TO  SAIL   INLAND   WATKHM    FROM  NEW  YORK   CITY 


II 


DEVELOPMENT  OK  THE  F"IRST  CENTURY  OF  STEAM 

ON  THE  HISTORIC  HUDSON  —  MAGNIFICENT  NEW  STEEL 

STEAMER  -HENDRICK  HUDSON."  PLYING  BETWEEN 

NEW  YORK  AND  ALBANY  ON  THE  HUDSON 

RIVER  DAY  LINE  AND  LICENSED 

TO  CARRY  FIVE  THOUSAND 

P ASSENG  ERS 


A  CENTURY   OF   STEAM  NAVIGATION 

KAI.'i:     PRINTS    OF    SOMK    OF   TIIK   FIRST   STEAMBOATS  ON  THE   HUDSON   RIVER 


— Qfcnteimial  nf  Steam  Natrigatum-lflflr 


every  hand.  In  a  letter  to  Eli  Whit- 
ney, relative  to  securing  injunctions 
against  those  who  were  invading  his 
rights,  he  writes  of  his  steamboats 
that  he  has 

"proved  their  practicability  and  utility 
to  the  world  and  accommodating  the  pub- 
lic with  a  conveyance  from  New  York  to 
Albany,  which  for  elegance,  convenience 
and  rapidity  is  superior  to  any  conveyance 
in  this  globe"  (April  4,  1811). 

The  original  Fitch  patents  had 
come  into  the  hands  of  Governor  Og- 
den,  of  New  Jersey,  and  a  line  of 
boats  was  put  into  operation  between 
New  York  and  Elizabethport,  New 
Jersey,  in  defiance  of  Fulton's  exclu- 
sive charter  for  navigating  boats  pro- 
pelled by  steam  on  any  water  within 
the  limits  of  New  York  state.  Ogden 
appealed  to  the  legislature  of  the  pro- 
hibiting state,  but  before  a  decision 
had  been  given  by  that  body  a  com- 
promise was  made  between  the  con- 
tending parties  and  Ogden  was  given 
permission  to  run  his  boats  for  a  pe- 
riod of  ten  years  under  the  Fulton- 
Livingston  franchise.  There  was  a 
partner,  however,  Thomas  Gibbons,  of 
Georgia,  who  later  built  the  "Olive 
Branch,"  the  "United  States"  and 
other  boats,  and  he  refused  to  be 
bound  by  the  terms  of  the  agreement. 
Counting  on  the  testimony  of  Dr.  Wil- 
liam Thornton,  the  first  United  States 
commissioner  of  patents,  he  pre- 
pared for  a  fight.  Thornton  seems 
always  to  have  been  a  thorn  in  Ful- 
ton's flesh.  Writing  to  Monroe,  Sec- 
retary of  State  under  Madison,  in  re- 
lation to  his  patents  he  says : 

"The  case  of  Dr.  Thornton  is  very  sim- 
ple, if  he  is  an  inventor,  a  genius  who  can 
live  by  his  talents,  let  him  do  so,  but  while 
he  is  a  Clerk  in  the  office  of  the  Secretary 
of  State  and  paid  by  the  public  for  his  ser- 
vices, he  should  be  forbid  to  deal  in  patents, 
and  thereby  torment  patentees,  involving 
them  in  vexatious  suits,  he  should  have  his 
choice  to  quit  the  office  or  his  pernicious 
practices. 

My  good  Sir,  I  expect  this  of  you. 

I  am,  with  sincere  regards 

ROBERT  FULTON. 
DECEMBER  27,  1814." 

It  will  be  remembered  that  during 
October,  1802,  Dr.  Thornton  had  pro- 

4>7 


posed  to  Major  Clayborn,  of  Wash- 
ington, that  a  joint  concern  be  ar- 
ranged to  build  steamboats  that  would 
use  Thornton's  boilers,  Clayborn's  pad- 
dle-wheels and  Isaac  Brigg's  engines. 
In  the  following  December,  Fulver 
Skipworth  received  a  letter  in  answer 
to  one  sent  to  Fulton  in  Paris,  con- 
taining the  following  suggestion : 

"My  advice,  therefore,  is  that  Mr.  Clai- 
born  should  make  a  small  model,  four  feet 
long  and  one  foot  wide  and  about  four 
inches  deep,  flat  on  the  ends  or  pointed  to 
sixty  degrees.  In  such  he  can  place  a 
strong  clock  spring  which  by  multiplied 
wheels  will  turn  a  crank  and  give  motion  to 
the  paddles." 

ROBERT  FULTON. 
PARIS,  12  DECEMBER,  1802." 

A  recollection  of  this  letter,  taken  in 
connection  with  the  activities  of 
Thornton  in  the  patents  of  Fitch, 
which  seem  to  have  come  into  his 
hands,  may  have  led  to  the  writing  of 
the  letter  quoted  above. 

While  Ogden  was  yet  running  the 
"Sea  Horse,"  a  lever-beam-engine 
boat,  seventy-five  feet  long  and  four- 
teen feet  wide,  between  New  York 
and  Elizabethtown,  Gibbons  put  on 
two  boats,  the  "Bellona"  and  the 
"Stoudinger,"  to  run  from  the  adja- 
cent ferry-slip  in  opposition.  This 
was  the  first  entry  of  Commodore 
Vanderbilt  into  the  steamboat  enter- 
prise of  which  he  afterward  became 
the  supreme  dictator.  In  Longworth's 
New  York  Directory  for  1819  one 
may  see  the  advertisement  of  this  new 
line  of  boats  bidding  for  patronage : 

"The  Old  Union  Line  for  Philadelphia 
via  New  Brunswick,  Princeton,  Trenton, 
and  Bristol  35  miles  land  carriage.  Fare 
through,  5  Dollars;  the  Vice  President's 
[Daniel  D.  Tompkins]  Steamboat  Nauti- 
lus, Captain  Deforest,  will  leave  New  York 
every  day  (Sundays  excepted)  from 
Whitehall  Wharf,  at  II  o'clock  A.M.  for 
Staten  Island.  From  her  the  passengers 
will  be  received  without  delay  into  the  su- 
perior and  fast  sailing  steamboat  Bellona, 
Captain  Vanderbelt,  for  Brunswick;  from 
thence — Post  Chaises  to  Trenton,  where 
we  lodge,  and  arrive  next  morning  at  9 
o'clock  in  Philadelphia  with  the  commo- 
dious and  fast  sailing  steamboat  Philadel- 
phia, Captain  Jenkins,  in  time  to  take  the 
Old  Union  Line  Baltimore  Steamboat." 


Ififlf— JJter-ffletttntarg   of  Am?riran   (Unmrnm? 


When  Vanderbilt  asked  for  the 
loan  of  ten  dollars  to  purchase  a  boat 
for  his  proposed  ferry-line,  his  mother 
made  the  loan  conditional  on  his 
planting  the  hardest  piece  of  the  farm 
land  with  potatoes  within  a  prescribed 
time.  When  the  day  arrived,  the 
potatoes  were  all  in  the  ground  and 
the  boy  was  demanding  his  money. 
Later  he  was  asked  by  Gibbons  to 
take  command  of  the  "Bellona"  and 
after  several  years  in  this  relation, 
when  he  had  decided  to  withdraw  and 
organize  a  line  of  his  own,  Gibbon  in- 
sisted that  he  become  a  partner,  or  if 
not,  that  he  should  buy  out  his  entire 
interest  and  run  the  line  personally. 
The  "Stoudinger"  above  mentioned 
and  the  "Bellona"  then  became  his 
property,  the  former  being  re-named 
"Mouse-in-the-Mountain." 

During  the  time  of  Vanderbilt 
the  question  of  exclusive  rights  for 
the  use  of  steam  on  the  waters  of 
New  York  was  taken  into  court 
and  upon  an  adverse  decision  was 
carried  to  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  and  the  famous  de- 
cision of  Chief  Justice  Marshall  was 
rendered  by  which  the  monopoly  of 
seventeen  years  was  destroyed. 

The  full  list  of  steamboats  enrolled 
at  the  New  York  customhouse  be- 
tween 1808,  the  second  enrollment  of 
the  "Clermont,"  and  1820,  covers  but 
six  vessels,  viz:  "North  River  of 
Clermont,"  May  14,  1808;  "Car  of 
Neptune,"  1808,  one  hundred  and  sev- 
enty-five feet  by  twenty-four  feet  by 
eight  feet;  "Paragon,"  November 
9,  1811,  one  hundred  and  sixty-seven 
feet  by  twenty-six  feet  and  ten  inches 
by  seven  feet  and  nine  inches;  "Fire 
Fly,"  September,  1812,  eighty-one 
feet  by  fourteen  feet  by  four  feet  and 
five  inches ;  "Richmond,"  July  6,  1814, 
one  hundred  and  fifty-four  feet  by 
twenty-eight  feet  and  nine  inches ; 
"Chancellor  Livingston,"  March  29, 
1817,  one  hundred  and  fifty-seven  feet 
by  thirty-three  and  a  half  feet  by  ten 
feet.  With  the  exception  of  the 
"Chancellor  Livingston"  the  hulls  of 
these  vessels,  which  all  belonged  to 


the  North  River  Steamboat  Company, 
were  built  by  Charles  Brownne.  Evi- 
dently the  "Fulton"  and  the  "Rari- 
tan"  must  have  been  enrolled  else- 
where. The  "Fulton"  was  designed 
by  Captain  Bunker,  who  seems  soon 
after  the  confiscation  of  the  "Hope" 
and  the  "Perseverance"  to  have  come 
into  the  employ  of  the  North  River 
Steamboat  Company,  and  was  looked 
upon  by  Fulton  almost  as  incredu- 
lously as  the  people  of  1807  had 
looked  upon  his  strange  craft.  More 
than  a  hundred  times  he  reiterated  to 
Cadwaller  Colden,  whose  entire  for- 
tune was  involved  in  her  building,  the 
lines  being  drawn  by  Elihu  Bunker 
who  had  full  authority  as  to  the  ar- 
rangement of  every  little  detail,  that 
the  boat  would  be  a  total  failure. 
(See  Doc.  21,  House  of  Represen- 
tatives, twenty-fifth  session,  page 
104.)  When  she  finally  proved  to  be 
a  success  the  name  of  "Fulton"  was 
painted  across  the  stern  and  a  bust  in 
his  honor  was  carried  as  a  figure-head 
at  the  bow. 

For  the  "Raritan"  there  are  signed 
plans  by  Fulton  and  a  letter  as  fol- 
lows: 

"As  you  will  have  more  and  greater 
waves  than  the  North  River  boat,  the 
wheel  guards  must  be  so  constructed  that 
the  head  of  the  wave  shall  not  strike  under 
them  as  here  delineated;  they  are  4  ft. 
from  the  water;  AA,  keelsons  for  the 
boiler,  8  ft.  6  in.  from  outside  to  outside; 
BB,  keelsons  for  the  machinery,  7  ft  from 
outside  to  outside ;  C,  hatchway  to  let  in  the 
boilers,  8  ft.  4  in.  wide,  21  ft.  long.  See 
Figure  the  ist. 

"ROBT.  FULTON. 

"John  R.  Livingston,  Esq.,  Oct.  22,  1807." 

The  "Chancellor  Livingston"  was 
built  from  designs  by  Stoudinger, 
who  succeeded  Fulton  as  engineer  of 
the  first  steam  frigate-of-war,  after 
the  death  of  the  latter  in  1815.  Ful- 
ton had  been  attending  court  at  Tren- 
ton in  reference  to  his  claims  as  the 
original  inventor  of  steamboats  and  in 
returning  to  his  home  at  No.  I  State 
street,  New  York  city,  contracted  a 
severe  cold  from  which  he  died  within 
a  few  days. 


FORERUNNER  OP  COMFORT  IN  TRAVEL  BY  WATER 

The  "  Fulton"  of  1814,  the  first  scheduled  steamboat  on  Long  Island  Sound— At  her  bow  she 

carried  a  bust  of  Fulton  and  with  flags  flying  she  steamed  out  of  Kew  York,  applauded  by  the   onlookers 


ONE  HUNDRED  YEARS  OP  STEAM  NAVIGATION 

The  "C.  W.  Morse,"  which  is  now  running  on  the  night  route  from  New  York 

up  the  Hudson  River,  ia  a  magnificent  specimen  of  marine  architecture  at  the  beginning  of 

this  second   century   of  steam    navigation  —  Photographed    for  The  Journal  of  American    History 


BURIAL  PLACE  OF  ROBERT  FULTON,  PROMOTER  OF  STEAM  NAVIGATION 

Old  Engraving  of  Trinity  Church,  New  York  ,  where  Fulton's  remains  were  placed  in  the  Livingston  vault 

shortly  after  his  death  in  1815— They  will  be  removed  to  the  magnificent  mausoleum  to  be  erected  in  his  honor 


lB0r—  Gfcntamtal  0f 


Nairigaium-19flr 


We  have,  then,  but  the  "Clermont," 
"Car  of  Neptune,"  "Paragon,"  "Rar- 
itan,"  "Fire  Fly,"  "Lady  Richmond," 
"Washington,"  and  a  small  steam 
ferry-boat  and  the  "Demologos,"  be- 
sides the  "New  Orleans"  and  the 
"Vesuvius"  on  the  Ohio  river  as 
having  come  direct  from  Robert  Ful- 
ton. The  "Emperor  of  Russia,"  which 
subsequently  became  the  "Connecti- 
cut," was  not  built  until  a  year  after 
his  death,  which  occurred  February 
24,  1815.  It  is  possible  that  Fulton 
may  have  worked  on  the  plans  for 
this  boat  which  was  one  hundred  and 
thirty-four  feet  long,  thirty  feet  wide 
and  nine  and  a  half  feet  deep.  She 
carried  three  boilers  and  had  an  en- 
gine with  a  thirty-six  inch  cylinder 
and  a  five  foot  stroke.  Her  wheels 
were  sixteen  feet  in  diameter  with 
buckets  four  feet  ten  inches  wide  that 
had  a  dip  of  two  and  a  half  feet. 

The  "North  River,"  or  "Clermont," 
ran  until  1814,  when  she  was  super- 
seded by  the  "Lady  Richmond,"  but 
was  not  broken  up  till  some  time  dur- 
ing 1825 ;  the  "Car  of  Neptune"  was 
broken  up  after  years  of  faithful  ser- 
vice; the  "Paragon,"  which  had  been 
used  to  tow  the  "Demologos"  from 
the  dock  where  she  was  built  to  Jersey 
City,  struck  on  a  rock  while  going  up 
the  river  in  1820  and  was  so  badly 
damaged  that  she  had  to  be  aban- 
doned ;  the  "Raritan"  wore  herself  out 
on  the  river  whose  name  she  bore ;  the 
"Fire  Fly"  went  onto  Long  Island 
Sound  and  was  worn  out  in  service 
around  Providence;  the  "Lady  Rich- 
mond" came  into  the  possession  of 
Captain  Wiswall  and  ran  for  years  ad- 
vertised as  "Slow  but  Sure;"  the 
"Washington"  was  broken  up  on  the 
Potomac  and  the  "Demologos"  was 
destroyed  by  an  explosion  on  board 
at  the  Brooklyn  navy  yard,  June  4, 
1829,  causing  the  death  of  twenty-five 
persons. 

When  the  "Chancellor  Livingston," 
of  which  we  gave  a  picture  in  the  last 
number  of  the  JOURNAL  OF  AMERICAN 
HISTORY,  copied  from  a  rare  litho- 
graph of  1824,  now  owned  by  Mr.  E. 


E.  Olcott,  president  of  the  Hudson 
River  Day  Line,  came  upon  the 
Hudson  it  was  expected  that  she 
would  make  marvelous  time,  but 
in  this  her  builders  were  disap- 
pointed. On  her  trial  trip,  March 
29,  1817,  she  ran  to  Newburgh  in  a 
"few  minutes  less  than  nine  hours,  of 
which  time  the  tide  was  in  her  favor 
only  three  hours.  In  returning  the 
same  distance  was  run  in  eight  hours 
and  fifteen  minutes — the  greater  part 
of  the  time  against  a  flood-tide  and  a 
head-wind."  It  was  calculated  that 
she  would  go  to  Albany  in  twenty 
hours  and  she  did  actually  succeed  in 
making  the  trip,  December  5,  1817,  in 
eighteen  hours.  She  ran  upon  the 
Hudson  till  1824  when  she  was  refit- 
ted for  service  on  the  Sound  and  later 
went  to  the  coast  of  Maine. 

While  the  "Chancellor  Livingston" 
and  the  "Lady  Richmond"  were  run- 
ning as  the  only  boats  on  the  line  of 
the  North  River  Steamboat  Company 
some  question  came  up  with  the  Post 
Office  officials  relative  to  the  carrying 
of  mail  and  a  notice  appeared  in  the 
papers  stating  that  "The  Post-Master- 
General,  having  declined  sending  mail 
by  the  North  River  Steamboats,  ex- 
cepting to  West  Point,  Newburgh 
and  Hudson,  letters  and  papers  will 
be  received  on  board  the  boats  for 
Albany  and  the  different  places  to 
which  the  mails  were  formerly  car- 
ried. Boxes  are  provided  on  board 
of  each  boat  for  the  reception  of  let- 
ter, etc.,  etc." 

This  was  practically  the  dawning  of 
a  new  era.  That  matchless  family  of 
engineers  at  Hoboken  had,  for  per- 
sonal reasons,  refused  to  enter  into 
competition  with  the  North  River 
Steamboat  Company,  Chancellor  Liv- 
ingston and  Colonel  Stevens  having 
been  brought  into  relationship  by  mar- 
riage, but  as  soon  as  the  old  company 
had  been  dissolved,  they  brought  onto 
the  river  one  of  their  best  boats  from 
the  Delaware  river.  It  would  not  be 
possible  to  follow  the  story  from  this 
time  on  to  the  present  in  a  single  arti- 
cle and  this  must  be  reserved  for 


lB0r— efcr-Qkntenarg   nf  Ammratt   (Enmmm* 


another  time,  but  the  progress  that 
has  been  made  from  the  time  that  the 
"Clermont"  started  out  with  a  capac- 
ity of  not  more  than  a  hundred  pas- 
sengers and  a  speed  of  not  more  than 
four,  or  possibly,  five  miles  an  hour, 
and  the  days  of  the  "Commerce"  and 
the  "Fanny,"  or  the  even  later,  larger 
and  faster  '"Champlain"  may  be 
judged  by  glancing  at  the  new  magni- 
ficent "Hendrick  Hudson"  of  the 
Albany  day  line  or  the  stately  "C.  W. 
Morse"  of  the  People's  Line  of  night 
boats  to-day  running  between  New 
York  and  Abany,  shown  here  that  it 
may  be  seen  what  progress  marks  the 
century  of  steam  navigation. 

To  show  the  evolution  of  the  Hud- 
son river  day  boat  a  list  giving  the 
sizes  of  prominent  steamers  built  for 
the  business  of  carrying  passengers 
between  New  York  and  Albany  since 
the  day  of  the  "Clermont"  is  herewith 
appended : 

Year  Length 

Built.     Name  of  Vessel.  Feet. 

1807— Clermont  133 

1816 — Chancellor   Livingston 154 

1832— Erie    180 

1836— Rochester    209 

1860— Daniel  Drew 251 

1864— Chauncey    Vibbard 281 

1881— Albany    325 

1887— New   York 350 

1506 — Hendrick  Hudson 400 

Early  in  the  nineteenth  century  the 
Hudson  river  set  the  pace  for  speedy 
and  magnificent  steamboats.  Follow- 
ing the  advent  of  the  crudely  con- 
structed "Clermont,"  the  first  vessel  to 
be  elaborately  fitted  was  the  "Chan- 
cellor Livingston,"  which  appeared  on 
the  river  in  1816,  being  the  last  steam- 
boat designed  by  Fulton.  Since  that 
day  the  owners  of  each  successive 
steamer  have  seemed  to  vie  with  one 
another  to  produce  something  greater 
and  grander  than  the  predecessors. 
Some  of  these  early  vessels  would  be 
called  freaks  nowadays.  For  instance, 
the  "Erie"  and  "Champlain,"  built  in 
1832  for  the  day  line  between  New 
York  and  Albany,  were  each  propelled 
by  two  beam  engines  and  carried  four 
boilers  and  smoke  pipes,  two  on  each 
guard.  Despite  this  apparent  super- 


fluity of  power  they  were  not  as 
speedy  as  some  of  the  contemporary 
steamers  built  some  years  before  their 
advent. 

To-day — at  the  close  of  the  first 
century  of  steam  navigation  we  find 
on  the  same  "American  Rhine"  the 
most  palatial  river  palaces  that  the 
world  has  ever  known.  Fulton,  in 
his  wildest  dreams,  never  conceived 
such  magnificent  floating  temples,  one 
alone  of  which  could  carry  away  the 
entire  population  of  any  one  of  a 
greater  proportion  of  the  American 
communities.  Along  the  deck  of  a 
modern  steamer,  plying  the  river 
where  Fulton  inaugurated  steam  navi- 
gation one  hundred  years  ago,  three 
"Clermonts"  could  be  placed  stem  to 
stern,  and  five  "Clermonts"  easily 
carried  side  by  side — fifteen  "Cler- 
monts" on  its  spacious  deck. 

There  are  yet  so  many  things  to  be 
said  of  even  the  early  boats  and  such 
an  undeveloped  field  of  history  in  the 
boats  of  more  recent,  years  that 
I  shall  not  attempt  to  touch  upon 
the  story  until  some  later  oppor- 
tunity when  I  hope  to  trace  more  in 
detail  the  several  steps  by  which  the 
original  little  craft,  scarce  larger  than 
the  railroad  coach  of  to-day,  has  be- 
come the  acme  of  all  that  is  luxurious, 
safe  and  convenient  as  a  mode  of 
travel. 

The  story  of  ocean  navigation, 
which  I  outlined  in  the  preceding 
issue  of  this  journal,  is  a  later-day  de- 
velopment from  this  same  "Clermont" 
and  is  in  itself  a  chapter  of  even 
greater  marvels. 

At  this  time  when  the  world  is  pay- 
ing homage  to  Robert  Fulton,  and 
through  him  to  the  several  men  who 
laid  the  foundation  upon  which  he 
builded,  I  cannot  refrain  from  tossing 
back  at  the  populace  the  jibe  which  it 
threw  at  steam  navigation  an  hundred 
years  ago: 

Jonathan  Hulls 

With  his  patent  skulls 

Invented  a  machine 

To  go  against  wind  with  steam 

But  he  being  an  ass 

Couldn't  bring  it  to  pass 

And  so  was  afraid  to  be  seen. 


in  %  ifflt&M? 


Tinier   of   tljr    JJruplr   an  ExprraariJ 

from    thr    (Sunmtoru    of  Ihr  Amrrican  (Cominuuuirallha 

TO 

THE   JOURNAL   OF   AMERICAN    H1STOHV 
BT 


GOVERNOR   OF   IOWA 


3~     •   T    is   believed    that    Father 
Jacques     Marquette,     the 
French     missionary,     and 
Louis   Joliet,   the   French 
explorer,  in  their  famous 
expedition    into    the    far 
West,    first    entered    the 
Mississippi  river  at  a  point  nearly  op- 
posite the  town  of  McGregor,  on  the 
seventeenth  day  of  June,  1673,  and  it 
was  then  that  the  eyes  of  white  men 
first  fell  upon  the  shores  of  the  terri- 
tory now  called  Iowa.     They  floated 
down  the  Mississippi  nearly  the  whole 
width  of  the  state,  making  frequent 
landings  upon  the  western  bank.  They 
did  not,  however,  found  any  perma- 
nent settlements.     Between  1673  a°d 
1784,   many  white  hunters,  trappers 
and  explorers  made  journeys  along  the 
Mississippi    river,   occasionally   pene- 
trating a  short  distance  into  the  inte- 
rior, but  the  first  settlement  within  the 
state  of  Iowa  was  made,  in  1784,  by  a 
Frenchman    named   Julien   Dubuque. 
There  was  little  growth,  however,  for 
many  years,  and  it  was  not  until  in 
1832  that  the  rapid  and  continuous  in- 
flow of  white  settlers  began.     When 
civil  government  was  first  extended 

433 


over  Iowa,  it  was  as  a  part  of  Michi- 
gan Territory.  It  shortly  after  became 
a  part  of  the  Territory  of  Wisconsin, 
and  in  1838  the  Territory  of  Iowa  was 
established. 

The  Territory  of  Iowa  became  a 
state  on  the  twenty-eighth  day  of  De- 
cember, 1846. 

According  to  a  careful  census  taken 
in  1905,  the  population  was  2,210,050. 
It  is  believed  that  the  present  popula- 
tion is  substantially  that  shown  by  the 
census  of  1905.  The  chief  occupa- 
tion of  the  people  and  dominant  inter- 
est of  the  state  is  agriculture. 

At  the  present  time,  Iowa  is  not 
getting  many  immigrants,  compara- 
tively speaking.  In  the  earlier  years 
of  the  state,  when  land  was  cheap, 
Iowa  received  a  great  body  of  immi- 
grants, mainly  Germans,  Swedes,  and 
Norwegians.  Almost  invariably,  they 
became  farmers.  It  is,  of  course, 
true  that  we  received  many  of  other 
nationalities, — Irish,  Bohemians,  with 
a  sprinkling  of  Englishmen,  Irishmen, 
Frenchmen  and  Swiss.  They  are  dif- 
fused, generally,  through  the  various 
occupations.  Within  the  last  few 
years,  we  have  received  some  Italians 


3mua   by 


QIummtuH 


and  Russians,  who  live  mainly  in 
cities  and  towns. 

Taking  the  immigration  into  Iowa 
a.s  a  whole,  its  effect  has  been  highly 
beneficial,  and  the  standard  of  our 
citizenship  has  not  been  lowered  by 
these  recruits  of  industry. 

Corporal  punishment  is  not  forbid- 
den by  law,  but  rarely,  if  ever,  in- 
flicted. 

Necessarily,  Iowa  is  making  the 
most  progress  in  the  development  of 
her  agricultural  interests.  The  won- 
derful growth  in  the  science  of  agri- 
culture in  the  last  few  years  has  revo- 
lutionized Iowa,  and  inasmuch  as 
there  is  no  other  state  in  the  Union 
that  can  compare  with  her  in  the  pro- 
portion of  good  land  to  the  whole 
area,  she  has  no  equal  in  the  produc- 
tions of  agriculture.  It  follows  that 
Iowa  is  prosperous,  and  it  may  be 
fairly  said  that  she  has  always  been 
prosperous. 

It  is  difficult  to  call  the  complete 
roll  of  those  who  have  been  promi- 
nent in  the  several  pursuits  of  life,  and 
it  would  be  invidious  to  present  a  par- 
tial one ;  therefore  I  shall  not  attempt 
a  reply  to  this  question,  further  than 
to  say  that  the  history  of  the  country 


will  bear  witness  to  the  part  that  Iowa 
has  borne  in  the  drama  of  national 
life. 

Iowa's  need  is  the  nation's  need. 
Nature  has  given  us  the  richest  dowry 
ever  bestowed  upon  organized  hu- 
manity. Our  greatest  need  in  the 
past  has  been,  at  the  present  is,  and 
in  the  future  will  be,  strong,  good  men 
and  women.  We  have  been  espe- 
cially fortunate  in  the  number  of  such 
men  and  women,  and  all  that  we  need 
to  do  in  order  to  accomplish  the  des- 
tiny of  the  Republic  and  the  state  is 
to  maintain  the  standard. 

It  is  enough  to  say  that  patriotism 
is  not  waning.  When  we  remember 
the  unselfish  devotion  of  our  people 
in  all  the  days  of  peril,  it  is  difficult  to 
say  that  our  patriotism  can  increase. 

What  does  the  future  of  the  Nation 
portend?  If  by  this  question  you 
mean  to  ask  what  the  future  of  the 
Nation  will  be,  my  answer  must  be  a 
mere  prediction.  I  believe  that  the 
United  States  will  be  the  exemplar  of 
the  whole  world,  and  that  in  govern- 
ment, in  morals,  in  wealth,  in  the  lives 
of  our  men  and  women,  in  the  volume 
of  business  done,  and  in  the  extent  of 
the  things  we  create,  it  will  lead  the 
march  of  nations. 


"WE  WANT  PATRIOTS  IN  EVERY  DAY  LIFE" 

EXCERPT     FROM 

HONORABLE    CHARLES    E.  HUGHES.    GOVERNOR  OF    NEW  YORK 


We  are  too  often  content  with  a 
vague  notion  of  duty  to  country. 
Some  who  would  give  their  lives  for 
their  country  in  time  of  war  are  satis- 
fied in  time  of  peace  with  any  con- 
duct promoting  their  own  benefit 
which  comes  close  enough  to  the  line 
of  rectitude  to  keep  them  out  of  jail. 
They  may  have  patriotism  which  is 
useful  in  a  great  national  emergency, 
but  at  other  times  they  constitute  a 
menace  to  the  country  which  they  pro- 
fess to  love.  The  man  who  regards 
with  sullen  indifference  the  congested 
life  in  our  great  city,  who  is  content 
to  pleasantly  wrap  himself  in  the  gar- 
ments of  prosperity  and  think  of  his 
fellow  creatures  as  ignorant  and  dis- 
orderly masses  with  whom  he  has 
nothing  in  common,  has  small  right  to 


pride  himself  upon  the  valor  of  his 
Revolutionary  ancestors  or  talk  of  his 
patriotic  devotion  to  his  country.  He 
who  in  ostentatious  parade,  in  idle  in- 
difference to  all  that  makes  for  better 
living,  in  disregard  of  opportunity  to 
serve  his  fellow  men,  turns  a  deaf  ear 
to  the  voice  of  entreaty  which  comes 
from  his  struggling  brother,  does  not 
know  for  what  our  fathers  died  and 
has  yet  to  learn  why  this  Union  should 
be  preserved.  The  man  who  by  the 
inflation  of  values  seeks  to  compel  an 
exaggerated  return  for  public  service, 
does  not  appreciate  the  meaning  of  the 
battle  of  Lexington.  We  want  patri- 
ots in  finance ;  we  want  patriots  in  the 
organization  of  our  corporations ;  we 
want  patriots  in  the  management  of 
our  public  utilities. 

434 


Amrriran  |Ir0gr?HB    in   tlf?   <&r?at 


HONORABLE  THOMAS  M.  CAMPBELL,.  GOVERNOR  OF  TEXAS 


HE  first  settlement  of  Euro- 
peans within  the  bounds 
of  the  territory  now  called 
ll  Texas  was  made  by  Rob- 
ert  Cavelier  Sieur  de  La 
Salle  at  a  point  named  by 
him  Fort  Saint  Louis,  on 
the  Lavaca  river  near  Matagorda  bay, 
in  the  year  1685.  Tnis>  the  cradle  of 
European  civilization,  was  also  the 
grave  of  the  first  settlement.  Yet  its 
brief  existence  was  sufficient  to  alarm 
the  jealous  Spaniard,  who  also 
claimed  Texas,  and  to  cause  him  to 
attempt  the  settlement  of  this  region. 
In  1689  and  1690,  expeditions  pene- 
tiated  from  Northern  Mexico  far  into 
the  interior  of  Texas,  and  the  second 
expedition  left  behind  it  a  small  es- 
tablishment, near  the  Trinity  river,  in 
Eastern  Texas,  called  Mision  de  los 
Tejas.  This  settlement  was  almost  as 
short-lived  as  that  at  Fort  Saint 
Louis;  its  results  were  the  origin  of 
the  name  Texas  and  renewed  attempts 
on  the  part  of  the  padres  to  occupy 
Texas  permanently  to  do  missionary 
work  among  the  docile  tribes.  About 
1715  they  returned,  and  thenceforth 
the  presence  of  Spanish  settlers  in 
Texas  has  been  continuous.  For 
another  century,  however,  this  beauti- 
ful country  with  its  unsurpassed  fer- 
tility of  soil  and  unbounded  natural 
resources  remained  practically  undis- 
turbed ;  the  thralldom  of  the  Spanish 
regime  was  a  blight  to  the  minds  and 
spirits  of  all.  With  the  advent  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  Texas  for  the  first 
time  came  into  the  foreground,  and 
the  role  she  was  destined  to  play  dur- 

435 


ing  the  next  thirty  years  is  phenome- 
nal. "But  her  elevation  was  not  due 
to  internal  development.  It  was  the 
effect  of  external  influences  and  the 
advent  of  another  race  of  men ;  the 
Anglo-American  element  gained  for 
her  a  name  in  the  history  of  the  New 
World." 

After  winning  her  independence 
from  Mexico  and  successfully  main- 
taining the  same  for  ten  years,  Texas 
was  admitted  to  the  American  Union 
on  December  29,  1845.  ^n  tne  terms 
of  annexation,  Texas  reserved  the 
ownership  of  her  public  lands.  Her 
public  domain  has  since  enabled  her  to 
pay  off  her  public  debt,  to  endow  her 
educational  and  eleemosynary  institu- 
tions, to  attract  immigration,  and  to 
promote  the  building  of  many  miles 
of  railroads.  The  total  population  in 
1847  was  142,000;  her  present  popu- 
lation is  twenty-five  times  thatf  num- 
ber, or  about  3,600,000;  yet  there  are 
less  than  eleven  persons  to  the  square 
mile.  Of  this  total  population  "all 
but  650,000  live  on  farms  and  in 
small  villages.  Eighty  per  cent  of  the 
values  produced  in  Texas  annually 
come  direct  from  the  farms,  while 
ninety  per  cent  relate  to  this  source 
directly  or  indirectly." 

Texas  is  receiving  a  large  number 
of  new  settlers.  The  great  majority 
of  them  are  from  the  wheat-growing 
states  of  the  Union.  Some  immigra- 
tion from  Europe  (German,  Bohe- 
mian, etc.),  and  from  Mexico  also 
flows  in  this  direction.  The  greater 
portion  of  this  addition  to  our  popula- 
tion finds  lodgment  directly  upon  the 


from 


fag  (Snuernnr  (Eamphell 


farm.  The  effects  of  immigration 
upon  the  citizenship  of  the  state  is 
imperceptible. 

While  not  forbidden  by  law,  cor- 
poral punishment  is  rarely  resorted  to 
in  our  public  schools.  The  same  can 
be  said  of  capital  punishment  as  dealt 
out  by  our  courts  of  justice.  The 
state  has  not  abolished  capital  punish- 
ment, and  it  is  invoked  in  extreme 
cases.  The  governor  has  the  consti- 
tutional power  to  commute  death  sen- 
tences. 

Texas  is  enjoying  a  season  of  pros- 
perity never  before  equaled  in  our  his- 
tory. It  would  be  too  tedious  to  at- 
tempt an  exhaustive  enumeration  of 
the  various  lines  of  progress.  Suffice 
it  to  say  that  the  farmer  is  enjoying  a 
goodly  portion  of  present  prosperity. 
Naturally,  all  associated  with  him  are 
reaping  a  portion  of  the  benefits. 
Banks  are  growing  in  number,  capi- 
tal, and  deposits;  railroads  are  ex- 
tending their  lines  and  adding  to  their 
rolling  stock;  manufactories  of  vari- 
ous kinds  are  springing  up  and  farms 
are  being  pushed  into  areas  that  have 
never  before  felt  the  civilizing  influ- 
ences of  the  plow. 

Progress  in  the  field  of  literature, 
arts  and  science  is  more  difficult  to  de- 
fine. Here  activity  is  not  subject  to 
geographical  areas  or  limited  by  nat- 
ural boundaries.  Therefore,  it  is  not 
surprising  to  find  the  sons  of  Texas 
members  of  the  faculties  of  the  prin- 
cipal universities  of  the  land.  Works 
of  Texan  artists  adorn  the  principal 
galleries  of  art  in  Europe  and  Amer- 


ica. Texan  scientists  and  engineers 
are  found  the  world  over.  In  busi- 
ness Texans  are  found  among  the 
leading  factors  in  the  trade  centers  of 
our  country.  As  politicians  and 
men  her  sons  command  respect  in 
counsels  where  wisdom  has  weight 
and  the  public  welfare  is  the  rule  of 
conduct.  As  soldiers,  the  descend- 
ants of  the  brave  defenders  of  the 
Alamo  have  not  suffered  their  reputa- 
tion for  gallant  courage  to  be  tar- 
nished either  in  the  Mexican  War; 
Civil  War,  or  the  late  war  with  Spain. 

The  greatest  need  of  Texas  to-day, 
as  well  as  of  the  nation,  to  conserve 
the  blessings  enjoyed,  is  the  presence 
of  an  honest  and  enlightened  citizen- 
ship— a  citizenship  that  feels  its  re- 
sponsibilities and  maintains  a  public 
sentiment  that  will  make  the  perform- 
ance of  duty  and  the  enforcement  of 
law  speedy  and  natural. 

There  is  much  in  the  past  history 
of  Texas  that  is  powerful  for  good  in 
accomplishing  this  end,  Every  child 
that  attends  the  public  schools  of 
Texas  is  directly  indebted  to  and  bene- 
fitted  by  the  unselfish  and  far-sight- 
ed statesmanship  of  the  founders  of 
the  Republic.  Patriotism  is  not,  and 
will  not  decrease  so  long  as  the  stir- 
ring deeds  of  our  forefathers  are  re- 
counted. The  teaching  of  Texas  his- 
tory in  the  public  schools  is  required 
by  law. 

The  future  portends  a  broader  love 
of  humanity,  a  deeper  public  philan- 
thropy, and  the  most  wonderful  prog- 
ress in  the  essentials  of  an  ideal  civ- 
ilization the  world  has  ever  witnessed. 


THE  MmLENIUM   OF  AMERICAN  CITIZENSHIP 

BY 

HONORABLE  CURTIS  GUILD,  JR.,   GOTERNOR  OF  MASSACHUSETTS 


The  ideal  citizenship,  the  ideal  com- 
monwealth, cannot  be  built  by  educa- 
tional laws  alone.  The  millennium 
of  American  citizenship  will  only 
come  when  an  aroused  public  con- 
science had  educated  the  educated. 

There  must  be  something  more  than 
the  education  as  taught  in  the  schools. 


The  press,  the  pulpit,  and  above  all, 
the  home,  must  furnish  supplementary 
education,  not  of  the  hand  nor  of  the 
brain,  but  of  the  soul  and  of  the  con- 
science, without  which  educated 
brain  and  hand  may  be  even  more 
dangerous  to  society  than  unintelli- 
gent ignorance. 


Sowtdlraa   Strips  0f   tlj?    Ammratt    Jntmor 


BT 


HONORABLE  GEORGE  L.  SHELDON.  GOVERNOR  OF  NEBRASKA 


first  permanent  settle- 
ment  in  Nebraska  was  at 
Bellevue,  on  the  Missouri 
ll  river,  eight  miles  below 
Omaha,  about  the  year 
1810.  It  was  a  fur  trad- 
ing post  in  charge  of  a 
Frenchman  from  St.  Louis  and  was 
for  many  years  the  rendezvous  of 
white  explorers;  Catlin,  Prince  Maxi- 
milian and  John  C.  Fremont  found 
hospitable  shelter  there. 

The  presence  of  white  men  upon 
Nebraska's  plains  dates  back  forty-six 
years  before  the  first  English  settle- 
ment at  Jamestown.  Francis  Vas- 
ques  Coronado,  a  Spanish  knight, 
with  seventy  horsemen,  in  the  summer 
of  1541  made  the  long  march  across 
the  plains  from  the  valley  of  the  Rio 
Grande  to  the  kingdom  of  Quivira  in 
Kansas  and  Nebraska,  reaching  the 
fortieth  degree  of  latitude  according 
to  their  observations  and  record. 
This  Spanish  army  found  a  soil  "very 
fat  and  black,  with  abundance  of 
plums  and  nuts  and  very  good,  sweet 
grapes  and  mulberries,"  but  three 
hundred  years  more  were  required 
before  the  people  were  ready  to  accept 
the  truth  of  this  early  Spanish  story 
and  make  homes  upon  the  rich  prai- 
ries of  Nebraska. 

The  earliest  record  of  French  ex- 
ploration of  Nebraska  is  about  1/05, 
when  a  trapper  named  Laurain  came 
down  the  Missouri  with  two  canoes 
loaded  with  furs.  The  first  men  to 
thoroughly  explore  Nebraska  were 
the  Mallet  brothers,  Frenchmen,  who, 
in  1739-40,  wintered  with  the  Pawnee 
Indians  and  journeyed  the  entire 
length  of  the  Platte  Valley. 

437 


In  1803,  Nebraska  became  a  part  of 
the  United  States  and  in  1804  the  first 
council  between  the  United  States  and 
the  Indian  tribes  of  the  Louisiana 
Purchase  was  held  by  Lewis  and 
Clark  at  what  is  now  the  village  of 
Fort  Calhoun,  eighteen  miles  north  of 
Omaha.  The  site  of  the  council  is  now 
marked  with  a  large  glacial  boulder 
with  the  dates  "1804-1904"  cut  there- 
on. The  steam  navigation  of  Nebraska 
waters  dates  from  the  year  1819  when 
the  steamboat  "Western  Engineer"  ar- 
rived near  the  present  city  of  Omaha 
with  the  scientific  expedition  of  Major 
Long.  The  first  wagon  trail  across 
the  state  was  made  in  1832-34  by  Cap- 
tain Bonneville  and  Wyeth.  This 
afterward  became  the  "Oregon  Trail," 
ever  which  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
people  and  wagons  passed  in  the 
thirty  years  following.  It  may  yet  be 
traced  in  some  places  to-day. 

The  first  mention  of  the  name  "Ne- 
braska," as  applied  to  this  region  is  in 
the  report  of  Secretary  of  War  Wil- 
kins,  November  30,  1844.  The  first 
bill  to  organize  the  territory  of  Ne- 
braska was  introduced  by  Stephen  A. 
Douglas  of  Illinois  in  the  House  of 
Representatives,  December  17,  1844. 
Nebraska  became  a  territory  May  30, 
1854,  and  a  state  March  i,  1867. 

The  present  population  of  the  state 
is  about  1,250.000,  the  majority  of 
whom  gain  a  living  directly  from  the 
"fat,  black  soil"  seen  by  the  Spaniards 
almost  four  hundred  years  ago,  either 
by  farming,  fruit  growing  or  cattle 
raising. 

A  large  part  of  the  recent  immigra- 
tion to  this  state  has  been  from 
farmers  in  states  east  of  us  who  have 


frnm  -NVbraaka  bg  (Snwrttnr 


sold  their  lands  at  a  high  price  and 
bought  better  land  in  Nebraska. 
There  is  still  room  for  more  of  these 
under  "intensive  farming  now  being 
introduced.  There  are  large  colonies 
of  Germans,  Swedes,  Bohemians,  Hol- 
anders,  Russians,  Poles  and  Irish  lo- 
cated in  various  Nebraska  counties. 
Most  of  them  are  engaged  in  farming, 
are  very  prosperous  and  are  among 
our  most  desirable  citizens.  The  chil- 
dren of  these  immigrants  from  the 
old  world  seek  eagerly  the  best  educa- 
tion the  state  can  give,  take  active 
part  in  all  the  social  movements  and 
are  thoroughly  American  in  spirit. 

Nebraska  has  the  lowest  percentage 
of  illiteracy  of  any  state  in  the  Union 
and  corporal  punishment  has  become 
practically  unknown  in  our  schools. 
The  children  of  Nebraska  learn 
willingly  and  without  force.  The 
law  of  Nebraska  still  permits  capital 
punishment  for  murder,  although 
every  recent  session  of  the  legislature 
has  witnessed  a  vigorous  effort  to  re- 
peal the  law.  At  present,  capital  pun- 
ishment can  take  place  only  in  the 
state  penitentiary  and  in  the  presence 
of  a  limited  number  of  people.  Two 
persons  have  been  thus  executed. 

The  greatest  material  progress  now 
being  made  in  this  state  is  in  the  direc- 
tion of  scientific  farming  and  agricul- 


tural education.  Farm  life  is  being 
made  attractive  by  telephone  lines  and 
rural  free  delivery  which  brings  the 
farmer  into  contact  daily  and  hourly 
with  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  great- 
est political  progress  is  being  made  in 
the  direction  of  public  control  of  cor- 
porations and  democratization  of  gov- 
ernment through  the  direct  primary. 
The  past  ten  years  have  been  years  of 
great  prosperity  to  the  farmer  and  all 
other  classes  have  shared  in  his  abun- 
dance. 

Nebraska's  greatest  need  is  the  firm 
and  popular  establishment  of  a  merit 
system  of  unselfishness,  inventive  de- 
votion to  duty  in  all  branches  of  the 
public  service,  both  state  and  local. 
The  greatest  need  of  America  is  Ne- 
braska's greatest  need  multiplied  by 
forty-eight. 

Patriotism  is  growing.  It  is  no 
longer  expressed  by  the  ambition  to 
kill  other  human  beings.  It  means 
the  courage  to  face  opposition  in  be- 
half of  honest  government,  better 
ideals  of  citizenship,  better  distribu- 
tion of  social  blessings  and  a  wider 
and  warmer  fraternity  between  men. 
The  future  of  America  is  the  promise 
of  a  spread  of  democracy  throughout 
all  the  nations  of  the  world  and  for 
union  in  a  world's  federation  of  peace 
and  progress. 


THE  RISE   OF  THE  BOUNTEOUS   SOUTH 

EXCERPT    FROM 

HONORABLE  CLAUDE  A,  SWANSON,  GOVERNOR  OF  VIRGINIA 


In  three  centuries  the  one  hundred 
and  five  colonists  who  settled  at 
Jamestown  in  1607  have  grown  into 
almost  as  many  millions.  From  petty 
and  despised  dependants,  vainly  peti- 
tioning parliament  and  kings  we  have 
become  a  great  power,  most  potential 
in  the  affairs  of  the  world,  courted 
and  respected  by  all.  We  have  be- 
come strong  enough  to  announce  and 
maintain  the  great  Monroe  doctrine, 
which  extends  our  protection  to  the 
Western  Hemisphere  and  defends  it 
from  foreign  aggression  and  con- 


quest. When  this  colony  was  planted 
here  Spain  ruled  with  an  iron  hand 
more  than  half  the  world.  But  a  few 
years  ago  this  nation,  which  grew 
from  this  small  beginning,  drove 
Spain  from  the  Western  world  and 
destroyed  her  colonial  empire.  The 
history  of  this  nation  from  Jamestown 
to  the  walls  of  Pekin  in  China  indi- 
cate an  heroic  achievement,  a  growth 
in  greatness  and  power,  unexcelled. 
From  suffering  and  poverty  we  have 
grown  to  comfort  and  wealth.  Our 
wealth  to-day  is  greater  than  that  of 
any  other  nation. 

438 


Ammran  Spirit  in  %  UJwatHatppt 


HV 


HONORABLE  JOSEPH  W.  FOLK,  GOVERNOR  OF  MISSOURI 


E  oldest  settlement  in 
Missouri  is  the  town  of 
Ste.  Genevieve,  which 
il  was  founded  in  1735.  At 
an  earlier  date  (1719) 
the  French  established 
Fort  Orleans,  on  the  Mis- 
souri river  above  the  mouth  of  the 
Osage,  but  this  place  was  afterwards 
destroyed  by  the  Indians.  Daniel 
Boone  was  the  first  American  to  come 
to  Missouri,  he  having  emigrated  to 
this  state  from  Kentucky  in  1795. 
There  were  no  American  settlements 
in  the  territory  prior  to  the  Revolution- 
ary War,  and  the  American  migration 
did  not  begin  until  after  that  war ;  but 
the  French  and  Spanish,  before  the 
American  advent,  bad  established 
missions  at  New  Madrid,  Ste.  Gene- 
vieve and  St.  Louis.  Missouri  was 
admitted  into  the  Union  August  10, 
1821. 

The  present  population  of  Missouri 
is  conservatively  estimated  at  four 
millions. 

The  chief  occupations  of  the  people 
are  manufacturing,  mining  and  agri- 
culture. 

Foreign  immigration  into  Missouri 
is  estimated  at  about  fourteen  thou- 
sand per  year.  They  are  chiefly  Ger- 
mans, Irish,  Greeks,  Italians,  Austri- 
ans  and  Swiss,  in  the  order  named. 
The  Greeks  and  Italians  usually  be- 
come day  laborers ;  the  Irish  and  Ger- 
mans enter  the  trades  and  professions ; 
the  Austrians  are  about  equally  divid- 
ed between  the  trades  and  day  labor, 
and  the  Swiss  engage  chiefly  in  dairy- 
ing and  cheese-making.  They  exert 
no  appreciable  effect  upon  the  general 
character  of  our  citizenship. 

439 


Corporal  punishment  is  practiced  in 
cur  schools,  but  the  practice  is  not  so 
general  as  it  formerly  was.  and  is 
steadily  diminishing. 

Capital  punishment  is  practiced  in 
Missouri,  but  the  last  regular  session 
of  the  legislature  passed  a  law  giv- 
ing to  the  trial  juries  in  murder 
cases  the  option  as  to  whether  the 
death  penalty  or  life  imprisonment 
shall  be  imposed  in  cases  of  murder 
in  the  first  degree. 

Missouri  is  progressing  rapidly, 
and  in  about  the  same  proportion,  in 
poultry  and  stock  raising,  manufac- 
turing and  mining,  the  mining  inter- 
ests alone  being  now  valued  at  about 
thirty-five  millions.  The  state  is 
more  prosperous  than  ever  before  in 
its  history. 

Missouri  claims  Mark  Twain,  Eu- 
gene Field  and  Winston  Churchill  as 
part  of  her  contribution  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  nation.  In  journalism 
she  has  produced  George  Horace 
Lorimer,  editor  Saturday  Evening 
Post;  Joseph  Pulitzer  of  the  Neiv 
York  World  and  St.  Louis  Post-Dis- 
patch; the  late  Joseph  B.  McCullough, 
formerly  editor  of  the  St.  Louis 
Globe-Democrat,  who  invented  the 
newspaper  interview,  and  also  one  of 
the  owners  of  Puck. 

To  art  Missouri  has  given  George 
C.  Bingham  and  his  famous  painting, 
"Order  Number  Eleven." 

To  science  Missouri  has  contribu- 
ted Dr.  T.  J.  J.  See,  discoverer  of  the 
binary  stars,  and  one  of  the  world's 
greatest  astronomers;  Dr.  Jackson, 
who  established  the  first  railway  hos- 
pital system  in  the  world ;  Dr.  Beverly 
Gallaway,  who  discovered  the  process 


from   HJtsanurt  bg   (Srwernnr   Jfalk 


of  immunizing  Northern  cattle  from 
"Texas  Fever;"  Eads,  the  builder  of 
the  famous  Eads  bridge  at  St.  Louis, 
and  Henry  Johnson,  builder  of  the 
Galveston  sea-wall. 

Missouri  has  given  to  the  Union 
many  prominent  business  men,  among 
them  Benjamin  F.  Winchell,  the  pres- 
ent head  of  the  Rock  Island  railway 
system;  Henry  Miller,  general  man- 
ager of  the  Wabash  railway  system; 
A.  D.  Brown,  one  of  the  leading  shoe 
manufacturers  of  the  world;  N.  O. 
Nelson,  one  of  the  nation's  most 
piominent  iron  manufacturers,  and 
Adolphus  Busch,  who  has  built  up  in 
St.  Louis  the  largest  establishment  of 
its  kind  in  the  world. 

Many  of  the  country's  greatest 
statesmen  have  been  Missourians, 
among  them  Senator  Thomas  H.  Ben- 
ton,  "Old  Bullion;"  B.  Granz  Brown, 
a  former  governor  of  the  state,  who 
was  prominent  in  national  politics ; 
Senator  Frank  P.  Blair,  Senator 
George  G.  West,  Carl  Schurtz,  who 
was  a  United  States  senator  from  the 
state ;  Richard  P.  Bland,  father  of  the 
"free  silver"  issue  in  American  poli- 


tics ;  President  Ulysses  S.  Grant ;  for- 
mer Senator  Cockrell,  who  is  now  a 
member  of  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission;  William  T.  Harris,  for- 
merly United  States  Commissioner  of 
Education.  Missouri  has  also  given 
to  the  Union  four  cabinet  ministers: 
Edward  Bates,  who  was  one  of  Lin- 
coln's attorney-generals;  D.  R.  Fran- 
cis, John  W.  Noble  and  E.  A.  Hitch- 
cock, all  of  whom  served  in  the  office 
of  Secretary  of  the  Interior.  Among 
Missourians  known  to  fame  for  their 
military  genius  may  be  mentioned 
General  Sterling  Price,  General  Jos- 
eph Shelby,  General  A.  W.  Doniphan 
and  General  Stephen  W.  Kearney. 

Missouri's  greatest  material  needs 
to-day  are  better  country  roads,  im- 
provement of  the  Mississippi  and  Mis- 
souri rivers  and  more  railroads. 
Fruit-growers  and  dairymen  are  need- 
ed for  the  Ozark  region. 

America's  greatest  need  to-day  is 
the  removal  of  all  unnecessary  restric- 
tions upon  trade  and  the  attendant 
expansion  of  industrial  opportunity 
and  a  strict  enforcement  of  the  laws. 

There  are  now  signs  of  a  revival  of 
patriotism  throughout  the  country. 


TRADE   OF  A  MULATTO  BOY  IN   1765 

Accurate  Transcript  of  Original  Document  in  Possession  cf 
MARY  R.  WOODRUFF,  Orange,  Connecticut 

Know  all  men  by  these  presents  that  I  Zachariah  Thomlinson,  of  Stratford  in  the 
County  of  fairfield  and  Colony  of  Connecticut  innevvengland,  for  the  Consideration 
of  eight  barrils  of  good  merchantable  pork  allready  in  hand  Reed  of  Joseph  Wood- 
ruff of  Milford  which  is  to  my  full  satisfaction  and  contentment,  Do  relinquish, 
release  and  pass  over  unto  him  the  Sd  Joseph  Woodruff  and  to  his  heirs  and  assigns 
forever,  all  my  right,  title  and  Interest  in,  and  unto  the  Servitude  of  one  Certain 
malatto  boy  namedj  ob,  aged  nine  years,  born  of  an  Indian  woman  named  Nab,  to 
have  and  to  hold  Sd  Malatto  boy  free  and  clear  from  all  Claims  and  Demands  made 
by  me  or  my  heirs  and  further  I  the  Sd  Zachah  Thomlinson  Do  for  my  Self  and  my  heirs 
Covenant  with  him  the  Sd  Jos.  Woodruff  and  his  heirs  that  he  and  they  Shall 
Quietly  and  peaceably  possess  and  enjoy  Said  Malatto  boy  Job  without  the  Least 
Interruption  or  molestation  from  by  or  under  me  or  my  heirs  forever.  In  witness 
whereof  I  have  hereunto  Set  my  hand  and  Ssal,  this  zist  Day  of  May  Anno  Dom. 
1765.  Signed,  sealed  and  Delivered 
In  presence  of 

ABNKR  JUDSON  (Signed)   ZACH:  TOMLINSON. 

WILLIAM  PIXLEK 


An  Ammratt'0  lExprnrnr*    in 

Irtttaly  Anmj 


fflannurript  of  (Kolonrl  &trptpn  3anris.  Surti  in  1750. 

Sruraluui    ihr    Cifr    of    tb.r    Eottaliata    who 

to  aUnounr*  tb.ftr  AUrgtanrr  to  in.*  ICtng  anil 

to  &aur  iljr  UJratrrn  Continrnt  to    thr  Srttiah.    Emjrtr* 

ORIGINAL  MANUSCRIPT  NOW  IN  POSSESSION  OF 

HONORABLE    CHARLES    MAPLES    JARVIS 

DESCENDANT  or  COLONEL  JABVIS  AND  MEMBBII  OF  MANY  AMERICAN  LEARNED  AMD  PATRIOTIC  SOCIETIES 


HIS  remarkable  manuscript, 
recently  rescued  from  ob- 
livion,  is  undoubtedly  the 
ll  most  important  documen- 
tary  evidence  of  its  kind 
in  existence.  In  it  is  re- 
vealed the  tragedy  of  an 
American  who  for  the  sake  of  family 
and  principle  took  up  arms  against  his 
fellow  Americans  an^  met  them  in 
deadly  conflict  on  the  firing  line.  It 
is  the  story  of  a  man  who  withstood 
the  rebuffs,  taunts,  and  insults  of  his 
closest  friends,  who  suffered  terrible 
privations,  jeopardized  his  life,  and 
was  finally  driven  from  his  home  to 
seek  refuge  on  British  soil.  Withal 
it  is  one  of  the  most  intense  stories  of 
patriotism,  of  fidelity  to  family  and 
loyalty  to  the  Mother  Country. 

When  the  Americans,  through  their 
misunderstandings  and  differences 
with  Great  Britain,  proposed  the 
stroke  for  Independence  there  were 
many  conservative  and  influential 
men  who  considered  the  action 
too  radical.  They  looked  upon  Eng- 
land as  their  homeland;  their  blood 
was  British  and  there  was  a  filial  love 
for  the  British  Empire.  While  they 
were  willing  to  join  in  urgent  ap- 
peal to  the  crown  and  to  respectfully 
demand  redress  for  existing  griev- 


ances, they  were  unwilling  to  become 
a  party  to  the  proposed  Declaration  of 
Independence  and  stoutly  refused  to 
join  any  revolutionary  movement. 
These  loyalists  came  from  every  rank 
in  society,  and  "being  actuated  by 
conscientious  motives,  command  our 
thorough  respect." 

When  the  Revolutionists  began  to 
arm  themselves  for  the  Great  Strug- 
gle many  of  these  conservatives 
offered  their  services  to  the  King,  re- 
mained loyal  through  the  conflict,  and 
"suffered  severely  in  exile  when  the 
contest  was  ended." 

This  ancient  manuscript,  now 
almost  illegible,  is  written  by  one  of 
them.  It  uncovers  many  secrets.  It 
reveals  the  contentions,  despairs  and 
almost  insufferable  hardships  of  the 
defenders  of  the  crown.  It  passes 
the  scouting  line,  penetrates  the  ranks 
of  the  red-coats  and  takes  one  into  the 
heart  of  the  British  Army.  It  is  a 
revelation  of  the  life  of  the  men  who 
fought  and  died  for  the  King  in  try- 
ing to  save  the  Western  Continent  to 
the  British  Empire. 

The  writer  of  this  remarkable  man- 
uscript is  one  Stephen  Jarvis.  He 
was  born  November  6,  1756,  in 
Danbury,  Connecticut,  and  died  in 
Toronto,  Canada,  in  1840,  at  the  age 
of  eighty-four  years. 


iEmwarript  nf  Gtahmri  SartriB — Unnt  in  IHifi 

Relating  the  remarkable  experiences  as  a  recruit  in  the  lines  of 
the  British  army — Accurate  transcript  from  the  original  manuscript 
which  was  lost  for  many  years  and  has  been  recently  recovered 


,Y  father  was  one  of 
those  persons  called 
lorries.  He  lived  in 
the  Colony  of  Con- 
necticut, his  disposi- 
tion was  more  for 
making  a  comfortable 
living  for  his  family  than  giving 
his  children  a  liberal  education.  My 
advantages  were  thereby  confined  to 
what  was  necessary  for  a  farmer, 
which  I  followed  until  I  was  at  the 
Age  of  Eighteen  years,  when  hostili- 
ties commenced  between  Great  Britain 
and  her  Colonies. 

It  cannot  be  expected  that  I  should 
give  a  minute  detail  of  every  circum- 
stance of  my  eventful  life,  as  I  kept 
no  regular  journal,  and  have  to  re- 
fresh my  memory  from  public  docu- 
ments for  the  last  fifty  years. 

Son  of  a  Loyalist  in  Ranks 

of  the  American  Revolutionists 

Some  time  in  the  month  of  April, 
I775>  when  the  first  blood  was  shed  at 
Lexington,  I  became  acquainted  with 
a  Lady  to  whom  I  paid  my  address, 
and  who  I  afterwards  married;  this 
attachment  was  disapproved  of  by  my 
father,  who  carried  his  displeasure  to 
great  lengths,  and  I  was  under  the 
necessity  of  visiting  the  Lady  only  by 
stealth.  Soon  after  the  Battle  of 
Bunker  Hill,  and  about  the  time  that 
the  British  Army  Evacuated  Boston, 
there  was  a  draft  of  the  Militia  of 
Connecticut  to  garrison  New  York, 
and  I  was  drafted  as  one;  my  father 
would  readily  have  got  a  substitute 
for  me,  but  as  he  had  so  strenuously 
opposed  my  suit,  I  was  obstinate  and 
declared  my  intentions  of  going  as  a 
soldier, — for  this  declaration  he  took 
me  by  the  arm  and  thrust  me  out  of 
the  door;  during  the  evening,  how- 
ever, I  went  to  my  room  and  went  to 
bed.  The  next  day  was  Sunday  and 
I  kept  out  of  sight,  the  next  morning 


we  were  to  march,  a  Brother  of  my 
Mother  was  the  officer  commanding. 
On  leaving  the  house  I  passed  my 
father  and  wished  him  "good-bye," 
he  made  me  no  reply,  and  I  passed  on 
to  the  house  of  my  uncle,  the  place  of 
rendezvous,  but  before  the  Troops 
marched  my  father  so  far  relented  as 
to  come  to  me  and  after  giving  me  a 
severe  reproof,  ordered  me  a  horse  to 
ride,  gave  me  some  money,  and  I  set 
off.  We  arrived  in  New  York  the 
next  day,  and  my  uncle  took  up  his 
quarters  at  Peck  Slip,  and  took  me 
into  his  house.  He  had  a  son  with 
him,  a  little  younger  than  myself,  with 
whom  I  spent  my  time  very  agreea- 
ble. 

Repents  when  He  Sees  Father's 
Displeasure  and  Joins  British 

During  my  short  stay  in  New 
York,  which  was  only  about  a  fort- 
night,— during  that  time,  however, 
the  Americans  broke  ground  on  Gov- 
ernor's Island.  My  uncle  was  one  of 
the  officers  for  that  duty.  The  Brit- 
ish Man  of  War  (the  Asia)  was  lying 
off  Staten  Island  at  the  time,  and  I 
had  an  inclination  to  get  on  board  of 
her;  I,  therefore,  went  to  the  Island 
with  my  uncle  and  remained  there  all 
night,  and  part  of  the  next  day,  when 
we  were  relieved  by  another  party, 
and  returned  to  the  City.  Having 
had  no  rest  during  the  night,  I  lay 
down  and  went  to  sleep.  I  was  awoke 
by  my  Cousin;  the  streets  were  filled 
with  soldiers,  part  of  the  American 
Army  from  Boston.  The  next  morn- 
ing the  Militia  was  dismissed,  and  I 
returned  to  my  family;  I  represented 
to  my  father  that  I  was  very  sinable, 
that  I  had  done  wrong  in  espousing  a 
Cause  so  repugnant  to  his  feelings, 
and  contrary  to  my  own  opinion  also. 
Asked  his  forgiveness,  and  went  even 
so  far  as  to  promise  that  I  would  give 
up  my  suit  with  Miss  Glover,  for  that 

44» 


An  Ammran's  Experonr*  tn 


tBfy  Anttg 


was  the  Lady's  name.  On  this  prom- 
ise, I  was  again  taken  into  favor — but 
I  only  kept  this  promise  but  for  a  few 
days, — as  soon  as  I  had  replenished 
my  wardrobe,  I  immediately  set  off  to 
visit  Miss  Glover,  and  before  we  part- 
ed, we  renewed  our  vows  of  love  and 
constancy.  My  reception  the  next 
morning  was  everything  but  pleasant. 
I  continued,  however,  to  visit  her  as 
often  as  I  could.  After  the  British 
Army  had  taken  New  York,  the  Mili- 
tia was  again  called  out,  and  I  was 
again  drafted,  but  I  refused  to  serve ; 
about  this  time  three  Torries  who  had 
been  confined  in  Symsbury  Mines, 
had  made  their  escape,  and  was,  by 
the  assistance  of  the  Loyalists,  inabled 
to  join  the  British  Army; — many  of 
the  Loyalists  also  joined  them  and 
went  with  them,  and  among  the  rest 
myself,  and  this  with  the  consent  of 
my  father,  as  I  had  been  instrumental 
in  making  provision  for  the  three  men 
who  had  escaped  from  Prison. 

Recruiting  American  Soldiers 
for  Service  in  England's  Army 

I  left  Danbury  in  the  middle  of  the 
day,  armed  Capa-pie  under  pretense 
of  joining  the  Americans  then  lying 
at  Horse  Neck, — and  went  forward  to 
make  provision  for  those  who  were 
to  follow  me  at  night.  I  passed  on  as 
far  as  Norwalk,  where  I  was  directed 
to  call  on  certain  persons,  Loyalists, 
for  advice  and  assistance  in  executing 
our  plan.  The  first  one  I  called  upon 
informed  me  "that  our  plans  were  dis- 
covered, that  the  whole  coast  was 
guarded,  and  that  if  we  proceeded  we 
would  all  be  taken  prisoners,  and  ad- 
vised me  by  all  means  to  return  home 
again  with  the  best  excuse  I  could 
make  for  doing  so."  I  took  his  ad- 
vice, and  after  refreshing  myself  and 
horse,  I  retraced  my  steps  to  Wilton, 

and  called  on  a  Mr.  B s,  his  house 

was  the  place  of  rendezvous  for  the 
whole  party; — I  had  a  wish  to  see 
what  reception  I  would  meet  with  as 
an  American  soldier.  I,  therefore, 
feigned  myself  much  hurt  from  the 

443 


fall  of  my  horse,  told  him  a  long  cock 
and  bull  story  of  my  going  to  join  the 
American  Army,  and  said  everything 
to  excite  his  compassion,  and  to  be 
allowed  to  sleep  by  his  fire  during  the 
night;  this  he  refused,  but  offered  to 
assist  me  to  the  Public  House,  where 
I  could  be  comfortably  provided  for ; 
— finding  nothing  would  prevail,  I 
then  asked  him  if  his  name  was  not 
B s.  He  with  some  surprise,  an- 
swered "Yes  and  what  then,"  his  wife 
and  two  fine  daughters  who  were  sit- 
ting in  the  room  viewed  each  other 
with  much  uneasiness.  I  desired  to 
speak  to  Mr.  B.  in  private.  We 
walked  into  another  room;  I  asked 
him  if  he  knew  Mr.  J of  Dan- 
bury,  and  he  replied,  "that  he  did." 
I  told  him  I  was  his  son,  com- 
municated to  him  the  commission  I 
was  entrusted  with,  gave  him  the  in- 
formation I  had  received  at  Norwalk 
— and  the  necessity  there  was  for  find- 
ing a  place  of  safety  for  the  three 
men.  One  of  them  was  a  Mr.  Mc- 
Neal.  The  other  persons  names  I 
have  forgot.  Mr.  B.  then  took  me  by 
the  hand,  introduced  me  to  his  wife 
and  daughters,  ordered  refreshments 
to  be  got  ready  as  soon  as  possible, 
for  that  I  was  very  tired  and  hungry. 
My  lameness  was  set  aside  for  the 
night  and  he  set  about  preparing  a 
hiding  place  for  the  three  men  and 
getting  sustenance  for  their  support. 
I  then  suggested  the  necessity  of  as 
many  of  us  as  possibly  could,  should 
reach  home  before  daylight,  gave  him 
the  countersign,  whereby  he  could 
make  himself  known  if  he  met  any  of 
our  party,  and  turn  them  back ;  sent  a 
message  to  my  father  in  what  manner 
I  should  return  the  next  day.  He  set 
off  and  after  proceeding  a  few  miles, 
stopt  in  a  wood  by  the  side  of  the 
road.  He  soon  saw  two  men  ap- 
proaching, gave  the  countersign, 
which  was  answered.  They  were 
two  young  men  from  Danbury,  he  de- 
livered my  message  to  them ;  they  re- 
turned home,  and  he  returned  to  his 
house.  Before  his  return,  however, 


nf  (Enlnttel  Slamis — Inrtt  tn  If5fi 


the  party  had  arrived  to  the  amount 
of  seventy  persons.  A  man  by  the 
name  of  Barnum,  who  had  been  with 
the  British,  and  returned  for  recruits 
conducted  the  party,  he  was  no  way 
discouraged  from  my  information  and 
urged  me  to  proceed  with  them,  this, 
however,  I  declined,  he  however  pre- 
vailed on  Mr.  B.  to  try  and  overtake 
the  two  men  he  had  turned  home- 
wards, but  after  he  had  pursued  them 
near  to  Danbury,  he  was  obliged  to 
return  without  them,  and  he  hardly 
reached  his  home  before  daylight.  I 
met  him  afterwards  a  Major  in  the 
British  Army.  Mr.  Barnum  and  his 
party  pursued  their  route  and  got  safe 
to  the  British. 

Americans  Fleeing  from  being 
Drafted  by  Revolutionists 

The  next  morning,  after  breakfast, 
I  took  leave  of  this  kind  family,  bound 
up  my  knee  in  a  piece  of  old  blanket, 
assumed  my  lameness,  was  helped  on 
my  horse,  and  set  off  for  home.  Many 
questions  were  asked  me  on  my  route, 
and  many  foolish  answers  were  given 
as  to  my  late  disaster.  Suffice  it  to  say 
that  when  I  reached  home  I  found  my 
father  had  received  my  message,  and 
had  a  surgeon,  whom  he  could  trust 
to  attend  me.  I  was  helped  off  my 
horse,  carried  into  the  house,  my  knee 
which  he  declared  to  be  dislocated, 
again  placed  into  the  socket,  the  ban- 
dages filled  with  the  spirits  of  turpen- 
tine, and  in  this  manner  I  walked 
with  crutches  for  ten  days ;  this  lulled 
all  suspicion ;  even  my  mother  was 
deceived,  for  she  had  no  idea  that  my 
intentions  were  that  of  going  to  the 
British. 

For  the  rest  part  of  the  sum- 
mer I  remained  quietly,  until  the  Au- 
tumn, when  I  again  joined  another 
party  of  Loyalists,  and  proceed  to  the 
waterside,  but  the  vessel  which  we 
expected  to  take  us  on  board  not 
arriving,  and  my  father  hearing  of  the 
situation  in  which  I  was  placed,  sent 
a  person  for  me  and  I  returned  home 
the  second  time.  On  my  afrival  I 


found  my  father's  house  filled  with 
American  soldiers,  my  father  intro- 
duced me  to  the  officers  as  returning 
from  a  visit  to  see  my  friends,  and  all 
went  on  very  well,  until  the  first  day 
of  January,  1777 — it  being  New 
Year's  day — I  rose  very  early  in  the 
morning,  and  in  opening  the  door  I 
discovered  a  large  body  of  horsemen 
armed,  with  a  number  of  prisoners, 
and  some  of  them,  those  I  had  a  short 
time  before  left  at  the  Seaside.  I 
must  leave  the  reader  to  judge  of  my 
feelings  for  I  cannot  describe  them. 
I  remained  quiet  during  the  day, 
but  I  was  lead  to  believe  that  I 
should  not  continue  so  during  the 
night,  and  therefore  kept  a  sharp 
lookout ;  I  came  very  nigh  falling  into 
their  hands.  The  day  had  been 
stormy,  both  snow  and  rain,  and  the 
roads  very  sloppy.  I  had  prepared  a 
horse  with  intentions  to  ride  out  of 
town.  I  had  set  down  to  supper, 
when  one  of  the  Committee  of  Safety 
(as  they  were  called)  came  in;  my 
father  urged  him  to  take  supper,  this 
he  declined,  and  after  making  some 
excuse  for  calling,  he  left  the  house. 
I  immediately  got  up  from  the  table, 
went  to  the  door,  the  night  was  very 
dark.  My  brother  had  gone  out  to  do 
an  errand  for  one  of  the  prisoners  and 
as  I  stepped  on  the  threshold  of  the 
door  I  heard  him  call  to  one  of  the 
prisoners.  "Stop"  said  a  person  close 
by  me. 

Tory  Boy  Escapes  on  Horseback 
as  Patriots  Search  Father's  Home 

I  gave  a  spring  and  in  a  moment 
I  was  on  horseback  in  full  speed 
down  the  street.  I  made  a  halt  at  a 
friend's  house  for  a  few  moments, 
when  my  sister  with  another  young 
lady  came  in,  saying  "Brother,  the 
soldiers  are  searching  the  house  for 
you."  I  immediately  set  off  again 
and  took  shelter  in  a  house  where 
there  was  two  British  prisoners  of 
War.  One  part  of  the  house  was 
occupied  by  soldiers  from  the  East- 
ward going  to  join  the  Army  of  the 


An  Ammran'fi  £xp?ranr*  in  ify?  SrittBlj  Armg 


Americans,  then  lying  near  White 
Plains.  I  remained  in  the  quarters 
of  the  British  prisoners  until  the  sol- 
diers were  asleep.  I  was  then  con- 
veyed to  a  small  room  in  the  garret 
with  some  provisions  for  the  twenty- 
four  hours.  Here  I  remained  until 
the  next  evening,  when  I  met  my 
father  in  the  field  back  of  the  town. 
He  had  a  shift  of  clothes  for  me  and 
some  money — here  we  parted,  and  I 
set  off  for  the  house  of  a  Brother-in- 
law  of  Miss  Glover  who  was  a  Loyal- 
ist, and  where  I  knew  I  should  find 
safe  quarters.  The  late  rain  had 
flooded  the  banks  of  the  Rivers,  and 
had  overflowed  the  road  in  two  places, 
so  that  I  was  obliged  to  wade  to  my 
hips  in  water.  The  weather  very 
cold,  my  clothes  became  very  stiff 
with  ice.  I  could  with  difficulty 
travel ;  I  however  made  out  to  reach 
a  friend's  house,  about  five  miles  from 
my  father's;  Here  again  I  was  en- 
countered with  another  band  of  sol- 
diers (strangers).  I  pretended  as 
coming  from  the  next  house,  and 
crossing  a  small  stream  on  a  log  had 
tumbled  into  the  water,  and  begged 
my  friend  to  give  me  a  shift  of 
clothes. 

I  was  taken  into  a  small  room, 
where  there  was  a  good  fire,  dried 
my  clothes,  got  some  refreshment, 
and  after  the  soldiers  had  got 
asleep,  a  young  man  of  the  house  con- 
veyed me  to  the  stable,  took  a  horse 
and  carried  me  five  miles  farther,  to 
the  house  of  Mr.  Hawleys  whose  wife 
was  Miss  Glover's  sister; — the  young 
man  remained  with  me  until  after 
breakfast  the  next  morning,  and  then 
returned  to  his  father.  He  was  the 
same  day  taken  up  and  carried  to 
Gaol,  for  what  crime  I  never  learn't, 
— the  day  after  my  arrival,  Mr.  H. 
sent  and  fetched  Miss  Glover  to  his 
house  and  the  pleasure  I  spent  in  her 
society  surely  can  be  better  imagined 
than  described.  At  the  end  of  a  fort- 
night a  Mr.  T s.,  who  had  mar- 
ried another  sister  of  Miss  Glover's, 
came  to  take  her  to  his  house  (he  was 


a  Republican  and  I  dare  not  see  him). 
He  arrived  in  the  evening,  it  was  a 
moonshine  night,  and  Miss  G.  pre- 
tended that  it  would  be  some  time  in 
the  evening  before  she  would  be  ready 
to  set  out,  left  him  and  visited  me  in 
my  apartment.  In  this  manner  we 
kept  him  until  a  late  hour,  when  we 
at  last  took  leave  of  each  other,  and 
she  set  off  with  her  brother  Mr.  T. 

Driven  into  Hiding  for 
Refusing  to  Denounce  the  King 

The  next  night  I  set  off  from  Mr. 

H 's  (I  dare  not  travel  in  the  day) 

and  went  to  Norwalk  where  my  father 
had  two  brothers,  and  where  his 
father  was  also  living — with  them  I 
remained  for  sometime,  but  hearing 
that  there  was  an  opportunity  that 
probably  I  might  have  in  getting  over 
to  Long  Island  from  Stamford,  I  re- 
paired thither,  where  my  father  had 
another  brother  whose  four  sons  were 
already  with  the  British,  two  of  which 
had  entered  the  Army.  Here  again 
I  was  disappointed — no  opportunity 
offered  of  getting  away.  It  was 
agreed  at  last,  as  the  best  mode  of 
safety,  and  as  the  smallpox  was  in  the 
place,  I  had  better  get  Enoculated  and 
that  his  young  son  should  also.  He 
sent  for  the  surgeon  of  the  Hospital, 
a  Doctor  W.  and  we  were  Enoculated. 
We  remained  at  my  Uncle's  until  a 
few  days  before  we  broke  out,  and 
then  was  removed  to  the  Hospital. 

We  both  had  the  disease  favorable, 
and  about  the  first  of  March  I  ven- 
tured to  pay  a  visit  to  my  father's, 
taking  the  night  for  performing  the 
journey.  I  arrived  at  his  house  about 
midnight,  called  at  the  windows  of 
his  bedroom,  he  awoke,  knew  my 
voice,  and  let  me  in.  I  remained  with 
the  family  only  two  days  and  then  for 
the  last  time  I  bid  them  good-bye  for 
seven  years,  and  returned  again  to 
Norwalk,  from  thence  to  Stamford, 
to  Greenwich,  and  so  back  and  fourth 
until  the  British  Army  made  an  ex- 
cursion to  Danbury.  The  day  the 
fleet  sailed  up  the  sound  I  was  at  the 


0f  (EnlnnH  Slamis — itant  in  ITSfi 


village  of  Greenwich,  and  remained 
there  until  the  British  Army  had 
marched  to  Danbury,  and  had  again 
re-imbarked  for  New  York.  In  this 
expedition  Munson  Jarvis  and  Wil- 
liam Jarvis  were  with  the  British  and 
slept  at  my  father's  house  the  night 
they  were  in  Danbury.  On  the  28 
of  April,  1777,  at  night  I  prevailed  on 
a  person  to  set  me  across  to  Long 
Island,  there  was  a  skiff  and  a  canoe 
loaded  with  potatoes  and  two  or  three 
calves. 

Crossing  Long  Island  Sound  in 
Canoe  to  Join  the  Redcoats 

We  set  off  about  10  o'clock  at 
night,  and  got  out  of  the  river  un- 
discovered and  steered  our  course  for 
Long  Island.  In  the  morning  we 
found  ourselves  under  the  Long 
Island  shore,  the  wind  was  strong 
from  the  Eastward — our  log  canoe 
was  swamped  in  running  ashore,  but 
no  lives  lost ;  after  hard  rowing,  we  at 
last  reached  the  Harbour  of  Hunting- 
ton,  went  on  board  the  Guard  Ship  in 
the  Harbour,  where  I  was  obliged  to 
remain  until  report  was  made  to  the 
Commanding  Officer  at  that  place;  I 
then  was  permitted  to  land,  here  I 
met  with  several  persons  I  know,  and 
I  was  strongly  urged  to  join  the 
Army.  This  I  declined  and  the  next 
day  set  off  for  New  York  in  company 
with  a  Mr.  Booth,  a  native  of  New- 
town  in  Connecticut.  On  my  arrival 
in  New  York  I  found  many  persons 
from  Danbury,  who  were  made  pris- 
oners. They  informed  me  that  after 
the  British  Army  had  left  Danbury, 
the  Americans  had  killed  my  father. 
(This  was  not  true,  they  only  plun- 
dered him). 

This  melancholy  news  determined 
me  for  a  Military  life.  I  therefore 
took  the  first  opportunity  of  intro- 
ducing myself  to  an  officer,  that 
first  fell  in  my  way.  It  was  with  a 
Captain  Lockwood,  who  piloted  the 
British  Army  to  Danbury.  I  told 
him  what  I  had  just  heard  relative  to 
the  fate  of  my  father,  and  my  deter- 


mination of  entering  the  Service; — 
He  replied  "That  he  was  raising  a 
Company  for  a  Corpse  that  was  to  be 
commanded  by  a  Major  Starks,  and 
that  if  I  would  join  his  Company,  he 
would  procure  me  a  commission,  and 
as  his  company  was  about  to  march  to 
Kingsbridge,  where  the  Regiment 
to  be  organized,  and  if  I  would  con- 
sent to  act  as  Sergeant  in  his  com- 
pany until  he  could  join  the  Regiment 
— with  my  commission  he  would  be 
very  glad,  and  in  the  meantime  he 
would  be  glad  that  I  would  assist  him 
in  making  out  a  statement  of  his  Com- 
pany." This  I  assented  to,  and  be- 
ing ignorant  of  the  consequences  that 
would  result,  suffered  myself  to  be  set 
down  as  Sergeant,  for  the  present  un- 
til my  commission  could  be  procured. 

American  Lad  under  English  Ensign 
Marching  against  His  Countrymen 

The  next  day  the  Company  marched 
to  Kingsbridge  under  the  command 
of  a  Lieutenant  Close,  where  we 
joined  the  rest  of  the  Regiment,  but 
so  small  were  our  numbers,  that  I 
have  no  recollection  who  was  the 
commanding  officer; — the  day  after 
our  arrival  at  our  Incampment  there 
was  an  order  for  each  Company  to 
give  in  a  Morning  Report ;  of  what  a 
Morning  Report  was,  neither  Mr. 
Close  or  myself  knew  anything  about 
more  than  we  did  of  the  Longitude, 
and  I  was  sensible  that  I  was  the  best 
scholar  of  the  two,  and  being  second 
in  command,  thought  I  was  of  equal 
rank  with  him,  and  without  consult- 
ing him  on  the  subject,  I  walked  over 
to  the  tent  of  my  relation,  whose  Reg- 
iment had  taken  up  their  ground  on 
the  left  of  our  small  (for  it  was  a  very 
small)  Regiment  to  attain  the  infor- 
mation necessary  to  comply  with  the 
order. 

My  friend  gave  me  a  number 
of  printed  copies  that  had  been  given 
him  for  his  guide, — to  wit — fit  for 
duty — sick— on  duty,  etc.,  etc.  I  re- 
turn to  my  tent,  and  return  the  whole 
fit  for  duty,  although  we  had  neither 

446 


An  Ammran'fi  £xp*ri*ttr*  in  tty  Brtttalf  Armg 


arms,  clothing  or  ammunition ;  the  re- 
sult of  which  was  that  there  was  on 
order  for  our  Regiment  to  parade  so 
many  men  for  piquet.  This  put  me 
to  my  wits  end,  to  parade  men  with- 
out arms  was  ridiculous,  but  there 
was  no  time  to  be  lost;  I  therefore 
went  from  one  tent  to  another  (for 
some  of  the  Companies  had  received 
arms)  got  a  stand  of  arms  from  one 
Company,  a  sick  man's  arms  from 
another,  until  I  had  completed  the 
whole  with  arms  and  marched  them 
off  for  to  this  parade.  Behold  me 
then,  for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  a 
soldier  in  the  British  Army,  com- 
manding an  out  piquet,  in  the  face  of 
the  Rebel  Army.  One  material  cir- 
cumstance happened  during  the  night. 
I  had  forgot  the  most  essential  part, 
the  Parole  and  Countersign,  which, 
when  the  officer  of  the  night  came 
around  to  visit  the  piquet,  and  if  there 
had  not  been  a  more  attentive  mem- 
ory in  my  Corporal,  I  should  have 
made  a  most  lamentable  figure.  How- 
ever, all  things  passed  on  very  well, 
and  in  the  morning  I  marched  off  my 
men  to  their  tents,  not  a  little  proud 
of  my  night's  duty. 

British  Soldiers  look  with 
Impunity  on  their  Yankee  Recruits 

The  same  routine  went  on  for  sev- 
eral days,  until  I  began  to  be  tired  of 
this  fatigue,  and  I  applied  to  Mr. 
Close  to  procure  clothing,  and  arms 
for  the  men,  stating  the  danger  we 
run  of  being  fired  on  as  Rebels  in  our 
Country  Clothes;  he  hem'd  and  har'd 
for  some  time  until  my  patience  was 
quite  exhausted,  and  I  said  to  him, 
"Sir,  you  command  a  Company  in  the 
British  Army,  you  are  not  fit  to  com- 
mand an  English  waggon."  In  short 
I  said  so  much  that  if  he  or  myself 
had  known  anything  of  military  duty, 
I  must  have  have  been  shot,  agreeably 
to  the  Articles  of  War.  I  however 
soon  learned  better,  as  the  secret  will 
show. 

One  day  as  I  was  walking  past 
the  officers  mess,  (for  I  had  already 

447 


learned  so  much  of  my  duty  as 
to  find  I  was  not  yet  to  be  admit- 
ted into  the  society  of  the  commis- 
sioned officers)  I  heard  them  Huzza 
for  the  Second  Battallion  of  Queen's 
Rangers;  I  had  heard  much  of  the 
Regiment  as  a  fighting  corpse,  and  I 
did  not  much  like  the  sound.  I  made 
up  my  mind,  if  possible,  to  change 
into  the  Regiment  with  my  relations, 
lying  along  side  of  us,  and  the  morn- 
ing we  were  ordered  for  marching  I 
left  my  tent  for  the  purpose  of  mak- 
ing the  application,  and  had  got  part 
of  the  way  to  my  friend's  tent,  when, 
I  beheld  the  Col.  of  that  Regiment 
mount  his  horse  and  begin  to  belay 
the  Sentinel  at  his  Marque,  over  the 
head  and  shoulders  of  the  man,  with 
great  violence.  I  looked  with  aston- 
ishment for  a  short  time,  marched 
back  to  my  tent,  and  when  the  orders 
were  given  to  march,  I  threw  my 
knapsack  on  my  back  and  marched, 
thanking  my  stars  that  I  had  escaped 
falling  under  the  discipline  of  such  a 
savage  in  the  shape  of  a  Colonel  of  a 
British  Regiment.  The  Regiment 
marched  to  New  York  and  went  im- 
mediately on  board  ship.  Here  I  had 
for  the  last  time  a  sight  of  Captain 
Lock  wood. 

I  remonstrated  with  him,  but 
he  replied,  "That  all  was  going  on 
well,  that  he  should  be  with  the  Regi- 
ment in  a  few  days,  and  bring  my 
commission  with  him."  I  had  not  a 
moment  longer  to  spare,  was  hurried 
on  board,  we  sailed,  and  the  next 
morning  landed  at  Amboy,  marched 
out  to  a  place  called  Strawberry  Hill, 
our  small  Regiment  was  drawn  up  in 
front  of  the  Encampment  of  the 
Queen's  Rangers,  the  Non-Commis- 
sioners in  front  of  the  men,  and  a  gen- 
eral selection  took  place,  those  fit  for 
grenadiers,  were  set  apart  for  the 
Grenadier  Company,  then  the  Light 
Infantry,  then  a  Company  was  select- 
ed for  a  Highland  Company.  The 
officers  were  Captain  McAlpine,  Lieu- 
tenant Close,  Simpson,  and  Ensign 
Shaw.  (Afterwards  General  Shaw  of 


iflmuiampt  0f 


3lanrifi—  $0rn  in  IfSfi 


Upper  Canada)  The  rest  of  the  offi- 
cers were  placed  on  half  pay — or 
joined  other  Regiments; — After  the 
officers  by  Seniority,  had  made  a  se- 
lection of  the  Non-Commissioned 
Officers,  a  Captain  McKay  came  up 
to  me,  asked  my  name,  age,  etc.,  and 
if  /  could  write.  I  happened  to  have 
a  roll  of  Captain  Lockwood's  Com- 
pany in  my  pocket,  which  I  took  and 
handed  him,  after  examining  it,  he 
folded  it  up,  handed  it  me  back,  called 
a  "Sergeant  Purday  to  show  me  his 
Tent." 

Experiences  of  an  American 
inside  the  British  Lines 

Here    all    my    hopes    of    a    Com- 
mission was  at  an  end.     I  was  a  per- 
fect    stranger     to     every     individual 
around  me,  not  a  friend  to  advise,  or 
ask    council    of,    no    money    in    my 
pocket,  the  most  inexperienced,  either 
of  men  or  manners,  of  any  almost  in 
existence.     Think   what  my   feelings 
were  at  this  time.     I  have  often  won- 
dered how  I  survived  the  disappoint- 
ment.    I  however,  made  up  my  mind 
that  if  I  ever  had  an  opportunity  to 
meet  the  enemy — that  I  would  merit 
a  Commission,  and  I  applied  myself 
strictly  to  my  duty,  and  soon  merited 
the  notice  of  my  officers  who  placed 
confidence  in  me.     A  few  days  after 
there  was  a   great  desertion  of  the 
Non-Commissioners,  and  amongst  the 
rest   Sergeant  Purday  of  our  Com- 
pany.     From   this    circumstance,   all 
the   duty  of  the   Company  devolved 
upon  me,  such  as  making  out  returns 
for  provisions,  clothing,  morning  re- 
ports, master  rolls,  etc.,  as  the  other 
Sergeant  was  a  drunken  useless  fel- 
low, who,  by  the  by,  I  recognized  as 
once  having  seen  him  in  Danbury  a 
recruiting   for   the   American   Army. 
There  is  one  circumstance  I  cannot 
avoid  mentioning,  as  it  mortified  my 
pride   exceedingly.      I   had   been   on 
duty  during  the  night,  and  as  the  duty 
was  arduous,  I  came  off  duty  very 
much  fatigued.     I  called  at  Captain 
McKay's  tent  to  have  him  sign  some 


return,  I  did  expect  he  would  have 
asked  me  to  sit  down,  I  waited  some 
time  and  then  sat  down.     I  had  not 
sat  long  before  Captain  McKay  said 
in  a  mild  tone  of  voice,  "Sergeant  Jar- 
vis,  it  is  very  improper  for  you  to  sit 
in  the  presence  of  your  officer,  with- 
out you  are  desired  to  do  so."     I  must 
leave  the  reader  to  judge  of  my  feel- 
ings at  this  rebuke,  altho  so  mildly 
given,  I  arose  from  my  seat  and  re- 
plied, Sir,  I  am  a  young  soldier,  and 
I  am  very  tired,  having  been  on  duty 
all  night.     I  was  in  hopes  you  would 
have  desired  me  to  sit  doivn,  but  as 
you  did  not,  I  was  in  some  measure 
under  the  necessity,  but  I  shall  know 
better  in  future; — he  signed  the  re- 
turn and  I  returned  to  my  tent.     In  a 
few    days    there    was    an    order    for 
marching  with  four  days'  provisions 
for  each  man.    The  Army  marched 
into  the  country.     We  fell  in  with  the 
enemy  on  our  route,  and  a  partial  en- 
gagement took  place,  and  we  had  one 
man  killed; — and  I  had  a  narrow  es- 
cape myself.     I  was  standing  in  the 
angle  of  the  fence,  a  rifleman  was  in 
the  opposite  field  on  horseback,  at  the 
time    we    were    forming    along    the 
fence.      He    dismounted,    placed    his 
rifle  across  his  horse,  fired.     The  ball 
struck  direct  in  the  angle  of  the  fence 
opposite  my  face,  and  the  splinters 
flew  about  my  head  and  eyes.    The 
Army    marched    to    Brunswick    and 
then  returned  again  to  our  old  quar- 
ters. 

On  the  British  Firing  Line  in 
the  Battle  of  Brandy  wine 

There  was  nothing  of  moment 
after  this  movement  until  we  em- 
barked for  an  expedition — the  fleet 
sailed,  as  it  appeared  afterwards  for 
the  Chesapeake  and  about  the  middle 
of  August  we  landed  at  the  head  of 
Elk  River,  where  the  Army  encamped 
for  some  days,  and  here  was  my  first 
exploit.  I  commanded  the  out  piquet, 
and  at  daylight  in  the  morning  a  body 
of  American  horse  charged  my 
Piquet.  I  repulsed  them  and  took 

448 


An  Am*riran'a  £;xp?ranr*  in  tty  Urittfilj  Army 


one  Dragoon,  which  I  secured  as  well 
as  his  horse,  and  which  I  took  to 
camp  with  me  when  relieved.  I  was 
sent  with  my  prisoner  to  General 
Howe's  quarters,  when  the  prisoner 
was  sent  to  the  Provost,  the  horse  and 
appointments  given  to  me,  which  I 
took  back  to  the  Regiment  and  which 
I  was  soon  relieved  of  by  Captain 
McKay  taking  to  himself.  This  was 
an  act  of  injustice  which  I  did  not 
much  like  but  thought  best  to  put  up 
with  it.  There  was  little  to  notice 
after  this  until  the  action  at  Brandy- 
wine;  The  Queen's  Rangers  led  the 
Division  of  General  Kuephausen. 
We  came  in  sight  of  the  enemy  at 
sunrise.  The  first  discharge  of  the 
enemy  killed  the  horse  of  Major 
Grymes,  who  was  leading  the  column, 
and  wounded  two  men  in  the  Division 
directly  in  my  front,  and  in  a  few 
moments  the  Regiment  became  warm- 
ly engaged  and  several  of  our  officers 
were  badly  wounded.  None  but  the 
Rangers  and  Ferguson's  Riflemen, 
were  as  yet  engaged ;  the  enemy  re- 
tired, and  there  was  a  cessation  for  a 
short  time,  to  reconnoiter  the  enemy, 
who  had  taken  up  their  position  in  a 
wood  which  skirted  the  road  that  led 
down  to  the  River.  The  Rangers 
were  ordered  to  advance,  and  drive 
the  enemy  from  that  position.  We 
marched  from  the  right  of  Companys, 
by  files,  entered  the  wood,  and  drove 
the  enemy  from  it,  into  an  open  field 
where  there  was  a  large  body  of  the 
enemy  formed.  Major  Wymes,  who 
commanded  the  Rangers,  ordered  the 
Regiment  to  halt  and  cover  them- 
selves behind  the  trees,  but  the  right 
of  the  Regiment  was  hotly  engaged 
with  the  enemy,  and  Captain  Dunlap 
came  to  Major  Wymes,  and  requested 
him  to  let  the  Regiment  charge  or  the 
two  Companies  would  be  cut  off.  The 
Major  then  ordered  the  Adjutant 
(Ormand)  who  was  very  glad  of  the 
opportunity,  to  desire  the  troops  in 
our  rear  to  support  him,  ordered  the 
Regiment  to  charge.  At  this  instant, 
my  pantaloons  received  a  wound,  and 


I  don't  hesitate  to  say  that  I  should 
been  very  well  pleased  to  have  seen 
a  little  blood  also.  The  enemy  stood 
until  we  came  near  to  bayonet  points, 
then  gave  us  a  volley  and  retired 
across  the  Brandywine.  Captain  Wil- 
liams and  Captain  Murden  were 
killed,  and  many  of  the  officers  were 
wounded  in  this  conflict.  The  Brandy- 
wine  on  each  side  was  skirted  with 
wood,  in  which  the  Rangers  took  shel- 
ter, whilst  our  artillery  were  playing 
upon  a  half  moon  battery  on  the  other 
side  of  the  River  which  guarded  the 
only  fording  place  where  our  Army 
could  cross.  In  this  position  we  re- 
mained waiting  for  General  Howe  to 
commence  his  attack  on  the  right 
flank  of  General  Washington's  main 
Army. 

Whilst  in  this  situation  Captain 
Agnew  was  wounded,  of  which 
wound  he  was  ever  after  a  cripple. 
Several  other  men  were  also  wounded 
by  the  riflemen  from  the  other  side. 
Captain  Agnew  (he  was  only  Lieu- 
tenant at  this  time)  had  behaved  very 
gallantly  when  we  drove  the  enemy. 
I  saw  him  plunge  his  bayonet  into  the 
fellow  who  had  killed  Captain  Mur- 
den the  minute  before.  General 
Howe  commenced  his  attack  late  in 
the  afternoon,  and  this  was  the  signal 
for  our  Division  to  advance.  The 
Fourth  Regiment  led  the  Column, 
and  the  Queen's  Rangers  followed, 
the  battery  playing  upon  us  with 
grape  shot,  which  did  much  execu- 
tion. The  water  took  us  up  to  our 
breasts,  and  was  much  stained  with 
blood,  before  the  battery  was  carried 
and  the  guns  turned  upon  the  enemy. 
Immediately  after  our  Regiment  had 
crossed,  two  Companies  (the  Gren- 
adiers and  Capt.  McKay's)  was  or- 
dered to  move  to  the  left  and  take 
possession  of  a  hill  which  the  enemy 
was  retiring  from,  and  wait  there  un- 
til further  orders.  From  the  emi- 
nence we  had  a  most  extensive  view 
of  the  American  Army,  and  we  saw 
our  brave  comrades  cutting  them  up 
in  great  style.  The  battle  lasted  until 


iimtu0rrijrt  nf 


SfartriB  —  Inm  in  1756 


dark,  when  the  enemy  retreated  and 
left  us  masters  of  the  field.  We  were 
then  ordered  to  leave  our  position 
and  join  our  Regiment.  We  did  so 
and  took  up  our  night's  lodgings  on 
the  field  of  the  battle,  which  was 
strewed  with  dead  bodies  of  the  en- 
emy. 

Fighting  at  Qermantown  under 
the  Colors  of  the  King 

In  this  day's  hard  fought  action,  the 
Queen's  Rangers'  loss  in  killed  and 
wounded  were  seventy-five  out  of 
two  hundred  fifty  rank  and  file  which 
composed  our  strength  in  the  morn- 
ing. Why  the  army  did  not  the  next 
day  pursue  the  enemy,  and  bring 
them  to  action,  I  must  leave  to  wiser 
heads  than  mine,  to  give  a  reason,  but 
so  it  was.  We  remained  encamped 
the  whole  of  the  next  day,  and  gave 
the  enemy  an  opportunity  to  rally  his 
forces,  get  re-inforcements  and  take 
up  a  position  to  attack  us,  which  they 
did,  at  Germantown,  where  our  Army 
had  encamped,  sending  our  sick  and 
wounded  into  Philadelphia.  At  this 
battle  the  enemy  were  again  defeated, 
and  left  us  in  possession  of  the  field. 
On  the  morning  of  this  action,  I  was 
under  a  course  of  physic,  and  was 
ordered  to  remain  in  camp,  and  had 
not  the  honor  of  sharing  in  the  vic- 
tory of  this  day's  battle ;  I  was  so  re- 
duced from  fatigue  that  I  was  re- 
turned, unfit  for  duty,  and  was  or- 
dered to  the  Hospital,  and  the  next 
day  took  my  quarters  at  the  Hospital 
in  Philadelphia.  I  was  not  so  ill  but 
that  I  could  walk  about,  and  the  Doc- 
tors allowed  me  to  take  a  walk  about 
the  City  every  day.  Whether  they 
had  any  orders  from  my  officers  on 
that  behalf  I  know  not.  but  so  it  was 
when  others  had  not  the  same  indul- 
gence. I  remained  in  the  Hospital 
until  I  thought  I  was  able  to  undergo 
the  fatigue  of  duty  and  join  my  Regi- 
ment. 

A  few  days  after  joining  the 
Regiment,  made  an  excurtion  into  the 
Jerseys,  as  far  as  Hattenfield,  but  it 
was  ordered  that  I  should  remain  at 


the  quarters  of  the  Regiment,  which 
was  at  Kingsonton.  The  next  day 
Captain  Dunlap  returned  to  the  quar- 
ters ordering  every  man  that  was 
able  to  march  to  join  the  Regiment, 
and  myself  among  the  rest.  It  was 
near  dark  when  we  got  to  the  Regi- 
ment. I  was  most  dreadfully  fa- 
tigued, and  lay  down  to  rest.  I  had 
hardly  time  to  take  my  refreshment 
before  the  Regiment  was  ordered  un- 
der arms,  where  we  remained  for  sev- 
eral hours  in  a  storm  of  hail  and 
snow,  and  at  last  ordered  to  retrace 
our  steps  towards  Philadelphia.  I 
had  marched  but  a  few  miles  before  a 
pain  attacked  my  limbs,  to  that  de- 
gree, that  I  could  with  difficulty  walk, 
and  soon  fell  in  the  rear  of  the  Regi- 
ment, expecting  every  minute  to  fall 
into  the  hands  of  the  enemy.  I  had 
the  good  luck  to  get  up  with  the  Regi- 
ment, who  had  encamped  at  a  planta- 
tion on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware. 
More  dead  than  alive,  the  ground  cov- 
ered with  snow,  I  scrambled  to  the 
barn,  got  into  a  large  mow  of  straw, 
covered  myself  up  with  straw,  and  fell 
asleep  and  did  not  wake  until  daylight 
in  the  morning.  On  awaking,  I 
heard  Major  Simcoe  (who  had  a 
short  time  before,  and  while  I  was  in 
the  Hospital)  succeeded  Major 
Wymes  in  the  command  of  the  Regi- 
ment, and  some  of  the  officers  in 
another  part  of  the  barn,  but  hid  from 
my  sight.  They  soon  left  the  barn, 
and  left  standing  on  a  beam  within 
my  reach  a  bottle  partly  filled  with 
good  madeira.  I  soon  demolished 
the  contents  and  set  the  bottle  up  as 
before,  left  the  barn  also,  and  joined 
my  Company.  In  the  course  of  the 
day  the  Americans  attacked  us,  and 
we  had  a  smart  brush  with  them,  had 
a  Sergeant  (McPherson  of  the  Grena- 
diers) and  several  men  wounded.  In 
the  evening  we  crossed  over  to  Ken- 
sington and  took  up  our  old  quarters. 

Intimate  Insight  into  Life 

in  the  British  Army  in  America 

I  had  forgot  to  mention  one  circum- 
stance,  which   happened   at   Brandy- 

450 


An  Ammran'fi  $Exp*ranr?  in  tlj?  Urittalf  Armg 


wine,  after  the  Regiment  had  crossed 
and  was  charging  with  enemy,  Lieu- 
tenant Close  found  it  more  safe  to 
take  shelter  under  the  walls  of  the 
battery,  where  he  fell  asleep  until  he 
was  discovered  by  the  Provost  Mar- 
shal, and  reported  to  the  Regiment  as 
killed.  A  party  was  sent  out  to  bring 
him  to  camp,  who  awoke  him  from 
his  slumbers.  He  came  to  the  Regi- 
ment, but  was  obliged  to  leave  it.  He 
never  did  duty  again  in  the  Regiment. 
Captain  McAlpine  also  left  the  Regi- 
ment for  some  cause, — a  change  took 
place  in  the  Companies,  Captain 
McKay  took  command  of  the  High- 
land Company,  Captain  Stephenson  of 
the  Light  Infantry.  After  the  death 
of  Captain  Williams,  Lieutenant 
McGill  was  promoted  to  Captain 
(now  at  York,  U.  C.)  and  took  com- 
mand of  McKay's  Company.  Lt. 
Shank  Captain  of  Captain  Murden's 
Company;  Lt.  Agnew  to  be  Captain, 
but  did  no  duty.  The  Regiment  dur- 
ing the  winter  had  severe  duty  once 
or  twice  every  week  to  cover  the  mar- 
ket people  coming  to  market,  and 
often  we  had  long  marches  and  fre- 
quent skirmishes  with  the  enemy,  and 
took  a  good  many  prisoners  during 
the  winter.  I  found  Captain  McGill 
the  same  indulgent  commanding  offi- 
cer as  I  found  in  Captain  McKay,  and 
I  found  my  situation  as  pleasant  as  I 
could  have  expected,  according  to  the 
discipline  of  the  Army,  and  I  looked 
forward  for  more  favorable  prospects 
in  the  future.  It  would  be  endless  to 
enumerate  the  different  actions  which 
took  place,  but  there  were  too  many, 
in  which  the  Regiment  gained  great 
applause  at  White  Marsh,  and  after- 
wards at  Parker's  Bridge,  at  both  of 
which  places  we  took  and  killed  a 
good  many. 

Accuses  General  Howe  of  Responsi- 
bility for  England's  Downfall 

In  short  we  were  continually  en- 
gaged with  the  enemy  more  or  less, 
and  had  General  Howe  during  the 
winter,  instead  of  gambling  with 

45 1 


the  officers  every  night,  to  the  utter 
ruin  of  many  of  them,  attacked 
General  Washington  at  the  Valley 
Forge,  where  he  might  have  done, 
the  event  of  the  War  would  have 
been  very  different,  but  I  am  only 
relating  of  those  actions  in  which 
I  was  personally  concerned.  During 
the  winter  Major  Simcoe  was  pro- 
moted to  the  rank  of  Lieutenant  Colo- 
nel, and  a  Major  Ross  joined  the  Reg- 
iment. The  news  of  General  Bur- 
goyne's  capture  gave  great  energy  to 
the  enemy.  The  French  also  form- 
ing an  alliance  with  the  Americans, 
and  sending  troops  to  America  put  a 
different  face  on  things.  General 
Howe,  after  making  a  great  display 
in  Philadelphia,  resigned  the  com- 
mand and  went  home  and  Sir  Henry 
Clinton  took  the  Command  in  Chief, 
and  began  to  make  preparations  for 
evacuating  Philadelphia  and  march- 
ing the  Army  through  the  Jerseys  up 
to  New  York,  and  on  i8th  day  of 
June  1778,  the  British  Army  crossed 
the  Delaware  and  commenced  their 
route,  the  Queen's  Rangers  always  in 
the  rear  of  the  line  of  march.  I  have 
omitted  to  state  that  before  we  left 
Philadelphia  a  Troop  of  Horse  was 
added  to  the  Regiment.  The  officers 
were  Captain  Wickham,  Lieut.  McKab 
(late  of  York  in  Upper  Canada)  and 
a  Cornet  Spencer  from  the  I7th 
Dragoons. 

Nothing  of  moment  took  place 
on  our  route  until  we  came  to 
Monmouth,  where  on  the  morning  of 
the  28th  of  June,  the  Queen's  Rangers 
met  at  daylight  the  advance  army  of 
the  Americans  under  the  command  of 
General  Lee.  We  had  a  smart  brush, 
and  Col.  Simcoe  was  wounded.  We 
took  some  prisoners  and  returned  and 
joined  the  Army  at  Monmouth  Court 
House, — Sir  Henry  Clinton,  with  five 
thousand  of  his  Army  attacked  Lee 
and  drove  him  the  whole  day — took 
and  killed  a  great  many  of  his  men 
until  we  fell  in  with  General  Wash- 
ington's whole  Army,  when  we  re- 
treated, leaving  our  wounded  in  the 


fi — Itorn  in  17 56 


enemies'  hands.  On  commencing  our 
retreat  we  had  to  oppose  a  large  body 
of  the  enemy,  and  one  of  our  field 
pieces  was  abandoned,  and  the  enemy 
gave  a  shout.  Lieutenant  Shaw  with 
the  Highland  Company  wheeled 
about,  charged  the  enemy,  and 
brought  off  the  cannon,  which  was 
ever  after  attached  to  the  Regiment. 

Retreating  with  King  George's 
Men  and  Dissension  in  the  Ranks 

We  continued  our  retreat  during 
the  whole  night  and  came  up  with  the 
main  Army  at  Middletown,  where  we 
halted  to  refresh  ourselves  for  the 
first  time  in  twenty-four  hours.  The 
day  of  the  battle  was  one  of  the  hot- 
test days  I  ever  felt,  and  we  lost  more 
men  by  drinking  cold  water  than  were 
killed  by  the  enemy.  I  bore  the  fa- 
tigue of  the  day  very  well  with  only 
having  again  a  shot  through  my  pan- 
taloons, leaving  the  mark  of  the  ball 
on  the  skin,  or  rather  the  powder 
without  drawing  blood.  The  Army 
continued  its  march,  the  Rangers 
bringing  up  the  rear.  The  Army 
crossed  over  on  a  pontoon  bridge  to 
the  lighthouse  island,  the  Queen's 
Rangers  embarked  in  flatboats  and 
rowed  up  to  New  York  and  landed  at 
Bloomingdale  above  New  York, 
where  we  remained  for  some  time 
and  then  crossed  over  to  Long  Island 
and  took  up  our  quarters  at  Oyster 
Bay.  Another  change  had  taken 
place  in  the  Regiment.  Major  Ross 
had  left  the  Regiment.  Captain  Arm- 
strong promoted  to  the  Majority,  Cap- 
tain McGill  went  to  the  Grenadiers 
and  Captain  Agnew  got  his  company 
soon  after  we  came  to  Oyster  Bay. 

Two  of  the  Sergeants  of  the  Horse 
(Kelly  and  Johnson)  were  convicted 
of  plundering  some  of  the  inhabitants, 
was  took  and  flogged  and  I  was  trans- 
ferred from  the  Infantry  and  to  the 
Calvary.  I  had  for  my  associates  a 
Sergeant  Prior  and  a  Sergeant  Mc- 
Laughlin, — from  this  moment  I  be- 
came a  great  favorite  with  Col.  Sim- 
coe,  as  well  as  all  the  other  officers, 


except  Captain  Wickham  who  became 
my  professed  enemy,  and  who  tried 
to  find  me  guilty  of  some  neglect  that 
he  might  try  me  by  a  Court  Martial, 
but  I  had  now  learned  my  duty,  and  I 
put  him  to  defiance,  and  the  only  way 
he  had  to  annoy  me  was  to  keep  my 
pay  back.  However,  always  having 
a  good  supply  of  necessaries,  I  did  not 
want  much  money.  Our  duty  during 
the  winter  was  not  very  severe,  the 
harbor  afforded  plenty  of  oysters.  I 
became  a  favorite  with  some  of  the 
principal  inhabitants,  and  if  I  some- 
times had  scanty  allowance  at  my 
barracks,  I  knew  where  to  go  to  get 
the  best  the  house  afforded.  Here  a 
Mr.  Moffet  from  the  I5th  Regiment 
joined  as  Quarter  Master,  a  rough, 
boisterous  Irishman,  but  I  knew  how 
to  humor  him  and  we  agreed  very 
well  together, — I  spent  the  winter 
very  pleasant.  Our  food  was  for 
some  time  rather  coarse,  our  bread 
oatmeal  biscuit  full  of  magots.  Early 
in  the  Spring  of  1779  the  Regiment 
left  Oyster  Bay  and  took  up  our  en- 
campment above  Kingsbridge,  where 
we  remained  the  greater  part  of  the 
summer,  making  several  excursions 
up  the  North  River,  as  also  to  the 
Eastward. 

Under  Fire  with  the  Enemy 
within  Ten  Miles  of  His  Own  Home 

At  one  time  the  I7th  Dragoons 
and  the  troop  of  Queen's  Rangers 
went  as  far  as  Pound  Ridge,  within 
ten  miles  of  my  father's  house  to 
surprise  a  Regiment  of  Dragoons, 
which  we  effected  and  made  great 
havoc  amongst  them,  and  took  a  great 
many  prisoners.  I  was  ordered  to 
flank  the  party,  and  in  doing  so  I  had 
in  one  instance  to  divide  my  party. 
There  was  a  lagoon  surrounded  with 
bushes.  I  took  one  rout  and  part  of 
my  men  the  other.  When  I  came  in 
sight  of  them,  I  saw  them  cutting  and 
slashing  at  a  single  man  with  a  female 
standing  by  his  side.  I  wrode  up  in 
time  to  save  the  man  from  much  in- 
jury. I  afterwards  brought  him  and 


An  Amfriran'fl  lExperonr*  in  %  IritisI? 


his  wife,  for  the  female  appeared  to 
be  so,  and  as  he  had  no  arms  about 
him,  I  did  not  think  proper  to  detain 
him  a  prisoner.  I  ordered  him  to  re- 
main in  his  house  and  left  him.  (I 
shall  have  reason  to  speak  of  this  man 
again.) 

We  returned  to  our  quarters  again 
at  Kingsbridge.  A  few  days  after 
this  a  young  man  by  the  name  of 
Vincent  gave  information  that  a 
party  of  the  enemy  were  at  West 
Chester,  that  he  had  narrowly  es- 
caped being  taken  prisoner.  Col. 
Simcoe  with  the  mounted  Legion,  and 
the  Rangers  passed,  ordering  the  In- 
fantry to  follow.  We  came  up  with 
the  enemy,  we  were  ordered  to  form 
for  the  charge.  In  the  meantime  as 
the  front  Division  were  wheeling  up 
I  saw  an  American  Dragoon  dis- 
charge his  pistol;  my  horse's  head  at 
that  moment  covered  my  body — the 
ball  entered  his  nostril,  and  into  his 
mouth.  The  blood  spouted  a  stream, 
and  my  horse  sank  upon  his  haunches. 
Col.  Simcoe  ordered  me  to  the  rear, 
and  gave  the  word  to-  charge ;  the  en- 
emy had  taken  post  behind  a  stone 
wall,  I  mean  their  Infantry,  and  when 
our  Troops  came  abreast,  gave  us  a 
very  galling  fire,  and  Captain  Wick- 
ham  wheeled  his  horse  about  and  put 
the  whole  in  disorder,  the  sequence  of 
which  was  that  the  enemy  got  off 
safe  and  we  suffered  severely,  both  in 
killed  and  wounded.  We  pursued 
the  enemy  afterwards,  as  far  as  By- 
ram  River,  and  here  a  curious  cir- 
cumstance happened — there  was  a 
very  deep  hole  in  the  river,  near  the 
fording  place,  and  the  trumpeter  of 
the  enemy  had  got  into  it  and  was 
hanging  bv  his  horse's  mane.  I 
plunged  in  after  him  when  my  horse 
and  self  were  several  feet  under 
water,  and  when  I  made  my  appear- 
ance several  shots  were  fired  at  me, 
without  effect,  and  the  Trumpetor  es- 
caped my  grasp,  as  there  was  a  large 
body  on  Infantry  on  the  top  of  the 
hill,  we  found  it  necessary  to  retire. 


Destroying  American  Property 
with  the  Queen's  Rangers 

Soon  after  this  a  large  body  of  the 
Army  marched  towards  the  White 
Plains.  I  was  with  a  division  of  the 
Cavalry,  leading  the  Column — Lord 
Cornwallis  and  Col.  Simcoe  came  up 
to  the  front,  and  I  heard  Col.  Simcoe 
say  to  his  Lordship,  "There  is  a  fine 
young  lad  who  knows  Danbury  well." 
From  this  I  took  it  for  granted  we 
were  going  there.  We,  however, 
soon  took  a  turn  to  the  Saw  Pits  in 
Horse  Neck  and  back  again  to  our 
old  quarters  without  falling  in  with 
any  of  the  enemy.  Soon  after  Col. 
Simcoe  took  the  route  up  the  North 
River,  where  we  fell  in  with  a  party 
at  a  place,  I  think  called  Kingsferry — 
when  we  came  nigh  the  place  I  re- 
ceived orders  to  charge  and  I  fol- 
lowed the  enemy  for  some  distance, 
and  altho  I  did  not  myself  take  any  of 
the  enemy,  I  cut  off  the  retreat  of  a 
good  many,  which  were  made  prison- 
ers. 

We  returned  to  our  camp  in  this 
manner.  Much  of  our  time  was 
taken  up  during  the  summer,  and  in 
the  Autumn  we  were  moved  to  Staten 
Island,  and  took  up  our  winter  quar- 
ters at  Richmond.  Soon  after  our 
arrival  at  this  place  a  quarrel  ensued 
between  Mr.  Moffet,  now  an  Ensign 
in  the  Regiment,  as  well  as  Quarter- 
Master  of  the  Horse,  with  a  Lieuten- 
ant (Mr.  Lawrence  died  in  Upper 
Canada)  Lawrence.  A  duel  ensued 
and  Moffet  was  killed.  Col.  Simcoe 
was  so  enraged  that  he  would  not  let 
him  be  buried  with  the  honors  of  war. 
Lieutenant  Lawrence  was  tried  by  a 
Court  Martiall  and  Honorably  Ac- 
quitted. Soon  after  our  arrival  at 
Staten  Island  an  expedition  was 
planned  for  destroying  a  number  of 
boats  that  had  been  built  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  landing  the  French 
Army,  which  the  Americans  were  ex- 
pecting to  arrive  daily.  It  was  com- 
posed of  the  Cavalry  of  the  Queen's 
Rangers,  the  Buck's  County  Volun- 
teers, and  the  Jersey  Ds;  the  Buck's 


453 


4fianu0rripi  nf 


3fartriB  —  Unrn  in  1756 


commanded  by  Captain  Sanford,  the 
others  by  Captain  Stewart,  all  under 
the  command  of  Col.  Simcoe.  The 
Infantry  of  the  Rangers  were  to 
march  into  the  country  to  cover  our 
retreat.  We  landed  at  Perth  Amboy, 
and  we  were  to  return  by  South  Am- 
boy. 

The  Troops  were  to  have  been 
landed  by  ten  o'clock  at  night,  for 
which  purpose  we  left  Richmond  for 
Billip's  Point  so  as  to  reach  that  place 
soon  after  dark.  From  some  cause 
or  other  it  was  near  daylight  before 
we  landed  at  Amboy,  and  we  had  to 
perform  the  whole  journey  almost  the 
whole  way  by  daylight.  In  passing 
through  a  small  village,  as  the  sun 
was  rising,  a  few  men  with  knap- 
sacks came  out  of  a  house  and  our 
men  took  them  for  soldiers  and  com- 
menced an  attack,  and  this  gave  the 
alarm ;  we  however  proceeded  on  our 
route.  We  had  a  Frenchman  in  our 
Troop,  who  from  his  broken  English 
said  that  we  were  French  Cavalry 
after  the  boats  to  land  the  French 
Army.  By  this  means  we  procured 
guides  who  conveyed  us  to  where  the 
boats  were,  and  we  had  collected  a 
good  number  on  our  way,  all  of  which 
we  made  prisoners  as  soon  as  we 
came  to  the  boats  and  began  to  de- 
stroy them.  There  were  twenty-five 
beautiful  barges  all  fixed  upon  car- 
riages ready  to  be  conveyed  to  any 
place  where  they  would  be  wanted. 

Terrific  Conflict  in  which 
Officers  almost  Lose  their  Reason 

In  a  few  minutes  the  boats  were  in 
flames,  and  the  wheels  of  the  car- 
riages cut  to  pieces,  to  the  great  dis- 
may of  the  guides  who  had  conduct- 
ed us  to  them.  We  then  proceeded 
to  a  place  called  Millstone,  where  we 
burnt  a  large  quantity  of  forage,  pa- 
rolled  several  American  officers  which 
fell  into  our  hands;  burnt  the  goal 
and  relieved  several  of  our  prisoners 
who  had  been  confined  in  goal,  and 
then  commenced  our  retreat,  and  a 


hazardous  one  it  was,  for  by  this  time 
the  whole  country  was  alarmed,  and 
from  every  house  and  corpse  of  wood 
we  were  fired  upon,  and  at  last  we 
fell  into  an  ambuscade,  where  we  lost 
Col.  Simcoe  and  several  of  our  men. 

I  had,  a  few  moments  before,  been 
sent  to  Captain  Sanford  who  formed 
our  rear  guard,  with  orders,  when  I 
heard  the  firing  commence,  and  on 
my  return  I  had  to  charge  through 
the  enemy ;  few  of  their  pieces  had  got 
reloaded  and  I  escaped  unhurt.  I 
pursued  as  fast  as  my  horse  would 
carry  me  to  the  front  to  make  my  re- 
port, but  I  could  see  nothing  of  Col. 
Simcoe.  I  rode  back  and  forth  en- 
quiring for  the  Colonel.  At  last  the 
Surgeon  said,  "He  is  dead."  Dead 
said  I,  and  are  we  going  to  leave  him 
in  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  and  I  tried 
to  get  the  men  to  turn  about  for  the 
purpose  of  bringing  him  off,  but  I 
could  not  succeed.  My  gallant  Cap- 
tain Wickham  was  riding  about  like  a 
mad  man,  had  lost  his  helmet  and 
seemed  to  have  lost  his  reason  alto- 
gether. 

By  this  time  Captain  Sanford 
had  assumed  the  command,  and 
we  had  got  into  some  degree  of  order 
— we  had  by  this  time  reached  Bruns- 
wick Plains,  and  the  enemy  had  nearly 
surrounded  us — was  enclosing  us  fast 
— Captain  Stewart,  our  principal 
guide,  had  received  a  slight  wound  in 
the  hand,  had  got  confused;  our  men 
every  moment  falling,  and  as  it  was 
announced  that  the  road  to  South 
Amboy  was  our  route,  no  person 
could  show  us  the  way.  I  had  already 
taken  charge  of  Captain  Wickham's 
Division.  The  Surgeon  got  fright- 
ened, leaped  off  his  horse,  put  his 
white  handkerchief  on  the  point  of 
his  sword,  and  ran  towards  the  en- 
emy, and  a  Sergeant  Carhart  fol- 
lowed him.  In  a  few  minutes  we 
saw  him  returning  and  calling  to  Cap- 
tain Sanford.  We  ordered  a  halt. 
He  came  up  and  said  to  Captain  San- 
ford, "Sir,  the  enemy  will  receive  the 
flag,  but  insist  that  you  go  back  to  the 


454 


An  Amfriran'0  Experonr*  in  %  SrittBlj  Artng 


ground  from  which  I  left  you."  Pray 
Sir,  says  Captain  Sanford,  who  or- 
dered you  to  go  with  a  flag,  go  back 
Sir  to  the  enemy,  and  make  your  own 
terms.  I  shall  have  nothing  to  do 
with  you."  By  this  time  we  had  little 
space  to  act  upon.  I  saw  the  situa- 
tion in  which  we  were  placed,  and  I 
sent  Sergeant  McLaughlin  to  tell 
Captain  Sanford  that  if  he  did  not 
allow  us  to  charge  the  enemy,  we 
should  all  be  prisoners  in  ten  minutes. 

Cutting  through  the  American 
Ranks  in  Reckless  Onslaught 

The  word  was  given  and  we  cut  our 
way  thro  the  enemy  and  in  doing  so 
we  fell  upon  the  road  we  had  been 
seeking  for  and  we  pushed  forward. 
In  pursuing  our  route  we  fell  in  with 
two  men  armed;  one  fired  and  killed 
a  Corporal  Maloy,  of  our  Troop. 
The  man  was  immediately  killed — 
the  other  taken  prisoner  and  ordered 
to  run  alongside  the  horses.  I  was 
ordered  to  bring  up  the  rear.  One 
of  Captain  Stewart's  Dragoons  had 
his  thigh  broken  by  a  shot,  and  it  was 
difficult  for  him  to  keep  up  with  the 
Troops,  who  were  making  the  best  of 
their  way.  He  was  fearful  of  falling 
into  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  and 
begged  of  me  not  to  leave  him.  I 
then  put  the  prisoner  behind  him  on 
his  horse,  and  remained  with  them 
until  our  Troops  were  long  out  of 
sight.  I  then  told  the  wounded  man 
that  I  would  stay  with  him  no  longer. 
You  have  got  your  pistol  and  can  de- 
fend yourself  if  the  prisoner  should 
make  any  attempt  to  resist  you,  and 
overtake  us  as  fast  as  you  can.  I  then 
left  them,  and  before  I  had  overtaken 
the  Troops  they  had  come  up  with 
the  Infantry  and  made  a  halt — the 
wounded  man  also  soon  came  up,  but 
the  prisoner  had  made  his  escape.  It 
is  impossible  to  describe  the  dismay 
of  our  Troops  when  they  found  we 
had  returned  without  our  Colonel. 

455 


Narrow  Escape  from  Americans 
and  Dreary  Journey  to  Safety 

On  our  arrival  at  the  place  for  em- 
barking we  found  the  boats  ready. 
I  was  ordered  to  see  all  the  horses  on 
board,  and  I  did  not  attempt  embark- 
ing my  own  horse  until  the  last  boat, 
when  he  refused  to  leap  into  the  boat. 
I  gave  the  bridle  to  a  sailor  and 
jumped  into  the  water,  to  urge  the 
horse  in.  At  that  moment  order  was 
given  to  push  off  and  wait  'for  no 
man.  The  sailor  dropped  the  bridle, 
took  to  his  oar — the  boat  rowed  away 
leaving  myself  and  horse  standing  in 
the  water — the  enemy  marching  down 
to  the  shore.  I  mounted  my  horse 
with  the  intent  to  swim  him  after 
the  boat,  but  I  saw  one  boat  yet  at 
the  shore.  I  rode  to  it,  threw  my  sad- 
dle and  bridle  into  the  boat,  and 
jumped  on  board,  and  had  the  morti- 
fication to  see  the  enemy  take  posses- 
sion of  the  animal  that  had  so  many 
times  carried  me  through  great  dan- 
ger and  difficulties.  I  was  happy  in- 
deed to  have  escaped  myself.  We 
landed  at  Billip's  Point,  and  we  had 
a  dreary  and  melancholy  night's  walk 
to  Richmond — and  took  up  our  old 
quarters.  The  day  after  we  got  to 
Richmond,  a  man  came  from  the  en- 
emy and  brought  intelligence  that  Col. 
Simcoe  was  alive,  his  horse  having 
fell  on  him  and  stunted  him.  This 
was  joyful  news  to  all  the  Regiment 
His  servant,  McGill  (died  in  Upper 
Canada  a  Captain  in  the  Army)  went 
out  and  took  care  of  him  while  a  pris- 
oner. They  confined  him  in  goal, 
where  Col.  Billip.  a  Loyalist  was 
chained  to  the  floor.  Sir  Henry 
Clinton  with  a  part  of  the  Army  em- 
barked for  Charlestown,  as  it  after- 
wards appeared,  and  the  Infantry  of 
the  Rangers  were  also  in  orders,  and 
the  baggage  was  on  board — but  they 
were  ordered  to  be  re-landed,  and  the 
fleet  sailed  without  them,  and  the 
Regiment  remained  at  Richmond  all 
winter.  Col.  Simcoe  was  soon  ex- 
changed, and  joined  the  Regiment. 

The  morning  after  his  arrival  he 


i$amt0rripi  0f  Qtalmtri  SartrtB — Sorn  tn  ITSfi 


came  down  to  where  the  Cavalry  was 
quartered — some  of  the  officers  with 
him — he  said  to  me,  "Jarvis,  come  to 
my  quarters  at  12:00  o'clock."  I 
accordingly  was  there  at  the  time. 
He  then  walked  out  of  the  Fort  into 
the  open  field,  out  of  hearing  of  any 
person,  and  began  questioning  me  as 
to  all  circumstances  which  took  place 
after  he  fell.  To  all  of  his  questions  I 
gave  as  correct  account  as  I  possibly 
could,  and  quite  to  his  satisfaction, 
and  then  he  said,  "Jarvis,  how  did  the 
officers  behave?"  I  answered,  as  offi- 
cers ought  to  on  such  occasions. 
"Well,  but  Jarvis,  how  did  Captain 
Wickham  behave?"  Very  well,  said 
I  "Did  he,  Jarvis,  did  he?"  Colo- 
nel, said  I,  do  you  think  it  possible 
that  an  officer  of  the  Rangers  can  be- 
have ill?  He  looked  at  me  with  his 
piercing  eyes  and  said,  "You  Yankey 
dog,  you  Yankey  dog."  After  a 
short  pause  he  clapped  his  hand  on 
my  shoulder  saying,  "You  are  right, 
you  are  right,  my  good  fellow.  Take 
care  of  yourself,  you  are  a  brave  fel- 
low." He  then  dismissed  me  and  I 
returned  to  my  quarters. 

Dragging  Cannon  Across 

New  York  Harbor  on  Ice  in  1780 

After  Mr.  Moffet  had  obtained  his 
Ensigney  in  the  Regiment  I  was 
allowed  to  do  the  duty  of  Quarter- 
Master,  for  which  Mr.  Moffet  allowed 
me  a  shilling  a  day,  besides  my  other 
pay,  and  I  still  continued  to  do  that 
duty.  My  friend  Wickham  one  day 
sent  for  me,  and  said,  "Jarvis,  if  you 
will  draw  a  petition  to  the  Colonel  for 
the  appointment  of  QuarterMaster,  I 
and  Mr.  McNab  will  recommend  you 
for  it."  This  was  so  extraordinary  a 
circumstance  that  I  hardly  thought 
him  sincere,  yet  I  lost  not  a  moment, 
and  after  he  had  done  as  he  promised, 
I  waited  on  the  Colonel  and  presented 
it.  He  read  it  with  great  attention, 
for  in  my  petition  I  had  stated  the  cir- 
cumstance of  my  joining  the  British 
Army,  the  loyalty  of  my  family,  and 
the  promise  and  expectation  made  me 


when  I  first  joined.  After  some  little 
hesitating  he  said,  "Jarvis,  I  have 
long  had  it  in  contemplation  of  giv- 
ing you  promotion,  and  I  am  sorry 
that  I  cannot  do  so  now,  but  I  have 
promised  it  to  McGill.  His  late  con- 
duct towards  me  when  in  goal,  and 
his  long  services  with  me,  has  induced 
me  to  do  so,  but  you  may  rest  assured 
that  I  will  take  the  first  opportunity 
in  providing  for  you."  This  was 
rather  a  disappointment  that  I  did  not 
look  for,  but  I  bore  it  with  fortitude. 

Ever  after  this  Captain  Wickham 
appeared  to  be  a  very  sincere  friend, 
made  me  a  companion  more  than  any- 
thing else,  ever  after  so  long  as  I  re- 
mained in  the  Regiment.  The  winter 
of  1780  was  a  most  severe  one;  the 
harbor  of  New  York  was  even  so  fro- 
zen that  cannon  were  brought  from 
New  York  to  Staten  Island  upon  the 
ice,  and  during  the  winter  a  body  of 
the  enemy  crossed  from  the  Jerseys 
to  Staten  Island  and  invested  our 
post.  At  the  Narrows  the  cold  was 
intense,  and  after  remaining  two 
nights  and  losing  about  forty  men 
frozen  to  death,  they  returned  to  the 
Jerseys.  Our  Regiment  from  Rich- 
mond pursued  them  and  took  some 
prisoners.  Whilst  the  enemy  re- 
mained on  the  Island  we  were  en- 
tirely cut  off  from  any  assistance 
from  the  rest  of  our  forces,  and  were 
obliged  to  make  such  arrangements 
best  calculated  for  our  defence. 

The  enemy  thought  best  however 
not  to  approach  us.  Soon  after  this, 
a  plan  was  formed  to  take  General 
Washington,  who  lay  some  distance 
from  New  York,  and  rather  attacked 
from  his  Army  so  as  to  make  the 
attempt  practicable.  The  i7th  Light 
Horse  and  the  Cavalry  of  the  Queen's 
Rangers  were  designed  for  this  ser- 
vice, and  we  marched  from  Staten 
Island  to  New  York  upon  the  ice,  and 
took  up  our  quarters  at  the  Bull's 
Head,  which  at  that  time  was  quite 
out  of  the  City.  The  time  arrived 
and  we  crossed  over  to  Elizabethtown 
Point,  and  after  marching  some  dis- 

456 


An  Amfriran'a  £xp?rwtr?  in  %  Srittelf  Army 


tance  in  the  country,  returned  back 
without  making  any  attempt,  and  thus 
the  affair  ended,  much  to  my  disap- 
pointment, for  I  had  set  my  heart  on 
this  expedition,  as  I  was  to  have 
taken  charge  of  the  General  after  he 
had  fallen  into  our  hands.  We  re- 
mained at  the  Bull's  head  for  several 
weeks,  until  the  harbor  opened  so  as 
to  return  to  Staten  Island  by  water, 
during  which  time  our  Dragoons  did 
much  injury  to  the  inhabitants,  but  I 
generally  found  out  the  perpetrators, 
and  had  them  punished.  One  rob- 
bery they  committed  is  of  so  singular 
a  nature  that  I  cannot  avoid  mention- 
ing it. 

With  British  Cavalry  in 

the  Surrender  of  Charlestown 

They  went  one  Sunday  to  some 
Dutch  parson's  house,  and  finding 
nothing  that  suited  them,  they  stole 
a  stove  and  carried  it  off,  for  which 
the  Commander-in-chief  made  Mr. 
McNab,  the  Commanding  Officer 
(for  my  friend  Wickham  was  not 
with  us)  pay  for  the  stove,  which  he 
did  before  we  were  allowed  to  join 
the  Regiment,  which  we  did  some 
time  in  the  latter  month  of  March. 
Soon  after  our  joining,  I  was  sent  for 
to  the  Colonel's  quarters,  when  I  was 
informed  that  the  Regiment  were  go- 
ing to  embark;  the  Cavalry  were  to 
remain  behind.  He  then  asked  me, 
"if  I  had  any  inclination  to  go  with 
the  Regiment."  I  expressed  a  desire 
to  go.  He  said,  "Well,  my  boy,  3*01* 
shall  go,  and  you  shall  have  a  com- 
mand. You  shall  have  fourteen  men ; 
those  you  shall  chose  out  of  the  whole 
Troop,  and  I  will  place  Sergeant  Mc- 
Pherson  (this  was  the  Brother  of  the 
one  that  was  killed  before  we  left 
Philadelphia)  with  fourteen  rifle  men 
to  act  in  conjunction  with  you,"  and 
he  ordered  me  at  the  same  time  to 
make  out  a  list  of  the  men  I  chose  to 
take  with  me.  I  did  so  and  gave  it  to 
him.  He  examined  it  and  said,  "You 
have  made  a  very  good  choice;  you 
have  left  out  Maloy,  I  thought  he 

457 


would  have  been  your  first  choice." 
So  he  would,  Sir,  if  we  should  be 
fighting  the  whole  time,  but  he  will 
always  be  getting  into  some  scrape 
and  disgrace  me  and  my  party.  How- 
ever I  found  it  was  the  wish  of  the 
Colonel  and  I  at  last  consented. 

We  soon  embarked,  me  with  my 
men,  saddles  and  appointments,  and 
after  a  passage  of  fourteen  or  fifteen 
days,  we  arrived  at  Charlestown.  We 
landed  on  James  Island,  crossed  over 
above  the  City,  and  took  up  our  quar- 
ters at  the  Quarter  House  six  miles 
from  Charlestown.  I  lost  no  time  in 
procuring  such  horses  as  fell  in  my 
way,  and  had  my  men  mounted  and 
our  business  was  to  make  patrols  into 
the  country,  but  we  never  came  in 
contact  with  any  of  the  enemy  during 
the  siege,  which  continued  until  the 
1 2th  of  May.  After  the  town  surren- 
dered, the  Rangers  marched  into  the 
country  as  far  as  Four  Hole,  when 
the  Infantry  halted  and  Captain  Saun- 
ders,  with  my  Cavalry,  pushed  con- 
siderable farther  and  passed  for 
Americans,  being  dressed  in  green. 
At  one  Plantation  we  took  a  number 
of  horses,  and  among  the  rest  a  very 
fine  stud  horse,  which  I  mounted  and 
rode  for  a  few  miles,  when  he  at  once 
halted  and  I  could  hardly  get  him 
along.  He  had  not  been  rode  for 
many  years,  and  I  foundered  him, 
and  was  obliged  to  take  to  my  former 
horse.  There  was  little  to  excite  the 
attention  of  the  reader  during  our 
stay. 

We  took  up  our  quarters  at  Dor- 
chester for  some  time.  The  people 
from  the  back  country  coming  in 
daily  and  taking  the  Oath  of  Allegi- 
ance, and  before  we  left  Charlestown 
it  was  again  to  appearance  a  British 
Colony.  We  soon  left  Charlestown 
and  sailed  for  New  York.  During 
the  passage  I  discovered  there  was  a 
negro  man  and  woman  on  board,  and 
when  we  came  to  Staten  Island  I 
landed  with  my  men  and  horses  whilst 
the  Regiment  proceeded  on  and 
joined  Colonel  Kuephausen,  who  was 


4Hmtu0rripi  nf  <E0l0tt?l  3larma — Jtorn  in  1T56 


in  the  Jerseys,  and  during  the  ab- 
sence of  the  Regiment,  two  men,  who 
it  appeared  had  a  claim  on  them  for 
their  support  at  least,  came  to  me  and 
said  there  was  a  man  who  wished  to 
purchase  the  negroes.  My  answer 
was  not  to  do  anything  without  the 
approbation  of  Mr.  McGill,  who  was 
the  only  officer  then  in  the  Garrison. 
They  obtained  his  approbation,  and 
they  sold  them,  and  the  only  hand  I 
had  in  the  matter  was  to  divide  the 
money  between  them,  and  I  thought 
nothing  more  of  the  matter  for  some 
time. 

British  Soldiers  Search  for 

Hidden  Money  on  American  Estates 

During  the  forepart  of  the  sea- 
son we  were  incamped  at  Kings- 
bridge,  at  a  place  called  Odle's  Hill, 
where  one  day  some  of  the  soldiers  in 
finding  a  mouse  under  a  stone  they 
were  induced  to  search  for  more.  At 
last  they  undertook  to  turn  over  a 
large  one,  and  at  last  succeeded,  when 
there  was  the  greatest  shout  and 
scrabbling  imaginable.  There  was  a 
deposit  of  money  to  the  amount  of 
many  hundreds  of  dollars,  which  was 
soon  distributed  among  the  soldiers 
according  to  their  good  fortune  in 
collecting  what  came  within  his  grasp. 
The  money  was  claimed  by  Mr.  Odle, 
the  proprietor  of  the  farm,  but  he 
got  no  satisfaction.  Col.  Simcoe 
however  told  him  if  he  had  any  more 
money  out  of  doors  to  bring  it  into 
the  house  and  it  should  be  safe.  He 
went  and  pulled  down  a  place  in  the 
stone  fence,  and  took  out  a  jar  full  of 
gold,  the  consequence  of  which  was 
that  he  had  hardly  a  rod  of  stone  wall 
about  his  farm  that  was  not  examined 
before  daylight  the  next  morning. 

We  remained  in  this  situation  until 
the  fate  of  Major  Andre,  where  we 
were  waiting  until  his  return  to  take 
possession  of  the  Fort  at  West  Point, 
when  we  were  removed  on  to  Long 
Island,  which  we  traversed  from  New 
York  until  we  arrived  at  East  Hamp- 
ton. Here  we  remained  until  our 


Army  evacuated  Rhode  Island,  after 
the  French  Fleet  had  returned  from 
that  place,  when  the  Queen's  Rangers 
retired  as  far  as  Oyster  Bay ;  the  Cav- 
alry remained  at  Satauket,  under  the 
commanding  of  the  Commanding 
Officer  of  the  17th  Dragoons.  Here 
again  I  met  with  the  most  discourag- 
ing circumstances,  and  it  was  a  won- 
der how  I  escaped.  I  had  been  tak- 
ing orders,  and,  as  is  the  custom,  was 
proceeding  to  my  officer's  quarters  to 
show  him  the  orders,  when,  after  go- 
ing some  distance  on  my  way,  I  heard 
some  person  calling  after  me.  I 
turned  around  and  saw  an  officer  and 
two  men  following  me,  and  as  they 
came  up  to  me  the  Officer  said,  "Is 
this  the  man?"  They  replied  "Yes," 
and  without  giving  me  time  to  reply. 

Jealous  English  Officers  Cause 
Court  Martial  of  American  Recruit 

I  was  ordered  to  the  Guard  House, 
where  I  remained  all  night.  How- 
ever, I  was  released  the  next  morn- 
ing— thro  the  interference  of  my  Offi- 
cer. Some  person  had  killed  a  hog 
belonging  to  a  Colonel  Floid,  and 
these  two  men  declared  that  I  was  the 
person.  I  applied  for  a  Court  Mar- 
tial to  prove  my  innocence,  but  this  I 
did  not  obtain.  Soon  after  we  were 
ordered  to  join  the  Regiment,  and  as 
we  came  near  the  town  of  Oyster  Bay, 
I  was  sent  forward  to  announce  their 
approach.  As  I  entered  the  town,  I 
was  congratulated  by  all  the  Officers 
on  my  promotion.  "I  was  not  in  or- 
ders," they  said,  "but  no  doubt  I 
should  be  the  next  day,  as  they  had 
seen  the  orders  from  Headquarters." 

I  therefore  proceeded  to  Colonel's 
quarters  with  a  delightful  sensation, 
expecting  the  same  congratulation 
from  him,  but  alas  it  was  quite  a  dif- 
ferent reception  that  I  met  with,  for 
after  I  had  delivered  my  message,  he 
with  a  stern  countenance  said  to  me, 
"Young  man,  what  is  this  you  have 
been  doing?  I  understand  you  have 
been  selling  negroes."  Indeed,  Sir,  I 
have  not,  I  replied.  Some  of  the  men 

458 


An  Am*riran'H 


in  %  Inttalf  Armg 


have,  not  me,  I  assure  you  Sir.  His 
only  reply  was,  "Go  to  your  Troop, 
Sir."  I  obeyed.  The  Cavalry  was 
camped  at  a  village  about  two  miles 
from  Oyster  Bay.  Imagine  what  my 
feelings  must  have  been  at  this  mo- 
ment, but  I  had  yet  a  much  greater 
mortification  still.  The  next  day 
there  was  a  Court  of  Enquiry,  a 
Captain  and  two  Subalterns.  I  was 
examined;  I  told  my  story,  as  it  hap- 
pened, except  how  far  Mr.  McGill 
was  concerned,  but  one  of  the  men 
flatly  told  the  Court  that  McGill  had 
given  them  leave  to  sell  the  negroes. 
I  was  then  again  called  and  exam- 
ined as  to  that  fact.  To  this  I  refused 
to  answer.  Whatever  I  have  done  I 
must  be  the  sufferer,  for  I  would  say 
nothing  that  would  in  the  least  in- 
jure Mr.  McGill.  "Captain  Shank, 
who  was  President  of  the  Court, 
urged  me  to  say  how  far  the  story 
given  by  the  men  was  correct,  for  it 
might  do  away  with  the  charge 
against  myself,  otherwise  he  feared  it 
would  be  the  means  of  my  losing  my 
promotion."  I  replied  that  I  had 
already  said  what  I  should  say,  let  the 
consequence  be  what  it  would.  On 
this  the  Court  broke  up,  and  what  re- 
port they  made  I  never  knew,  but  I 
rather  suspect  that  McGill  must  have 
been  examined,  and  denied  giving  any 
such  leave  from  what  took  place  after- 
wards. The  next  morning  after  the 
men  were  assembled  for  the  morning 
parade,  Colonel  Simcoe  called  me  to 
him,  and  laying  his  head  down  on  the 
neck  of  his  horse  gave  me  one  of  the 
most  severe  reprimands  I  believe  man 
ever  received,  and  told  me  decidedly 
"that  I  had  lost  my  promotion  and  his 
countenance  forever.  Go  Sir  and 
join  your  Troop."  I  returned  to  my 
duty  more  dead  than  alive.  One  of 
the  Officers,  I  think  it  was  Mr.  Mc- 
Nab,  was  going  to  New  York  the 
next  day,  and  I  took  the  opportunity 
of  writing  my  relation,  a  Mr.  Jarvis 
who  was  in  the  Commissarist,  and  in 
my  letter  gave  him  a  true  statement  of 
facts,  enjoining  him  to  secrecy;  that 


he  was  not  to  divulge  it  until  after  my 
death — for  I  determined  the  first  ac- 
tion that  gave  me  opportunity,  either 
to  sacrifice  my  life  or  retrieve  my 
character — at  all  events  I  do  not  think 
I  should  long  have  survived.  I  lost 
my  appetite,  and  my  sleep  went  from 
me;  my  frame  decayed,  and  in  a  few 
days  I  was  a  complete  skeleton. 

One  evening  after  parade  was  dis- 
missed, both  Mr.  McGill  and  myself 
were  desired  to  attend  the  Colonel, 
and  after  all  the  officers  had  retired, 
he  then  taxed  McGill  of  giving  the 
men  liberty  to  sell  the  negroes,  which 
he  denied.  The  Colonel  then  turned 
to  me  and  said,  "Jarvis,  did  he  not 
give  them  leave?"  I  replied,  No  Sir. 
He  gave  me  one  of  those  stem  looks, 
which  spoke  volumes,  taking  a  letter 
fiom  his  pocket  handed  it  to  me  say- 
ing, "Is  not  that  your  handwriting?" 
I  was  thunderstruck,  and  it  was  some 
time  before  I  could  answer.  "Speak 
Sir,  speak,  is  that  your  letter?"  and 
"Is  what  you  have  stated  true?"  I 
then  answered,  Sir  it  is  my  letter,  and 
since  I  must  answer,  the  contents  are 
true,  but  Sir  give  me  leave  to  say  that 
if  I  could  have  imagined  that  my 
friend  would  have  betrayed  me  and 
the  confidence  that  I  had  placed  in 
him,  I  would  have  suffered  death  be- 
fore I  would  have  wrote  that  letter 
now  in  my  hands.  "Go  to  your 
Troop,"  was  his  reply.  What  he  said 
to  Mr.  McGill  I  forbear  mentioning. 

Defeat  of  Conspiracy  and 
Promotion  of  American  Soldier 

Not  long  after  this  I  was  one  even- 
ing ruminating  over  my  misfortunes, 
in  a  retired  part  of  our  quarters,  seat- 
ed upon  a  stone  in  the  dusk  of  the 
evening,  when  I  was  accosted  by  a 
voice  familiar  to  me,  and  embracing 
me  round  the  neck  at  the  same  time, 
saying,  "Dear  Jarvis,  all  is  well  again, 
I  am  sent  as  a  messenger  of  peace  to 
you,  but  you  must  keep  it  secret  that 
I  give  you  the  information.  Captain 
McKay  has  sent  me  to  say  to  you  that 
your  promotion  will  take  place".  I 


459 


0f  (EnUwl  Sfartrta — IStorn  tn  1756 


was  so  much  overcome  that  it  was 
some  time  before  I  could  speak,  and 
when  I  did,  I  said  to  McPherson. 
don't  sport  with  my  wounded  feel- 
ings, I  have  already  received  my  sen- 
tence, and  I  shall  not  long  survive  it. 
"I  tell  you  Jarvis  I  have  said  noth- 
ing but  the  truth."  "Mind  what  I 
have  said,  don't  let  it  be  known  that 
I  gave  you  the  good  news."  He  then 
left  me  and  returned  to  his  Company. 
In  a  few  days  the  Regiment  again 
marched  and  crossed  over  to  Staten 
Island,  and  took  up  our  old  quarters 
at  Richmond.  The  next  morning  I 
saw  my  name  in  the  orderly  book  as 
QuarterMaster  in  Captain  Saunders' 
Troops,  with  orders  for  embarkation. 
An  expedition  was  formed  under 
General  Leslie,  of  Virginia,  and 
amongst  the  Troops  that  composed 
the  Army  was  one  Troop  of  the  i/th 
Light  Dragoons,  Captain  Saunders, 
Lieutenant  Wellson,  Cornet  Merritt, 
QuarterMaster  Jarvis  and  a  few  men 
of  the  old  Troop  of  the  Queen's  Ran- 
gers. Captain  Saunders  was  former- 
ly from  Virginia  and  he  went  to  that 
place  for  the  purpose  of  recruiting; 
clothing,  saddles  and  appointment 
were  placed  under  my  care  for  the 
completion  of  a  full  Troop  of  fifty 
strong.  We  soon  sailed  and  Captain 
Saunders  with  the  other  Officers  and 
men  landed  at  Norfolk,  and  marched 
to  that  part  of  the  country  where  he 
had  formerly  resided.  I  was  ordered 
to  remain  with  the  baggage  until  fur- 
ther orders.  Captain  Saunders,  after 
traversing  the  country,  and  procur- 
ing a  number  of  very  fine  horses,  took 
up  his  quarters  at  Kemp's  Landing, 
to  which  place  I  was  ordered  with  the 
baggage  and  stores.  I  had  hardly 
got  into  good  quarters  before  we  were 
again  ordered  to  march  and  we  sup- 
posed for,  a  short  expedition  only — 
and  a  Company  took  possession  of  my 
quarters  in  my  absence,  but  was  to 
surrender  them  on  my  return,  which 
however  never  took  place.  We  em- 
barked for  Charlestown,  myself,  men, 
stores  and  horses  in  one  vessel  and  the 


Officers  in  another.  On  our  leaving 
Norfolk  Captain  Saunders  had  plun- 
dered more  horses  than  he  was 
allowed  to  put  on  board.  He,  there- 
fore, distrubted  them  to  his  Officers 
and  among  the  rest,  gave  me  a  very 
fine  horse. 

At  sea  we  had  very  boisterous 
weather,  our  vessel  sprang  a  leak — 
never  so  crazy  a  vessel  went  to  sea. 
To  save  our  lives,  I  threw  thirty 
fine  horses  overboard,  but  saved  every 
Officer  a  horse.  With  great  diffi- 
culty we  got  safe  into  port;  every 
person  was  down  working  at  the 
pumps,  and  had  it  not  been  for  a  for- 
tunate circumstance  of  having  several 
green  ox  hides  on  board,  which  we 
cut  up  in  strips,  and  the  Captain  lash- 
ing himself  over-board  and  nailing 
the  strips  over  the  seams  of  the  vessel, 
by  which  means  with  great  exertion 
we  could  keep  the  water  under,  we 
would  have  been  lost.  We  arrived 
safe  at  Charlestown,  when  Captain 
Saunders  with  what  men  he  had  was 
ordered  to  Georgetown.  I  was  or- 
dered to  remain  with  the  Stores,  set 
the  sailors  at  work  making  new  cloth- 
ing for  recruits  and  also  to  recruit, 
but  left  no  money  with  me  to  recruit 
with.  The  consequence  was,  I  never 
recruited  a  man  for  him  whilst  I  re- 
mained in  the  Troop.  He  also  took 
the  horse  from  me,  with  a  promise  to 
give  me  another  when  I  joined  him 
again,  but  as  that  was  not  the  case  I 
lost  my  horse.  About  the  time  that 
Captain  Saunders  went  to  George- 
town, a  party  of  Americans  dashed 
into  the  town,  and  made  Colonel 
Campbell  of  the  King's  American 
Regiment,  who  quartered  outside  the 
Garrison,  a  prisoner,  and  paroled  him, 
and  retired  without  any  other  person 
falling  into  their  hands.  There  was 
at  the  time  a  Captain  Campbell  who 
was  recruiting  a  Troop  of  Dragoons 
at  Georgetown,  and  who  brought  the 
news  of  Colonel  Campbell's  capttare 
to  Charlestown.  He  wished  to  re- 
main at  Charlestown  in  some  busi- 
ness. 


An  Am*riran'fi 


in  %  Srittalj  Artng 


He  procured  an  order  for  me 
to  proceed  to  Georgetown,  with  the 
orders  vesting  Captain  Saunders  with 
the  Command  of  the  Garrison,  and 
giving  Major  Grant  of  the  King's 
Americans  leave  of  absence.  Captain 
Campbell  kept  one  horse,  and  sent  his 
servant  with  one  as  a  guide.  I  pro- 
ceeded on  and  met  an  escort  at  the 
Santee,  who  conducted  me  to  George- 
town, where  I  delivered  my  dispatches 
to  Captain  Saunders,  and  the  next 
morning  returned  in  company  with 
Colonel  Campbell  and  Major  Grant 
under  an  escort  as  far  as  the  Santee 
on  our  return.  After  our  arrival  at 
Charlestown,  Major  Grant  made  me 
a  present  of  a  little  horse,  of  little 
value,  which  I  afterwards  exchanged 
with  a  Hessian  Officer  for  a  very 
smart  white  pony.  This  enabled  me 
to  ride  about  the  country  and  amuse 
myself,  overseeing  my  squad  of  Tail- 
ors at  work,  and  at  the  same  time  in- 
structing them  in  the  carbine  exer- 
cise. 

Experiences  In  Charge  of 
Uniforms  of  King's  Fighters 

Soon  after  this  Captain  Camp- 
bell made  another  visit  to  Charles- 
town,  and  was  to  take  back  with  him 
several  suits  of  clothing,  saddles  and 
appointments  for  some  recruit  Cap- 
tain Saunders  had  obtained.  They 
were  to  go  part  of  the  way  by  water, 
and  I  had  them  put  on  board  for  that 
purpose,  and  called  on  Captain  Camp- 
bell to  sign  a  voucher  for  them.  He 
flew  in  a  violent  passion,  swore  bit- 
terly that  he  would  do  no  such  thing. 
You  won't  Sir  was  my  only  reply,  I 
shall  order  them  on  shore  again,  and 
left  him  for  that  purpose,  but  when 
the  men  came  on  shore,  and  before  the 
things  were  landed,  Captain  Campbell 
came  down  to  the  shore  in  company 
with  some  of  the  Officers  of  the  7ist 
Regiment,  and  I  heard  Captain  Camp- 
bell say  to  them  that  there  was  the 
most  obstinate  fellow  (meaning  me) 
he  ever  saw  in  his  life,  and  mentioned 
the  circumstance.  One  of  the  gentle- 


men  replied  in  these  words,  "I'll  tell 
you  what  Campbell,  the  young  gentle- 
man knows  his  duty.  Suppose  on  the 
way,  those  appointments,  etc.  should 
fall  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy,  and 
he  should  be  called  upon  for  a  state- 
ment of  the  stores  in  his  charge,  and 
he  could  procure  no  vouchers,  the 
consequence  would  be  that  he  would 
be  broke  and  dismissed  the  service." 
After  some  explanation  and  a  prom- 
ise to  indemnify  me  in  case  they 
should  be  lost  and  to  get  Captain 
Saunders'  certificate  and  send  me,  I 
ordered  them  on  board  the  vessel 
again,  and  I  soon  received  Captain 
Saunder's  certificate  of  his  receiving 
them,  and  all  was  well.  A  short  time 
after  this  I  was  one  day  taking  my 
usual  ride,  I  fell  in  with  a  Major  Fra- 
ser  (he  had  formerly  belonged  to  the 
Rangers)  who  after  the  usual  saluta- 
tions said,  "Jarvis,  I  am  glad  to  fall 
in  with  you.  I  have  been  wishing  to 
see  you  for  some  days."  I  wish  I  had 
known  it  Major,  I  hope  it  was  noth- 
ing disagreeable,  for  of  late  I  have 
only  got  out  on  one  difficulty  to  fall 
into  another."  "No,  I  assure  you." 
he  said.  "It  was  on  a  subject  I  hope 
much  to  your  advantage."  I  am  hap- 
py to  hear  it  I  replied,  as  I  have  been 
a  useless  animal  for  this  some  time 
past,  and  I  should  like  for  some  em- 
ployment for  the  good  of  the  service 
than  I  am  now  engaged  in.  He  then 
said,  "Captain  Campbell  has  been 
speaking  with  me,  and  requested  me 
to  solicit  you  to  accept  a  Lieutenancy 
in  his  Troop." 

Commanding  Cavalry  and  procuring 
Sheep  for  British  Soldiers 

This  was  a  matter  so  unexpected 
that  I  could  hardly  think  him  in 
earnest,  and  then  mentioned  the 
circumstance  which  happened  at  our 
last  interview.  "Perhaps  that  is 
the  very  cause  why  he  is  so  desirous 
for  you  to  join  him."  After  some 
enquiry  on  what  establishment  his 
Troop  was  raised,  and  his  advice  how 
he  thought  I  should  act  on  a  matter 


0f  Ofolmtri  Slanrta— Inrn  tn 


of  such  consequence,  he  "advised  me 
to  write  to  my  Commanding  Officer, 
who  no  doubt  would  give  me  such  ad- 
vice as  would  be  acceptable  to  me," 
and  if  he  gives  you  leave,  I  advise  you 
by  all  means  to  accept  of  Captain 
Campbell's  offer."  I  wrote  to  Cap- 
tain Saunders,  received  a  favorable 
answer,  called  on  Captain  Campbell, 
who  went  with  me  to  the  Inspector 
General's  office,  had  my  warrant 
made  out  and  put  in  General  orders 
until  the  Commander-in-Chief  should 
signify  his  pleasure,  to  whom  a  rec- 
ommendation was  sent,  and  which 
was  by  him  confirmed.  Captain 
Campbell  furnished  me  with  plenty  of 
money,  and  I  earnestly  set  about  re- 
cruiting, and  in  a  short  time  we  mus- 
tered twenty-six  Dragoons  with 
which  number  we  were  ordered  to 
take  the  field,  after  procuring  horses 
and  appointments.  This  was  at  the 
time  that  Lord  Rawden  fought  the 
Americans  and  defeated  them  at  Cam- 
den,  and  the  first  service  I  performed 
was  to  escort  Colonel  Balfour  to  the 
Santee  where  we  met  Lord  Rawden. 
After  having  an  interview  with  his 
and  after  having  an  interview  with  his 
Lordship,  we  returned  to  Charlestown 
and  his  Lordship,  after  disposing  of 
his  sick  and  wounded,  proceeded  with 
the  Army  to  relieve  our  post  at 
Ninety-Six  which  was  closely  be- 
seiged  by  the  Americans.  In  the 
meantime,  a  re-inforcement  of  three 
Regiments  arrived  from  England,  the 
3rd,  iqth  and  3Oth  Regiments.  The 
1 9th  Regiment,  Captain  Saunders' 
Troop,  which  had  been  removed  from 
Georgetown,  and  Captain  Campbell's 
Troop  were  ordered  to  Monks'  Cor- 
ner to  relieve  the  Garrison  there,  who 
went  on  to  join  Lord  Rawden.  At 
this  point  the  Commissary,  who 
wished  to  join  his  Lordship,  invested 
me  as  Commissary,  and  gave  me  pos- 
session of  the  Stores,  and  for  some 
time  I  was  both  Commissary  and 
Commanding  Officer  of  the  Cavalry, 
and  during  that  period  I  marched  into 
the  country  and  procured  a  large 


drove  of  beefs  and  sheep  for  the 
Army,  which  so  pleased  General 
Coats  who  commanded,  that  he  urged 
me  strongly  to  take  a  commission  in 
his  Regiment,  but  for  sundry  motives, 
not  worth  mentioning  here,  I  de- 
clined. I  continued  for  some  weeks 
to  perform  this  double  duty,  but 
found  too  fatiguing  to  discharge  both. 
I  wrote  to  the  Commissary  General 
to  send  a  person  to  relieve  me.  At 
this  time  we  were  re-inforced  with 
the  South  Carolina  Regiment,  who 
for  their  gallant  conduct  at  Camden, 
were  made  Cavalry.  This  re-inforce- 
ment made  the  Cavalry  of  great  con- 
sequence at  this  post,  and  we  had 
soon  an  opportunity  to  try  our  mettle. 

Scouting  with  Redcoat  Dragoons 
on  Trail  of  Americans 

General  Coats  had  received  intelli- 
gence that  the  enemy  intended  an 
attack  upon  our  position  at  two  places 
at  the  same  time,  and  in  a  very  short 
period.  I  was  sent  for  by  the  Gen- 
eral, who  directed  me  to  take  four 
Dragoons  and  a  few  Militia  and  pro- 
ceed on  the  road  that  lead  to  Charles - 
town,  and  go  until  I  should  fall  in 
with  the  enemy,  if  they  were  between 
Monks'  Corner  and  Goose  Creek.  I 
set  off  a  little  before  sunset  in  a  heavy 
shower  of  rain,  and  before  I  had  pro- 
ceeded far  found  that  my  Militia  men 
had  left  me,  and  I  was  reduced  to  my 
four  Dragoons,  but  as  my  object  was 
intelligence  more  than  fighting  I  pro- 
ceeded on.  I  soon  discovered  six  or 
eight  men  advancing  towards  me, 
and  when  they  came  to  a  certain  dis- 
tance, challenged  me.  I  said  a  friend. 
"What  friend?"  To  the  King.  At 
this  declaration  one  of  them  dis- 
mounted and  placed  his  rifle  across 
his  horse.  I  charged,  his  rifle  missed 
fire.  He  mounted  and  with  his  com- 
rades dashed  into  the  woods.  I  soon 
came  up  with  him,  and  by  a  well  di- 
rected stroke  laid  him  in  the  dust.  I 
ordered  my  man  to  secure  him,  and 
push  forward  after  the  rest.  I  had 
nearly  overtaken  another,  when  my 

462 


An  Ammran'a 


in  tip  Iritialf  Army. 


horse,  unfortunately,  got  entangled  in 
a  grape  vine,  and  the  man  escaped ;  as 
the  day  was  so  far  spent,  I  could  not 
see  to  pursue  the  enemy  any  further. 
I  set  to  camp  with  my  prisoner,  and 
gave  him  up  to  the  General.  He  con- 
firmed the  information  before  re- 
ceived. It  was  my  turn  for  duty  that 
night,  and  my  orders  were  to  patrol 
on  the  road  leading  to  the  Santee,  and 
I  did  so,  but  discovered  none  of  the 
enemy  during  the  night,  but  in  the 
morning  about  sunrise  I  discovered 
that  a  large  body  of  men  had  ap- 
proached near  the  Garrison,  and  had 
taken  off  the  road  to  gain  our  right 
flank.  I  galloped  back  as  fast  as  I 
could,  but  before  I  reached  the  Camp 
the  enemy  had  drove  in  our  Sentinels, 
and  were  destroying  the  bridge  to 
prevent  our  retreat  on  that  route,  and 
then  they  retraced  their  steps  and 
took  up  their  position  on  the  road  that 
lead  to  the  Santee.  We  remained 
idle  during  the  fore  part  of  the  day, 
but  hearing  that  the  American  Horse 
were  at  a  plantation,  and  their  horses 
were  running  loose  about  the  field, 
Major  Fraser,  of  the.  South  Carolina 
Dragoons,  was  ordered  with  the 
whole  Cavalry  to  proceed  and  recon- 
noiter  the  Troop.  I  commanded  (for 
Captain  Campbell  was  absent)  led, 
except  the  advance  guard  commanded 
by  an  Officer.  We  soon  came  in 
sight  of  the  enemy  and  charged.  The 
Officer  with  the  advance — his  horse 
fell  and  threw  his  rider — I  said  to 
Major  Fraser,  I'll  take  charge  of  the 
advance,  did  not  wait  to  hear  any 
reply,  but  set  off.  I  rode  a  very  fleet 
horse  and  soon  gained  the  advance, 
and  pressed  hard  on  the  enemy,  who 
left  the  road  and  took  the  woods.  I 
soon  came  up  with  one,  and  my  Cor- 
poral on  the  other  side,  and  we  both 
made  a  blow  at  the  same  time  and 
gave  the  fellow  his  quarters.  I  heard 
a  shout  in  my  rear,  looked  round,  and 
found  myself  in  the  rear  of  a  large 
body  of  the  enemy.  In  wheeling  my 
horse  round  I  broke  my  stirrup 
leather  and  came  to  the  ground. 

463 


Encounter  with  Revolutionists 
and  a  Flag  of  Truce 

However  I  recovered  my  seat  and 
then  pressed  to  regain  the  front  of  the 
enemy,  or  I  must  be  taken  prisoner, 
and  I  was  indebted  to  the  fleetness  of 
my  horse  for  my  escape.  I  had  nearly 
gained  the  front  of  the  enemy  before 
they  discovered  me,  and  they  called 
me  to  surrender;  not  yet,  thinks  I,  a 
little  more  running  first.  I  found  I 
gained  fast  upon  our  Troops,  who 
were  retreating  in  good  order.  I  re- 
covered the  roads  a  few  rods  in  front 
of  the  enemy.  They  fired  several 
shots  after  me  without  injury.  We 
met  our  Infantry  with  a  piece  of  ord- 
nance. We  wheeled  about  and 
checked  the  enemy,  and  then  retired 
to  Camp.  By  this  time  our  piquet  at 
the  bridge  leading  to  Charlestown 
were  attacked,  and  I  was  ordered  to 
direct  Captain  Bell,  who  commanded, 
to  retire,  which  he  did  with  no  other 
loss  than  one  of  his  Officers  slightly 
wounded  in  the  arm,  which  he  was 
very  fond  of  carrying  in  a  sling  for  a 
long  time  after.  We  remained  until 
night,  when  we  burned  our  stores,  and 
commenced  our  retreat  through  a  bye 
road  that  the  enemy  had  no  knowl- 
edge of.  During  the  night  the 
Troops  got  separated,  and  the  wag- 
gons which  were  heavily  loaded  broke 
down  one  after  the  other.  Captain 
Campbell,  Paymaster  of  the  iQth  Reg- 
iment, with  the  Military  chest  fell  into 
the  enemy's  hands,  with  all  the  heavy 
baggage  of  the  Regiment.  We  pro- 
ceeded on  until  daylight,  when  we 
took  up  a  position  at  a  plantation, 
flanked  by  a  navigable  stream,  over 
which  there  was  a  bridge  which  we 
passed,  and  placed  a  piece  of  cannon 
to  guard  the  bridge.  The  Cavalry 
had  unbridled  their  horses  at  the  plan- 
tation, and  the  Infantry  began  to 
cook  their  breakfast.  The  enemy 
charged  over  the  bridge  and  cut  the 
sentry  at  the  cannon  down,  and  then 
dashed  into  the  wood.  The  igth  fell 
in,  some  without  their  coats;  great 
confusion  ensued,  and  they  began  to 


nf 


Sarute  —  Horn  m  IfSfi 


give  ground.  The  Cavalry  mounted 
and  really  forced  them  to  face  the  en- 
emy. Major  Eraser  then  had  some 
consultation  with  General  Coats,  took 
advantage  of  a  high  field  of  corn,  and 
set  off  and  left  the  igth  to  their  fate, 
and  pushed  for  Charlestown,  got  a 
re-inforcement  and  returned  to  look 
after  the  iQth  Regiment,  who  after  we 
left  them  General  Coats  drew  up  his 
men  in  the  open  field,  and  waited  for 
the  enemy,  who  came  on  and  were  re- 
pulsed several  times,  and  at  last  re- 
treated over  the  bridge,  and  sent  a 
flag  of  truce  for  leave  to  bury  their 
dead.  Had  the  Cavalry  been  with 
the  General,  on  the  retreat  of  the  en- 
emy, we  might  no  doubt  have  made  a 
glorious  day  of  it,  but  so  it  was — they 
lost  all  their  baggage,  but  had  gained 
their  credit,  which  in  some  measure 
they  had  tarnished  in  the  morning. 
I  had  made  up  my  mind  that  they 
would  all  have  been  taken  prisoners. 

A  Loyalist  and  a  Patriot 
in  Death  Duel  on  Battlefield 

We  all  marched  to  Charlestown  and 
in  a  few  days  Captain  Campbell's 
Troop  were  drafted  into  the  South 
Carolina  Regiment,  but  before  this 
took  place,  the  Regiment  had  taken 
a  Colonel  Haines,  who  was  executed 
as  a  traitor.  Captain  Saunders  also 
with  his  and  Captain  Campbell's 
Troop  made  an  excursion  into  the 
country  and  attacked  a  body  of  the 
enemy  at  Snipe's  Plantation — we  ap- 
proached the  place  at  sunrise  in  the 
morning,  found  the  gate  leading  to 
the  house  secured  with  a  large  ox 
chain,  and  the  fences  each  side  made 
very  strong,  which  it  took  some  time 
to  demolish  under  a  heavy  fire  from 


the  enemy.  We  at  last  succeeded, 
and  the  enemy  retreated  back  into  a 
large  rice  field,  where  they  were  over- 
taken and  very  few  of  them  escaped 
with  their  lives,  and  only  one  man 
taken  prisoner,  who  was  so  shame- 
fully mangled  that  we  could  not  bring 
him  away — one  of  the  enemy,  who 
had  nearly  gained  a  wood,  discovered 
that  no  person  was  following  him  but 
myself,  waited  for  me,  and  when  I 
had  got  at  a  certain  distance,  levelled 
his  rifle.  I  expected  at  least  he  would 
have  killed  my  horse.  To  turn  from 
him  was  to  me  certain  death.  I 
therefore  dashed  towards  him.  He 
fired  and  missed  me  and  my  horse, 
and  before  he  could  raise  his  rifle  he 
was  a  dead  man.  We  returned  to 
our  quarters  with  a  few  horses  which 
we  had  taken.  We  were  now  sta- 
tioned at  Dorchester,  twenty  miles 
from  Charlestown,  with  some  Troops 
of  Infantry.  Captain  Campbell's 
Troop  now  became  a  part  of  the 
South  Carolina  Regiment  and  we 
with  some  Hessian  Troops  and  the 
3<Dth  Regiment  formed  a  body  of 
Troops  for  an  expedition  towards. 
Georgia. 


The  remaining  pages  of  this  re- 
markable manuscript  reveal  an  aston- 
ishing story  of  conditions  in  the  Brit- 
ish Army,  and  relate  many  incidents 
hitherto  unknown  to  American  his- 
tory. The  experiences  of  Colonel 
Jarvis  of  Connecticut  as  a  fighter  in 
the  King's  ranks  against  his  own 
countrymen,  for  the  sake  of  his  fath- 
er's principles  and  his  own,  is  one  ^f 
the  most  important  documents  of  the 
period.  Its  closing  pages  will  be  re- 
corded in  another  chapter. 


SONNET  BY  HORACE  HOLLEY 


Covertly  in  music  is  a  cry 

And  hidden  in  the  slow  fine  toil  of  brush 

A  stifled  eagerness,  an  untaught  rush 

Of  soul  to  voice  a  passion  and  to  die; 

Unsought,  unbid,  an  outlawed  legacy, 

A  sudden  shriek  that  stabs  the  brooding  hush 

But  slinks  away  at  its  own  nudity 


And  chokes  the  fountain's  fierce  extorted  gush. 
Toe  like  a  lonely  warrior  on  the  field 
Who  seeks  a  fair  opponent  for  his  lance, 
But  finds  all  knights  are  stooping  in  a  dance 
And  stilled  the  ancient  sturdy  clang  of  shield. 
So  as  his  untamed  sword  will  never  tame 
Undrawn  he  bears  it  from  their  sluggard  shame. 


464 


PILOT    OF    FIRST    WHITE  iMEN    TO    CROSS    AMERICAN 
•CONTINENT— STATI-K  or  *ACAJAWEA  BY 
BRUNO  Louis  Zixx,  SCTLITOR 


INDIAN    GIRL    GUIDING    EXPLORERS    OVER    ROCKY 
MOUNTAINS— SACAJAWEA  AND  HER  PAPOOSE 
BAPTISTE— BY  BRDNO  Louis  ZIMM 


Pilot  flf  3tet  Htfit?  Mm  to 
tlje  Ammratt  OJntttttumt 

J&rntifiraticn 

nt'  llir  jluiiiau  o'url  mlm  Crb 

ihr  Cruna  auii  (Clark  txyrfiitum  onrr 

iljr  Rorkg  fflmmtaina  in  Ihrtr  llnparallrlrfc  Knurnry 

into  tljr  ffiijatrrira  nf  Ihr  Ulratrrn  HSnrlb    ^    Hrrnnnition  0f 

aa  ttfr  Wuman  uilin  (Buifcrb  thr  Explurrra  tn  tltr  Nrui  (Solftrn  tutpirr 

BY 

GRACE  RAYMOND  HEBARD.  PH.D. 

LIBRARIAN  OF  THK  UNIVERSITY  OP  WYOMINO 

MEMBER  OP  WYOMING  HISTORICAL  SOCIETY 

MEMBER  op  THE  WYOMING  BAR 


most  hazardous  and  the 
JL  most    significant    journey 

ever  made  on  the  West- 
W  I  ern  Continent — a  journey 
that  rivals  in  daring  and 
exceeds  in  importance  the 
expeditions  of  Stanley 
and  Livingstone  in  the  wilds  of  Africa 
— a  journey  that  resulted  in  the  great- 
est real  estate  transaction  ever  record- 
ed in  history  and  gaVe  to  the  world  a 
riches  beyond  comprehension — was 
piloted  by  a  woman. 

It  was  an  epoch-making  journey ;  a 
journey  that  moved  the  world  along; 
that  pushed  the  boundary  of  the 
United  States  from  the  Mississippi 
river  to  the  Pacific ;  that  gave  us  the 
breadth  of  the  hemisphere  from  ocean 
to  ocean ;  the  command  of  its  rivers 
and  harbors ;  the  wealth  of  its  moun- 
tains and  plains  and  valleys — a  do- 
minion vast  and  rich  enough  for  the 
ambition  of  kings. 

When  this  woman  led  those  first 
hardy  explorers  into  the  wonders  of 
an  unknown  realm  its  solitudes  were 
unbroken,  except  by  the  war-whoop 
of  the  savage  and  the  growl  of  wild 
beasts  echoing  through  the  forests. 
The  buffalo  and  wild  horse  roamed  at 
will  over  its  vast  prairies — the  stately 
elk,  the  timid  deer,  and  the  sprightly 
antelope.  The  bear  and  the  wolf 
were  monarchs  of  the  forest.  Its 
M  rnery  is  the  grandest  on  earth  :  IN 
natural  curiosities  the  most  remarka- 
ble in  existence,  and  its  river  courses 
tlu-  longest  in  the  world. 

In  honor  of  this  Indian  girl,  Saca- 

467 


jawea,  the  only  woman  who  accom- 
panied the  Lewis  and  Clark  expedi- 
tion into  the  northwest  an  hundred 
years  ago,  memorials  are  being 
erected.  A  bill  was  introduced  in  the 
Wyoming  Legislature  in  February, 
1907,  carrying  with  it  an  appropria- 
tion of  $500  for  the  erection  of  a  mon- 
ument to  mark  the  last  resting-place 
of  this  woman  pilot,  the  amount  asked 
for  purposely  corresponding  to  the 
amount  given  Charboneau  by  Lewis 
and  Clark,  at  Mandan  in  1806.  The 
Legislature  of  Xorth  Dakota  has  re- 
cently, 1907,  appropriated  the  sum  of 
$15,000.00  for  a  foundation  and  ped- 
estal for  a  Sacajawean  statue  to  be 
made  by  Mr.  Leonard  Crunelle.  This 
is  to  be  erected  at  Bismark.  There  is, 
also,  a  project  on  foot  in  Montana  to 
erect  a  monument  at  Three  Forks  in 
memory  of  this  woman.  Although 
the  governor  of  Wyoming  earnestly 
recommended  to  the  Legislature  in  his 
message  an  appropriation,  the  meas- 
ure failed  to  become  a  law,  due  doubt- 
less to  the  fact  that  sentiment  for  the 
measure  had  not  been  sufficiently 
aroused  and  a  keen  enough  interest  in 
the  subject  awakened.  When  the 
measure  was  presented  for  passage,  it 
developed  that  one  member  of  the 
Legislature  had  known  not  only  the 
children  of  Sacajawea  but  also  their 
mother. 

The  grave  of  Sacajawea  has  re- 
cently been  found,  and  her  identity 
is  established  by  newlv  discovered  evi- 
dence herein  recorded : 


Woman 


to 


®O    have    one's    deeds    ex- 
tolled after  a  century  has 
passed,   when   they   were 
hardly    recognized    when 
executed,    has    been    the 
common  fate  particularly 
of  that  class  of  individu- 
als known  as  explorers ;  for  the  ser- 
vice rendered  must  be  subjected  to  the 
test  of  time  and  the  benefits  derived 
as  a  result  of  the  exploration  must  be 
carefully    weighed     before     applause 
may  be  adequately  given. 

The  only  woman  who  accompanied 
Lewis  and  Clark  across  the  Continent 
to  the  Pacific  Coast  during  the  sea- 
sons of  1804-6,  did  not  in  her  life  time 
icceive  any  personal  recognition  of 
the  services  she  rendered  these  ex- 
plorers during  their  unparalleled 
journey  to  the  then  unknown  great 
Northwest.  But  the  century  that  has 
passed  since  that  event  has  brought  a 
keener  appreciation  of  her  services 
from  those  who  have  taken  interest  to 
examine  and  unravel  records  of  her 
deeds  as  a  genius  of  a  guide.  This 
woman  was  a  Shoshone  Indian  who 
wras  known  by  the  name  of  Saca- 
jawea.1  As  she  was  a  wife  of  a  French 
interpreter,  Touissant  Charboneau, 
conventionality  might  demand  that 
she  be  known  as  Mrs.  Charboneau ; 
but  we  prefer  to  call  her  more  famil- 
iarly by  her  tribal  name,  because  it 
was  her  native  instincts  and  intelli- 
gence that  gave  her  a  place  in  history 
lather  than  that  she  was  the  wife  of 
an  interpreter.  The  story  of  the  part 
that  Sacajawea  played  in  this  conti- 
nental expedition  is  as  fascinating  as 
a  piece  of  knighthood  fiction ;  that  it 
is  history  adds  to  the  charm. 

Wyoming  was  not  traversed  by 
these  explorers  either  on  the  journey 
to  the  coast  or  on  the  return,  yet  it 
claims  the  distinction  of  having  had 
this  Indian  woman  guide  a  resident 
within  its  borders  for  many  years  and 

i.  Reverend  John  Roberts,  missionary 
to  Shoshone  Indians.  Wyoming,  for 
twenty-five  years,  gives  the  pronunciation 
as  Sak-a-jawe.  The  a  as  in  far.  Last  a 
silent. 


holds  now  all  that  is  mortal  of  this 
"native  born  American."  The  facts 
leading  to  the  establishment  beyond 
doubt  of  the  identity  of  the  Wyoming 
woman  with  that  of  the  woman  guide 
are  presented  in  detail  now  for  the 
first  time.  This  statement  of  identity 
has  been  met  with  ridicule,  doubt,  sus- 
picion, denial.  Ridicule  has  been 
turned  to  consideration ;  doubt  to  be- 
lief ;  suspicion  to  admission ;  denial  to 
acceptance  for  fact  after  fact  has  been 
presented  and  corroborated  by  those 
of  unquestioned  integrity. 

Sacajawea's  life  has  two  periods: 
that  about  which  we  know ;  that  about 
which  nothing  can  be  learned.  It  is 
this  latter  period  that  has  been  the 
stumbling  block,  "the  winter  of  our 
discontent."  We  see  her  in  the  vigor 
of  her  splendid  young  womanhood ; 
she  disappears  as  mysteriously  as  she 
appeared ;  when  she  again  is  visible 
it  is  as  the  aged  Sacajawea,  white- 
haired  and  well  preserved,  whose  fatal 
ailment  could  only  be  attributed  to 
"old  age." 

When  Lewis  and  Clark  with  their 
party  of  men.  in  the  fall  of  1804, 
reached  the  Mandan  Indian  Villages, 
not  far  from  the  present  site  of  Bis- 
mark,  North  Dakota,  they  engaged 
an  Indian  interpreter  who  was  to 
accompany  them  in  the  spring  on  their 
farther  western  voyage.  This  French 
Canadian  interpreter,  Charboneau, 
had  at  that  time  at  least  two  wives, 
Sacajawea,  the  younger,  having  been 
sold  to  him  as  a  slave  when  she  was  a 
child  of  five  years.  When  he  made 
her  his  wife  she  was  about  fourteen 
years  old.  The  following  year,  Feb- 
ruary nth,  1805,  she  gave  birth  to  a 
son  who  was  destined  to  occupy  a 
unique  position  in  the  expedition 
which  continued  its  western  journey 
on  the  seventh  of  April  of  that  same 
year.  Sacajawea  strapped  her  little 
papoose,  not  yet  two  months  old,  on 
her  back  and' practically  carried  him 
in  this  cuddled  position,  with  his  view 
of  the  surrounding  country  limited  to 
what  he  could  see  from  over  his  moth- 
er's shoulder,  to  the  coast  and  return, 


pint  of  3firsi  Mljite  Mm  to  (EroHa  Amerira 


a  distance  of  over  5,000  miles.  This 
youthful  traveler  has  been  known  as 
"Little  Touissant,"  "Little  Charbo- 
neau,"  but  he  was  called  "Baptiste" 
by  Clark  and  also  at  various  other 
times  when,  grown  older,  he  in  his 
turn  acted  as  guide,  for  he  possessed 
the  native  instincts  and  cleverness 
characteristic  of  his  mother.  It  is  as 
"Baptiste"  that  he  was  known  at  the 
time  of  his  death  and  his  children  have 
taken  this  as  their  family  name. 

A  century  ago  the  Shoshone  In- 
dians made  their  home  around  and 
along  the  Snake  river  in  Idaho,  just 
west  of  the  Bitter  Root  Mountains, 
or,  as  they  are  now  called,  the  Rock- 
ies. It  was  in  this  locality  that  the 
Minnetarees,  or  Blackfeet,  swept 
clown  and,  in  mighty  battle,  slew  many 
of  the  Shoshones,  taking  others  into 
captivity.  At  this  time  Sacajawea, 
with  a  girl  friend,  was  stolen  and 
taken  over  the  mountains  toward  the 
East.  The  girl  friend  escaped  but 
Sacajawea  was  forced  to  the  Mandan 
Village  and  sold.  In  journeying 
west  with  Lewis  and  Clark  from  the 
Mandans,  in  the  spring  of  1805,  Saca- 
jawea became  more  and  more  con- 
scious that  the  country  over  which 
they  were  going  was  that  over  which 
she  had  been  taken  when  in  captivity 
five  years  previous,  and  when,  after 
traveling  many  days,  no  one  of  the 
expedition  knew  where  he  was  or  the 
true  direction  to  pursue,  the  party  de- 
pended entirely  upon  the  instincts  and 
guidance  of  the  Indian  woman.  The 
homing  bird  knew  the  direction  was 
right,  but  intelligence  had  not  yet 
awakened. 

At  this  time  Sacajawea  was  not 
only  helpful  as  a  guide,  but  also  ren- 
dered invaluable  service  on  May  four- 
teenth, when  her  husband,  through 
his  clumsiness,  turned  over  the  canoe 
containing  all  of  the  papers,  instru- 
ments, medicine  and  almost  every 
other  article  indispensable  to  the  jour- 
ney, without  which  it  would  have 
Uvn  impossible  to  proceed.  Had 
these  properties  been  lost  it  would 
have  been  necessary  to  retrace  three 

469 


PURE   TYPE    OF   THE  SHOSHONE  GIRL 

Virginia  Grant,  a  pupil  at  the  Carlisle  Indian 
School  in  Pennsylvania,  posing  for  Sculptor 
Zitnm's  statue  of  Sacajawea— The  papoose  on 
Sacajawea's  back  is  modelled  from  the  child 
of  William  Sitting  Bull,  son  of  the  Sioux  chief 

thousand  miles  in  order  to  replenish 
the  destroyed  goods,  which  require- 
ment in  itself  would  have  postponed 
the  journey  for  at  least  a  year.  At 
the  risk  of  her  own  life  and  that  of 
her  child,  Sacajawea  plunged  into  the 
stream,  righted  the  boat,  rescued  the 
papers  and  packages  that  already 
were  floating  down  the  stream.  Sev- 
eral days  after  this  when  a  new  river 
was  discovered,  Lewis  and  Clark 
named  it  after  her.  It  is  now  known 
as  Crooked  Creek.2 

In  the  summer  of  1805  the  party 
camped  on  the  exact  spot,  the  junc- 
tion of  the  Jefferson,  Madison  and 
Gallatin  rivers,  where  Sacajawea  had 
been  captured.3  From  this  point  on  she 

2.  Montana. 

3.  Gass'  Journal,  page   114   (Hosmer's 
Edition). 


Woman  WIn  IGro 


to        (Soloen  W?st 


recognized  familiar  landmarks  and 
the  path  to  the  West  became  more  and 
more  a  matter  of  memory  rather  than 
of  instinct.  She  found  for  Clark  the 
pass  in  the  mountain  through  which 
the  party  went,  on  the  other  side  en- 
countering what  threatened  to  be  hos- 
tile Indians.  These  Indians,  the  Sho- 
shones.  thought  their  old  enemy,  the 
IMuckfeet,  had  returned  to  renew  their 
war.  Lewis  advanced  on  horseback 
alone,  having  discovered  an  Indian 
chief  with  bow  and  arrows  on  an  ele- 
gant horse  without  saddle.  This  In- 
dian proved  to  be  a  Cameahwait,  the 
chief  of  the  Shoshone  tribe.  Lewis 
took  his  blanket  which  he  had  in  his 
knapsack  and  after  holding  it  up  with 
both  hands  by  two  corners,  threw  it 
over  his  head  unfolded  so  to  appear 
as  if  he  were  trying  to  spread  it  on  the 
ground.  This  was  a  signal  of  peace 
to  signify  that  it  was  to  serve  as  a  seat 
for  a  distinguished  guest  and  is  the 
usual  sign  of  friendliness  among  In- 
dians of  the  West.  At  the  same  time 
Lewis  kept  calling  "tabba  bone,"4 
which,  as  taught  to  them  by  Saca- 
jawea,  signifies  "white  man."  While 
doing  these  things  he  rolled  up  his 
sleeves  to  show  the  white  skin  of  his 
arms,  for  the  many  months  of  sun  and 
weather  had  tanned  both  face  and 
hands  to  the  color  of  an  Indian. 

A  few  days  after  this  event  Clark, 
who  with  Charboneau  and  Sacajawea 
had  explored  another  region,  made  his 
appearance ;  upon  his  approach 
toward  the  Indians  Sacajawea  com- 
menced to  dance  with  joy  and  excite- 
ment and  sucked  her  ringers  which 
was  to  indicate  that  the  warriors  in 
place  of  being  hostile  were  of  her  own 
tribe.  She  at  once  discovered  her 
treasured  girl  friend  whom  she  em- 
braced with  the  most  "tender  affec- 
tion" and  to  her  infinite  delight  recog- 
nized in  the  chief  her  long-lost 
brother.  The  Lewis  and  Clark  Jour- 
nals speak  of  the  most  ardent  manner 
in  which  the  feelings  of  the  brother 

4.  Lewis  and   Clark  Journals,  Volume 
I,  page  379  (Hosmer's  Edition). 


and  sister  were  expressed.  Saca- 
jawea threw  her  blanket  over  him  and 
with  her  head  on  his  shoulder  "wept 
profusely."  Here  she  learned  that  all 
of  her  family  had  died  except  two 
brothers  and  a  son  of  her  eldest  sis- 
ter, "a  small  boy,  who  was  immedi- 
ately adopted  by  her:'  This  last 
fact,  insignificant  as  it  may  appear, 
proves  a  strong  point  in  establishing 
Sacajawea's  identity.  There  is  no 
record  to  show  what  became  of  this 
boy  after  adoption,  whether  he  went 
en  with  the  party  or  whether  on  its 
return  he  went  with  his  adopted 
mother  to  the  Mandan  Villages.  Xo 
record  can  be  traced  of  him  from  that 
time  until  recent  years  when  we  find 
him  living  as  the  brother  of  Baptiste 
and  son  of  Sacajawea,  he  being 
known  as  Bazil. 

Sacajawea  was  home  again,  not  to 
stay,  however,  for  she  never  hesitated 
in  her  choice  to  continue  with  the 
white  man's  party  rather  than  to  be 
reunited  with  her  tribe.  The  expedi- 
tion at  this  point  purchased  horses 
which  were  absolutely  necessary  for 
the  continuance  of  the  journey,  as  the 
canoes  which  had  done  service  to  this 
point  now  had  to  be  abandoned  and 
the  journey  made  overland  until  the 
waters  of  the  Columbia  became  navi- 
gable. Sacajawea  discovered  a  plot 
which  was  to  drive  the  horses  away 
that  had  been  purchased  from  her 
brother  and  leave  the  expedition 
stranded,  with  the  alternate  of  having 
to  return  by  boat  or  press  forward  on 
foot,  an  impossible  task  owing  to  the 
scarcity  of  food.  Here  again  she 
made  herself  valuable  by  giving  infor- 
mation to  Lewis  and  Clark,  even 
though  she  had  to  testify  to  the 
treachery  of  her  own  brother  and  his 
people. 

Charboneau  was  the  interpreter,  she 
the  guide,  though  many  times  she  had 
to  come  to  his  rescue.  One  interest- 
ing circumstance  will  illustrate  this 
important  service.  There  was  a  con- 

5.  Lewis  and   Clark  Journals,  Volume 
I,  page  408  (Hosmer's  Edition). 

470 


plot  0f  3Btr0t  MIftte  Mm  10  (ErnBH  Ammra 


troversy  in  which  two  chiefs  were  im- 
plicated over  some  horses,  at  a  time 
when  the  possession  of  horses  meant 
success  or  failure.  These  chiefs, 
Twisted-Hair  and  Xeeshnepahkeeook 
(Cut  Nose),  were  of  the  Chopunn 
tribe.  One  of  Lewis  and  Clark's  men 
took  the  wording  of  the  trial  in  Fng- 
lish  and  turned  the  English  into 
French  for  Charboneau.  who  trans- 
lated this  French  into  Ilidatsa  for 
Sacajawea,  while  Sacajawea  gave 
this  Hidatsa  in  Shoshonc  to  the  Sho- 
shone  prisoner,  who  in  turn  adapted 
this  Shoshone  to  Chopunnish  for  the 
contesting  Indian  chiefs.  A  recital 
of  all  of  the  service  that  this  Indian 
woman  rendered  to  the  expedition 
would  require  a  daily  extract  from  the 
Lewis  and  Clark  Journals,  for  it  was 
as  constant  as  it  was  unselfish. 

How  Lewis  and  Clark  who  selected 
all  of  the  men  who  were  to  accompany 
them  for  varied  and  special  qualifica- 
tions which  would  best  and  most  mis- 
cellaneously serve  the  expedition, 
failed  to  include  some  one  of  the  med- 
ical profession  or  one  skilled  in  surgi- 
cal science  is  a  matter  quite  beyond 
comprehension.  Along  these  lines, 
however,  Sacajawea  added  to  her 
value,  for  her  native  and  secret 
knowledge  of  medicinal  herbs  and 
plants  and  their  curative  properties 
was  of  extreme  worth  in  time  of  sick- 
ness. Again  it  is  difficult  to  imagine 
when  starvation  seemed  to  be  the  only 
outcome  what  would  have  been  the 
result  if  she  had  not  concocted  messes 
made  from  seeds  and  plants  and  had 
not  known  of  the  riches  stored  away 
in  the  prairie  dog  holes  where  were 
found  artichokes  as  valuable  as  pota- 
toes. The  coast  was  finally  reached 
December  7,  1805,  where  the  party 
made  winter  quarters  at  Clatsop.  four 
thousand,  one  hundred  and  thirty-five 
miles  from  St.  Louis,  the  starting 
point. 

March,  1806,  found  the  party  ready 
to  retrace  the  many  weary  miles. 
The  entire  party  that  left  Mandan 
reached  that  point  in  August  of  this 
same  year.  At  this  point  we  must 


GREAT  -  GREAT  -  GRANDDAUGHTER  OF 
SACAJAWEA  —  Indian  Woman,  Eunice  Bazil, 
photographed  in  her  native  costume  on  the  Sho- 
shone Reservation  for  Dr.  Hebard's  identification 
of  the  Lost  Pilot  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition 
into  the  Unknown  Northwestern  American  Frontier 


abandon  the  exploring  party  and  con- 
fine ourselves  to  the  movements  of  the 
actors  who  are  most  vitally  connected 
with  the  history  of  our  Indian  Prin- 
cess, for  such  a  title  she  could  have 
rightfully  claimed  through  her  royal 
blood.  Charboneau  received  from 
Lewis  and  Clark  for  his  services  the 
sum  of  $500  and  a  few  odd  cents. 
There  is  no  record  to  show  that  Saca- 
jawea received  any  compensation  by 
gift  or  word.  It  is  true  we  find  the 
following  in  the  journal :  "This  man 
(Charboneau)  has  been  very  service- 


Unman 


tn 


able  to  us,  and  his  wife  particularly 
useful  among  the  Shoshones.  Indeed 
she  has  borne  with  a  patience  truly 
admirable  the  fatigues  of  so  long  a 
route  incumbered  with  the  charge  of 
an  infant,  who  is  even  now  only  nine- 
teen months  old.  She  was  very  ob- 
servant. She  had  a  good  memory, 
remembering  locations  not  seen  since 
her  childhood.  In  trouble  she  was 
full  of  resources,  plucky  and  deter- 
mined. With  her  helpless  infant  she 
rode  with  the  men,  guiding  us  unerr- 
ingly through  mountain  passes  and 
lonely  places.  Intelligent,  cheerful, 
resourceful,  tireless,  faithful,  she  in- 
spired us  all." 

The  finding  of  letters  written  a 
hundred  years  ago  shows  that  Saca- 
jawea  was  more  keenly  appreciated 
than  we  had  been  led  to  believe.  This 
evidence  was  first  made  public  by  an 
article  in  the  Century  Magazine,6  the 
letter  having  been  written  August  20, 
1806,  by  Clark  on  his  voyage  down 
the  river  after  leaving  Mandan. 

"CHARBONO:7 

You  have  been  a  long  time  with  me 
and  have  conducted  yourself  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  to  gain  my  friendship.  Your  woman 
who  accompanied  you  that  long,  dangerous 
and  fatiguing  rout  to  the  Pacific  Ocean 
and  back  diserved  a  greater  reward  for  her 
attention  and  services  on  the  rout  than  we 
had  in  our  power  to  give  her  at  the  Alan- 
dans." 


No  further  attention  was  paid  to 
this  woman,  not  even  in  the  accounts 
that  have  been  published  by  those  who 
made  the  journey,  until  the  time  of 
the  St.  Louis  Fair,  called  the  Louisi- 
ana Purchase  Exposition,  in  1904; 
and  later  at  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Ex- 
positon  in  1905,  at  Portland,  Oregon. 
Mrs.  Eva  Emery  Dye  attracted  atten- 
tion to  this  pilot  of  the  West  in  her 
book,  "The  Conquest,"  in  which  she 
has  extolled  not  unduly  the  devotion 
of  the  little  woman  to  the  cause  of 
Lewis  and  Clark  on  their  marvelous 
trip.  Mr.  Bruno  Louis  Zimm,  the 
New  York  sculptor,  in  his  preparation 
for  the  modelling  of  a  statue  for  the 
St.  Louis  Fair  spent  a  year  in  study- 
ing the  literature  and  ethnology  in- 
volved in  this  subject.  When  the 
time  came  for  him  to  procure  a  model 
typical  of  the  woman  of  the  Shoshone 
tribe  he  was  instructed  to  correspond 
with  Reverend  John  Roberts  of  the 
Shoshone  Reservation  in  Wyoming 
where  he  had  preached  and  worked  as 
a  missionary  for  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury. This  reservation  is  located  in 
the  center  of  the  state,  having  been 
the  home  of  Indians  for  many  genera- 
tions. Mr.  Roberts  directed  Mr. 
Zimm's  attention  to  one  of  the  young 
Shoshone  women,  Virginia  Grant, 
who  was  at  that  time  and  is  at  pres- 
ent a  student  at  the  Carlisle  Indian 
School.  She  is  pronounced  to  be  de- 
cidedly typical  of  this  tribe. 

6.  Volume  LXVIII,  page  876. 

7.  Captain  Clark  not  only  spelled  pho- 
netically, but  evidently  early  anticipated  the 
spelling  reform  movement. 


DESCENDANTS  OF  THE  INDIAN  PILOT— 
The  four  in  the  back  row  from  left  to  right  are 
Maggie  Meyers,  daughter  of  Baptiste,  the  son  of 
Sacajawea— Charlie  Meyers,  son  of  Maggie  Meyers 
—Charlie  Meyers'  wife  who  is  not  a  blood  relative 
of  Sacajawea— George  Bazil  (We-to-gan),  son  of 
Baptiste  —  The  front  row  from  left  to  right  are 
Nannie  Bazil,  daughter  of  George  Bazil— Fannie 
Meyers,  daughter  of  Charles  Meyers— Willie  Bazil, 
son  of  George  Bazil  -Little  Bessie  and  Oro  Meyers, 
the  daughter  and  young  son  of  Charles  Meyers 


of  Jfftrat  Mljto  Men  to  (Urnaa  Ammra 


In  the  correspondence  incident  to 
obtaining  the  desired  information  Mr 
Roberts  in  a  personal  interview  with 
the  author  of  this  article  imparted 
long-sought  information  which  car- 
ries with  it  substantial  evidence  of  its 
authenticity.  After  Mr.  Roberts  had 
been  informed  that  the  purpose  of  this 
photograph  of  Virginia  Grant  was  to 
assist  in  modelling  a  statue  of  the 
woman  who  gave  Lewis  and  Clark 
guidance  across  the  mountains  it 
freshened  his  memory  to  the  extent 
that  he  remembered  burying  a  very 
old  Indian  woman  during  the  first 
years  in  his  field  of  labor  in  Wyom- 
ing. Upon  examination  of  his  parish 
records,  which  he  had  carefully  kept 
since  assuming  his  duties  with  the 
Shoshone  Indians,  he  found  this  nota- 
tion under  date  of  1884,  April  9, 
"Bazil's  mother,  Shoshone,  one 
hundred  years,  residence  Shoshone 
Agency,  cause  of  death,  old  age,  place 
of  burial,  Burial  Ground  Shoshone 
Agency."  Mr.  Roberts  on  January  8, 
1906,  while  attending  a  funeral  of  one 
of  Chief  Washakie's  grandsons,  heard 
a  great  wailing  as  .is  the  Shoshone 
custom,  for  they  mourn  with  a  great 
and  very  sore  lamentation,  and  ob- 
served one  of  Sacajawea's  grand- 
daughters standing  over  her  grave 
"giving  away  to  her  grief  in  great 
wailing."  This  cemetery  or  burial 
ground  is  a  forty-acre  tract  fenced  in 
with  a  very  strong  and  lasting  fence 
of  cedar  posts  and  twisted  barbed 
wire  on  either  side  of  the  posts  and 
twisted  together  between  posts.  Only 
a  slight  slab  marks  Sacajawea's  grave. 
The  proper  marking  of  this  grave 
should  have  immediate  attention  while 
he  who  buried  her  can  identify  the  ex- 


GREAT  -  GREAT  -  GRANDCHILDREN  OF 
SACAJAWEA— These  photographs  were  recently 
taken  on  the  Shoshone  Reservation  during  Dr. 
Hebard's  investigations  and  they  picture  the  des- 
cendants of  the  Indian  Guide  in  native  life— The 
older  Indian  woman  on  the  left  is  Mrs  Charles 
Meyers  and  to  the  right  is  Eunice  Bazil— The  three 
little  ones  on  the  left  are  Fannie,  Bessie  and  Oro 
Meyers-The  boy  and  girl  at  the  right  are  Willie 
and  Nannie  Bazil,  children  of  George  Bazil 

473 


act  locality.  This  woman  was  known 
in  the  Shoshone  valley  as  Sacajawea 
and  had  two  sons  called  Bazil  and 
Baptiste,  both  of  whom  were  person- 
ally known  by  Reverend  Roberts. 
Old  Indians  now  living  testified  to 
him  that  in  her  earlier  life  Sacajawea 
was  "very  nice  looking ;"  short  of 
stature,  spare  of  figure,  very  intelli- 
gent and  quick  in  her  movements. 
Reverend  Roberts  stated  that  Saca- 
jawea in  1883  was  wonderfully  active 
and  intelligent  considering  her  great 
age.  She  walked  alone  and  was 
bright  to  the  last.  She  had  no  sick- 
ness but  was  found  dead  one  morning 
April  9,  1884,  on  her  "shake-down" 
of  blankets  and  quilts  in  her  tepee. 
In  the  afternoon  of  the  same  day  she 
received  a  Christian  burial.  This 
woman  was  illiterate,  but  spoke 
French  as  well  as  did  her  two  sons. 

Although  Shoshones  claim  nephews 
as  sons  and  will  not  admit  any  adop- 
tion, yet,  for  thirty-four  years  at  least 
there  had  been  a  rumor,  amounting  to 
a  statement  of  facts,  that  Bazil  was 
not  Sacajawea's  own  son  but  was  a 
nephew  and  had  been  adopted.  This 
is  a  crucial  point  in  the  case  because 
it  was  a  puzzling  fact  that  this  son 
Bazil  should  be  older  than  Baptiste 
(Bat-tees  as  pronounced  by  the  In- 
dian) who  was  the  child  carried  on  the 


ffl0man 


tn 


mother's  back  during  the  journey  to 
the  coast,  Baptiste  being  then  her  only 
son,  hence  the  oldest.  We  must  refer 
again  to  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Jour- 
nals, page  408,  Volume  I,  to  that  sin- 
gle line — "a  son  of  her  eldest  sister,  a 
small  boy.  who  was  immediately 
adopted  by  her."  Had  the  child  been 
a  baby,  or  papoose  he  would  not  have 
been  a  "small  boy."  These  few  words 
furnish  convincing  explanation  why 
the  older  son  was  not  the  one  Saca- 
jawea  took  with  her  and  why  there 
was  a  family  tradition  that  Bazil  was 
adopted.  Bazil  and  Baptiste  both 
told  Mr.  Roberts  that  Baptiste  was  the 
child  that  was  carried  to  the  coast. 
This  isolated  piece  of  evidence  about 
the  adoption  and  the  child  so  adopted 
being  older  than  her  own  child  is  not 
one  generally  remembered  or  noticed. 
As  it  appears  in  the  Journal  it  has  no 
significance  and  that  child  is  never 
mentioned  again  so  far  as  can  be  as- 
certained. 

Again,  the  name  of  "Baptiste"  has 
been  a  stumbling  block,  because  the 
little  papoose  was  known  in  history 
for  a  century  as  "Little  Touissant," 
or  "Touissiant  Charboneau"  or  "Lit- 
tle Charboneau,"  and  so  that  when 
we  introduce  into  the  romantic  his- 
tory an  aged  man  with  an  entirely 
new  and  foreign  name  there  is  cer- 
tainly a  demand  for  an  explanation 
and  a  reconciliation  of  facts.  If  we 
will  go  back  to  the  spring  of  1805, 
Sunday,  April  7,  when  Lewis  and 
Clark  engaged  their  additional  men  at 
the  Mandan  Village  we  find  the  name 
Baptiste  Lapage.8  This  man  at  that 
time  was  living  at  the  locality  where 
Charboneau  and  Sacajawea  made 
their  home  or  headquarters.  As  they 
were  friends  and  companions  it  is  not 
improbable  or  unlikely  that  his  first 
name  was  given  the  first  child  of  the 
French  Canadian  interpreter.  There 
is  no  mention  of  this  child's  name  in 
all  of  the  journals  and  accounts  that 
have  been  printed  about  the  journey. 
But  in  going  over  the  private  papers 

8.  Lewis  and   Clark  Journals.  Volume 
I.  page  190. 


of  Captain  Clark  the  letter  before 
mentioned  contains  more  valuable  in- 
formation than  that  before  cited.  A 
portion  reads  as  follows: 

"As  to  your  little  son  (my  boy  Pomp) 
you  well  know  my  fondness  for  him  and 
my  anxiety  to  take  and  raise  him  as  my 
own  child.  I  once  more  tell  you  if  you 
will  bring  your  son  Bapticst,  1  will  educate 
him,  etc."  .  .  .  "with  anxious  expecta- 
tions of  seeing  my  little  dancing  boy  Bap- 
tiest,  I  remain  your  friend. 

WILLIAM  CLARK." 

This  letter  was  written  in  1806  and 
never  was  known  to  the  public  until 
1904,  yet  for  thirty-five  years  at  the 
least  prior  to  the  latter  date.  Saca- 
jawea's  own  son  was  known  as  Bap- 
tiste. Incredibility  cannot  attach  to 
this  point  in  the  evidence,  for  the  facts 
are  substantiated  by  a  hundred  living 
witnesses  as  to  the  name  by  which  the 
son  had  been  called  by  his  mother,  for 
thirty  or  thirty-five  years.  Documen- 
tary evidence  shows  further  that  Cap- 
tain Clark  was  true  to  his  promise  and 
had  little  Touissant  Charboneau  and 
Sacajawea  come  to  St.  Louis  where 
the  boy  was  placed  in  a  Catholic 
school,  the  teaching  being  in  French, 
the  language  of  his  father.  We  find 
in  Captain  Clark's  account  as  Indian 
Commissioner,  to  which  office  he  was 
appointed  by  the  president  after  his 
return  from  the  West,  items  under 
date  of  1820,  covering  expenses  for 
school  books,  shoes  and  other  things 
for  a  boy.  This  account  appears  in 
the  name  of  Touissant  Charboneau, 
doubtless  our  interpreter  rather  than 
the  son.  His  boy  was  born  in  1805, 
hence  was  fifteen  years  old  at  this 
period  of  his  education.  Baptiste  and 
Bazil,  we  must  remember,  spoke  Sho- 
shone,  French  and  English. 

The  descendants  of  Bazil  scorn  the 
idea  of  having  any  French  blood  in 
them  and  claim  onlv  the  blue  blood  of 
the  American  Indian  and  there  is 
strong  evidence  that  they  are  right  in 
their  assertion.  There  is  nothing  to 
show  that  Sacajawea's  sister,  the 
mother  of  Bazil,  ever  saw  a  man  other 
than  the  Indian.  The  descendants  of 
Baptiste  look  like  mixed  blood  and 


plot  nf  First  Wljite  Ufon  In  (Etnas  Ammra 


THE    RESTING     PLACE    OF    THE    BRAVE    INDIAN    GIRL    PILOT 

Photograph  taken  at  the  grave  of  Sacajawea  in  the  Shoshone  Indian  Agency  cemetery  at  Wind  River, 
Wyoming,  for  Dr  Hebard's  investigations— The  older  girl  is  Eunice  Bazil,  great-granddaughter  of  Bazil, 
and  she  is  standing  at  the  head  of  the  grave  which  is  marked  only  by  a  short  stick  and  low  mound— The 
smaller  girl  is  Bessie  Meyers,  great-great-granddaughter  of  Sacajawea  and  she  stands  at  foot  of  grave 


act  as  such,  associating  more  with 
whites  than  Indians  usually  do.  They 
have  acted  as  guides  in  earlier  days 
and  as  United  States  police  later,  in- 
termixing with  whites  and  Mexicans. 
A  son  of  Baptiste  told  Mr.  Roberts 
that  his  father  often  told  him  that  his 
grandmother  had  carried  his  father 
(Baptiste)  when  a  babe  on  her  back 
at  the  time  she  showed  the  way  to 
"The  first  Washington"  across  the 
Crow  Indian  Country  to  the  "Big 
Water  toward  the  Setting  Sun  :"  that 
I'.aptiste's  father  (Charboneau)  died 
"long  ag<>"  near  the  site  of  the  present 
White  Rocks  Ute-Agency,  Utah,  and 
that  he  had  a  lot  of  papers  that  were 
burnt  at  his  funeral. 


The  name  Sacajawea,  according  to 
Reverend  Roberts,  who  has  made  a 
careful  study  of  the  Shoshone  lan- 
guage for  the  quarter  of  a  century  he 
has  worked  with  this  tribe,  is  derived 
from  Sac — canoe  or  boat  or  raft ;  a — 
the,  jaii'e — launcher.  It  is  a  pure 
Shoshone  name.  Had  the  word  been 
spelt  sac-a-dza-we-a  ( pronunciation 
almost  identical  with  the  former 
word),  it  would  have  meant,  if  a  Sho- 
shone word.  Sac,  which  one?  a,  the, 
</C(j.  good,  TC't'd.  gap,  or  mountain,  or 
pass,  "which  one  is  the  good  pass?" 
The  oldest  Shoshone  and  also  Saca- 
jawea's  descendants  state  that  her 
name  was  "\Vadze-wipe"  (Lost 
Woman),  Bah-ribo,  (Water-White 


Unman 


tn 


Man)  and  Boo-e-nive,  (Grass  Maid- 
en). Most  Shoshones  have  several 
names.  If  it  be  true  that  the  name 
Sacajawea  is  not  Shoshone,  and 
should  be  spelled  Sakakawea,  or  "Bird 
Woman,"  as  is  stated  by  some  who 
have  made  a  study  of  Indian  lan- 
guages, and  affirm  the  word  is  Hi- 
datsa,  this  would  account  for  the  fact 
that  she  was  not  known  by  that  name 
among  these  Shoshones. 

Perhaps  even  more  valuable  than  all 
of  this  information  is  the  evidence 
submitted  by  Mr.  James  I.  Patten,  a 
resident  of  Wyoming,  who  in  a  per- 
sonal interview  told  a  similar  narra- 
tive. Mr.  Patten  came  to  Wyoming 
in  1871  when  the  one  railroad  in  the 
then  Territory  of  Wyoming  only 
reached  to  Laramie,  a  point  about 
sixty  miles  west  of  the  Eastern  State 
line.  From  this  point  he  went  to  the 
Shoshone  Valley  by  prairie  schooner 
and  by  broncho  before  there  was  even 
a  wagon  road,  only  a  trail  serving  as 
a  guide.  Mr.  Patten  had  been  sent 
into  this  locality  by  the  Episcopalian 
denomination  to  teach  and  to  convert 
the  Indians  to  Christianity.  His  duty 
was  to  prepare  Indians  and  others  for 
baptism,  which  ritual  was  performed 
"by  the  Bishop  at  stated  intervals.  He 
continued  in  this  work  until  1880. 

He  first  saw  Sacajawea  in  the  fall 
of  1871.  She  was  then  very  old. 
She  was  pointed  out  to  him  as  the 
squaw  who  had  accompanied  Lewis 
and  Clark.  Mr.  Patten  had  read  the 
Journals  of  Lewis  and  Clark  before 
coming  to  this  valley  and  at  that  time. 
1871,  was  wholly  convinced  from  the 
information  he  gleaned  that  the  Saca- 
jswea  of  Wyoming  was  the  Saca- 
jawea of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  expe- 
dition. Dr.  Irwin,  whose  place  Rev- 
erend Roberts  commenced  to  occupy 
in  1883,  talked  to  Mr.  Patten  about 
the  matter  and  said  that  he  had  col- 
lected from  her  and  from  her  son  a 
good  deal  of  material  about  this  jour- 
ney which  he  intended  to  publish : 
that,  after  carefully  reading  Lewis 
and  Clark's  Journals  he  was  con- 
vinced that  the  two  Sacajaweas  were 


one   and   the   same.      Dr.    Irwin   has 
been  dead  many  years  and  it  is  feared 
his      notes      have     been      destroyed, 
although   an    active    search   is   being 
made  for  them.     It  is  difficult  to  tell 
the  exact  age  of  Indians,  but  Bazil 
and  Baptiste  were  old  men  when  first 
seen  by  Mr.  Patten.     He  knew  them 
both  and  talked  with  them  about  their 
mother  and  her  trip.     Both  of  these 
men  spoke  the  three  languages,  Sho- 
shone, French  and  English,  their  de- 
gree of  proficiency  being  in  the  order 
named.     Bazil,   when   he   found    Mr. 
Patten  was  learning  their  dialect,  took 
a  great  deal  of  interest  in  telling  him 
of  his  mother  and  her  service  as  a 
guide  to  Lewis  and  Clark.     It  is  dif- 
ficult to  get  any  information  from  a 
Shoshone  Indian  when  he  is  conscious 
one  is  trying  to  extract  facts.     They 
cannot  be  drawn  out  of  him ;  he  must 
volunteer     the     information.       Once, 
however,  get  an  Indian  interested  in 
the  subject  at  hand  and  then  uncon- 
sciously he  will  impart  the  desired  in- 
formation.     Aged    Indians   are   very 
superstitious   and   exceedingly   secre- 
tive, being  reluctant  to  converse  with 
white  people  on  certain  topics,  more 
particularly  if  they  refer  to  their  fam- 
ily or  tribal  movements.     Sacajawea 
at  this  time  conversed  with  few.     She 
lived  in  a  tepee  by  herself,  but  her 
two  sons  looked  after  her  very  care- 
fully and  tenderly,  the  special  atten- 
tion coming  from  Bazil  who  appar- 
ently was  slightly  the  older,  although 
the  two  men  seemed  to  be  so  near  of 
an  age  that  it  was  impossible  to  say 
which  one  was  the  older.     Bazil  was 
the  owner  of  an  Indian  dwelling  situ- 
ated   near    the    Agency.      The    most 
marked  characteristic  of  the  Shoshone 
Indian  is  that  his  tribal  ties  are  even 
stronger  than  his  family  ties.     A  Sho- 
shone woman  will  leave  her  husband 
and  even  small  children  to  return  to 
her  tribe.     This  powerful  instinct  or 
trait   is   unquestionably  the  one   that 
brought  Sacajawea  with  her  two  sons 
down  from  Mandan  to  the  new  region 
selected  by  her  tribe. 

476 


plot  of  Jfftrat 


Mm  ta  (trass  America 


In  1871,  when  this  tribe  was  prepar- 
ing to  go  forth  on  its  annual  hunt. 
Bazil  brought  his  mother  up  near  the 
government  house  and  pitched  her 
tepee  there,  saying  to  Mr.  Patten: 
"This  old  aged  woman  is  my  mother 
and  I  want  to  leave  her  at  the  Agency 
when  we  are  on  our  hunt."  At  this 
time  he  made  a  statement  as  to  her 
age  and  while  he  did  not  exactly  know 
what  it  was  he  thought  she  must  be 
nearly  one  hundred  years  old ;  he 
slated  that  she  went  to  the  place  of 
"much  water"  (the  ocean)  for  the 
"Great  Washington"  (the  govern- 
ment is  always  Washington  to  these 
Indians)  and  that  the  men  she  went 
with  were  the  first  white  men  who 
ever  crossed  the  country.  He  did  not 
then  mention  the  names  of  Lewis  and 
Clark  until  they  were  spoken  by  Dr. 
Irwin  and  Mr.  Patten.  Indians  do 
not  remember  exact  dates  or  names 
readily,  although  events  are  accu- 
rately reproduced.  Sacajawca  stated 
to  both  Dr.  Irwin  and  Mr.  Patten  that 
she  had  made  the  voyage  and  she 
talked  of  the  "Big  Waters  beyond  the 
Shining  (snowy)  Mountains."  Wit- 
to-gan,  the  son  of  old  Baptiste,  told 
Mr.  Patten  that  his  father  had  often 
told  him  that  his  mother  acted  as  a 
pilot  to  "A-va-je-me-ar"  (the  first 
Washington). 

Once  she  came  to  the  Agency  when 
Mr  Patten  was  there,  at  the  time  of 
the  drawing  of  rations,  to  draw  hers ; 
he  told  Bazil  that  she  was  too  old  to 
carry  these  provisions.  "Yes,"  said 
Bazi'l,  "pretty  old  ;  pretty  old."  Bazil 
was  particularly  devoted  to  her  and 
looked  after  her  with  great  care  and 
consideration.  This  attention  is  usual 
among  the  Shoshones  who  take  good 
care  of  their  old  people.  Baptiste  was 
always  attentive  but  had  no  charge  of 
IRT  as  she  always  had  her  tepee  nearer 
the  house  of  Bazil.  "Bazil's  mother," 
— she  was  commonly  known  by  this 
name — always  wore  the  Indian  cos- 
tume with  blankets  and  moccasins  and 
her  hair  down  her  back.  While  Bazil 
and  Baptiste  wore  the  Indian  costume. 
they  always  wore  a  hat  and  negligee 


SURVIVAL  OF  AN  EARLY  EXPEDITION  TO 
WYOMING— Captain  William  Clark  Kennerly  of 
St.  Louis,  Missouri,  who  went  to  Wyoming  in  1842 
and  who  conversed  with  Sacajawea's  son  at  Fort 
Laramie— Captain  Clark  is  named  after  his  dis- 
tinguished uncle  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition 
of  1806  -  He  testifies  that  Baptiste  recognized  Jeffer- 
son Clark,  the  son  of  Captain  Clark,  from  his  mem- 
ory of  the  features  of  his  father,  the  explorer 

shirt  in  addition  to  the  blanket.  Their 
children  wear  the  native  costume. 
Thirty-six  years  ago  Sacajawca 
looked  as  if  she  might  have  been  a 
pretty  plump,  good-looking  woman  of 
medium  size.  The  true  Shoshone 
type  is  one  of  robustness  and  short  in 
stature.  Mr.  Patten  not  only  knew 
Sacajawea  and  her  sons,  but  knew  the 
grandchildren  and  prepared  them  for 
baptism  when  they  embraced  our  reli- 
gion, in  as  far  as  they  could  under- 
stand it.  When  the  Bishop  (George 
Maxwell  Randall)  baptized  them  they 
were  given  Christian  names,  the  chil- 
dren taking  their  father's  names  as 
their  last  name.  Bazil  and  Baptiste 
and  their  descendants  seemed  to  feel 
it  a  great  honor  that  their  mother  had 
been  allowed  to  accompany  the  "Great 
Father,"  which  deed  gave  to  them  an 


•BJnman 


In        OfoUten 


inheritance  that  was  akin  to  an  aris- 
tocracy. Mr.  Patten  never  heard  of 
Sacajawea  having  any  husband  other 
than  Charboneau,  and  she  was  known 
also  by  the  name  of  "Lost  Woman." 
Chief'  Washakie,  (Was-a-kie,  the 
lightning  striker — he  kills  him  run- 
ning) who  made  the  treaty  at  Bridger 
in  1868  with  our  government  for  the 
reservation  in  the  center  of  Wyoming, 
in  a  conversation  with  Air.  Patten, 
mentioned  Sacajawea  as  the  woman 
who  accompanied  the  white  people 
who  went  to  the  Great  Water. 

In  order  to  obtain  favor  from  the 
Indians  they  knew  they  were  to  en- 
counter, Lewis  and  Clark  carried  with 
them  many  bright  trinkets  and  gor- 
geous presents.  These  were  given  to 
the  ordinary  Indians,  but  to  the  chiefs 
they  presented  medals.  These  were 
of  three  grades.  To  the  chief  of 
chiefs  they  gave  a  medal  with  the  like- 
ness of  the  president  of  the  United 
States  (Jefferson)  on  one  face;  to 
chiefs  of  a  -secondary  order  a  medal 
decorated  with  some  kind  of  a  domes- 
tic animal ;  and  to  the  third  chiefs  a 
medal  with  the  imprint  of  a  farmer 
sowing  grain.  The  chiefs  wore  these 
medals  suspended  on  a  cord  around 
their  necks.  The  brothers  of  Saca- 
jawea each  received  one  of  these  med- 
als.9 On  state  occasions  Bazil  wore  a 
medal  suspended  from  his  neck  which 
he  said  his  father  (Sacajawea's  hus- 
band) had  given  him.  Charboneau 
said  Lewis  and  Clark  had  given  the 
medal  to  him.  Reverend  Roberts  and 
Mr.  Patten  have  both  seen  this  medal, 
the  former  saying  that  Bazil  was 
buried  with  this  silver  medal  or  scarf 
protector,  while  the  latter  affirming  it 
was  about  as  big  as  a  silver  dollar. 

To  strengthen  the  foregoing  state- 
ments there  has  been  added  the  verbal 
information  from  Mr.  Richard  A. 
Morse,  who  was  a  government  black- 
smith on  the  reservation  from  1882  to 
1890  and  had  often  seen  Sacajawea. 
When  he  first  saw  her  she  was  an  old, 


9.  Lewis  and  Clark  Journals,  Volume 
I,  page  409. 


old  woman,  with  white  hair  and  no 
teeth,  but  even  with  this  defect  was 
nice-looking.  For  a  woman  of  her 
age  she  was  remarkably  straight.  She 
was  short  and  heavy  and  was  a  "reg- 
ular, genuine  Shoshone  woman." 
People  in  1882  knew  of  her  trip  and 
talked  to  him  about  her  and  it.  He 
had  seen  her  any  number  of  times 
picking  sagebrush  and  packing  it  on 
her  back  to  her  tepee  to  burn.  The 
sons  were  very  strong  in  their  family 
relations  and  were  short,  straight  and 
stout. 

In  a  conversation  with  Mr.  H.  E. 
Wadsworth,  the  United  States  Indian 
agent  at  Shoshone  or  Wind  river,  he 
stated  that  Sacajawea  had  died  before 
he  entered  upon  his  duties  at  this 
reservation  over  twenty  years  ago. 
but  she  had  repeatedly  been  spoken  of 
by  those  who  had  known  her  as  one 
under-sized,  but  very  straight.  He 
did  not  know  her  sons,  but  knew  her 
grandchildren  and  great-grandchil- 
dren and  great-great-grandchildren, 
all  of  whom  were  or  had  been  at  the 
agency  school,  and  one  at  least  at  the 
Carlisle  Indian  School.  The  grave  in 
which  lies  all  that  is  mortal  of  Saca- 
jawea is  situated  about  sixteen  miles 
northwest  of  Landar  (the  county  seat 
of  Fremont  County),  and  two  miles 
west  of  the  Shoshone  Indian  Agency. 
The  location  of  the  cemetery  is  bleak, 
situated  on  a  hill  without  surrounding 
trees  or  grass,  in  the  center  of  a  for- 
mer hunting-ground.  Mr.  Wads- 
worth  corroborated  the  statement  that 
the  Indian  woman  was  known  as 
IVad-zc-u'ip  and  that  Sacajawea  is  de- 
rived from  two  pure  Shoshone  words, 
"boat"  and  "to  push." 

Mr.  Lahoe,  the  government  inter- 
preter for  the  Shoshone  Reservation, 
whose  mother  is  a  Shoshone  Indian, 
added  interesting  information  to  the 
effect  that  he  had  personally  known 
both  Bazil  and  Baptiste  and  knew 
where  they  were  buried, having  helped 
in  the  burial  of  Bazil.  Baptiste  is 
buried  up  in  the  mountains,  his  body 
having  been  taken  there  by  a  few  In- 
dians and  dropped  down  between  two 


$JUni  nf  Jfftrst  Hljtte  HJptt  to  Qknaa  Ammra 


crags,  about  forty  feet  deep.  After 
the  body  had  been  let  down  by  a  rope. 
a  few  rocks  were  thrown  upon  him, 
one  striking  his  head  and  crushing  his 
brain.  Bazil  was  also  buried  after  the 
Indian  custom.  Wrapped  in  a  sheet 
and  blanket  he  was  taken  by  a  few  In- 
dians up  to  Mill  Creek  and  placed  in 
a  new  gulch  which  was  dug  into  the 
bank  and  allowed  to  cave  down  and 
cover  him.  At  the  time  he  was  buried 
he  had  a  silver  medal  upon  his  neck. 
Bazil  was  a  powerful  man,  a  warrior 
and  one  of  the  bravest  men  among 
Indians.  He  was  also  a  hunter  and 
ttapper,  Indian  Doctor  and  Medicine 
Man.  Baptiste  was  a  guide,  not  as 
civilized  as  Bazil,  having  all  of  the  In- 
dian beliefs  which  Bazil  did  not  have. 
Bazil's  oldest  son  was  known  as  Edde- 
to-que  (Ed.).  His  next  child  is  Ni- 
be-chee  (Ellen),  followed  by  Ando, 
known  as  (Andrew  Bazil),  and  Mag- 
gie. The  last  three  are  living  and  on 
the  reservation.  Maggie  Bazil  has 
nine  children :  Charles,  Xettie,  Kittie. 
\Yillie,  Ellen,  Leddie,  Freddie,  Roy 
and  Lawrence.  (This  generation 
makes  no  claim  to-. Indian  names.) 
Baptiste  had  three  wives  who  were 
sisters ;  his  children  are :  Barbara,  An- 
tyne.  Jim  and  George  Bazil  (We-to- 
gan).  Barbara  married  a  man  by  the 
name  of  Meyer,  whose  son,  Charles 
Meyer,  at  one  time  attended  the  Car- 
lisle School  and  now  acts  in  the  capac- 
ity of  a  herder.  This  son  has  seen 
the  medal  around  his  grand-uncle's 
neck  and  was  present  at  his  burial. 
He  has  three  children,  all  of  whom 
appear  in  the  picture.  George  Bazil 
Baptiste  (We-to-gan)  has  two  chil- 
dren, Willie  and  Annie  or  Nannie. 
(One  cannot  help  deploring  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  liquid  Indian  names 
which  are  fast  being  supplanted  by 
most  ordinary  ones). 

Having  proved  Sacajawea's  iden- 
tity, established  beyond  a  question  of 
a  doubt  her  home  and  the  location  of 
her  grave,  explained  the  seeming  dis- 
crepancy in  the  age  of  her  children, 
and  fitted  the  name  of  Baptiste  to  the 
little  papoose  journeying  on  his  moth- 


er's back,  the  next  step  is  to  substan- 
tiate these  statements  by  showing  that, 
prior  to  1871,  the  earliest  date  which 
we  have  thus  far  fixed  as  the  home  of 
Sacajawea  in  Wyoming,  the  son  of 
Charboneau  was  seen  and  known  as 
his  son  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
present  Shoshone  Indian  Reservation. 
In  1811,  Brackinridge  states  that 
Sacajawea  and  Charboneau  were  seen 
on  the  Missouri  river.  Maximilian's 
writings  make  frequent  mention  of 
"Charboneau"  working  up  and  down 
the  Missouri.  We  also  find  evidence 
that  he  served  as  an  interpreter  for 
Sublette  and  Campbell  who  explored 
and  traded  in  Wyoming  1826-32.  In 
1838,  last  mention  is  made  of  him  by 
Larpenteur10  as  "old  Mr.  Charbo- 
neau." Sacajawea  \vas  many  years 
younger  than  her  husband  and  it 
would  be  natural  if  she  followed  her 
sons  after  his  death.  It  is  positively 
known  that  Sacajawea's  Baptiste  was 
with  James  Bridger  at  Fort  Bridger 
(where  the  now  abandoned  fort  was 
situated  in  the  southwest  corner  of 
Wyoming),  in  1832,  acting  as  a  guide 
and  mountain  explorer.  He  is  men- 
tioned in  Wyeth's  Journal,  in  Bonne- 
ville,  1832-5,  and  in  Fremont  1842-3, 
both  of  whom  were  in  Wyoming  at 
the  dates  indicated.  The  most  trust- 
worthy information,  however,  that 
Baptiste  was  in  Wyoming  and  on  the 
Overland  Trail  which  passed  just 
south  of  the  Shoshone  Reservation,  is 
given  by  Captain  William  Clark  Ken- 
nedy, at  present  a  resident  of  St.  Louis. 
Mr.  Kennerly  imparts  the  following 
authentic  information  in  a  letter  of 
December,  1906.  In  1842,  Sir  Wil- 
liam Drummond  Stewart  organized  a 
party  to  hunt  buffalo  and  other  game ; 
among  others  engaged  to  assist  was 
one  "Baptiste  Charboneau"  who  acted 
in  the  capacity  of  a  driver  of  one  of 
the  carts.  Mr.  Kennerly.  named  after 
his  uncle  by  marriage.  Captain  Wil- 
liam Clark  of  the  Lewis  and  (.'lark  ex- 
pedition, was  one  of  this  party.  Cap- 

10.  Wheeler.    O.     D..    The    Lewis    and 
Clark  Trail.  Volume  I.  page  130-4. 


THE  WOMAN  WHO  LED  THE  WAY  TO  THK  GOLDEN  EMI 
OF  WESTERN  AMERICA- STATUE  TO  SACAJAWEA 
AND  BAPTISTS  ERECTED  BY  THE  WOMEN  OF 
OREUON    AT    PORTLAND  —  Miss 
ALICE  COOPER,  SCULPTOR 


of 


iflru  to  CL'nuui   Anu-rtra 


tain  Clark's  son,  Jefferson  Kennedy 
Clark,  a  cousin  of  Captain  Kennerly, 
was  also  one  of  this  hunting  party. 
This  expedition,  which  consisted  of 
eighty  members,  including  guides, 
drivers  and  hunters,  came  into  Wyom- 
ing as  far  north  as  Fort  Laramie, 
which  was  on  the  old  Overland  Trail, 
and  where  there  were  fifty  or  sixty 
lodges  of  the  Sioux  Indians.  This 
Baptiste,  when  he  saw  young  Clark, 
at  once  "welcomed  him  as  the  son  of 
his  old  guardian."  Some  of  the  Sioux 
chiefs  immediately  recognized  Jeffer- 
son Clark  from  his  strong  resemblance 
to  his  father  who  became  known  to 
them  on  the  Pacific  Expedition,  and 
called  him  at  once  "son  of  redheaded 
father,"  that  being  the  name  by  which 
Clark  was  known  to  the  Sioux  In- 
dians, the  color  of  the  hair  of  father 
and  son  being  identical  and  of  a  strik- 
ing hue.  St.  Louis  was  always  called 
by  these  Indians  "Redhair's  town." 
Captain  Kennerly  is  the  only  one  of 
this  party  now  living.  In  this  Indian, 
Baptiste  Charboneau,  we  find  one  who 
not  only  bears  the  name  of  Saca- 
jawea's  husband,  but  who  also  has  a 
given  name  that,  until  1904,  was  never 
known  to  have  been  associated  with 
that  of  Charboneau.  Further,  if  the 
Sioux  Indians  in  their  hunts  came  as 
far  south  as  Fort  Laramie  it  would 
be  possible  for  Sacajawea  also  to  have 
come  that  distance  to  be  with  her  son, 
who  was  familiar  with  the  land 
around  this  locality. 

An  analytical  examination  of  the 
pictures,  paintings  and  statuary  cre- 
ated to  represent  Sacajawea  has  de- 
veloped the  fact  that  there  existed  an 
exceeding  diversified  interpretation  of 
the  character  of  this  Indian  woman. 
If  we  examine  the  painting  by  Mr. 
Paxson11  we  measure  her  as  tall,  raw- 
bcned  and  angular.  Miss  Alice 
Cooper's  noble  and  graceful  statue  at 
Portland,  erected  by  the  women  of 
Oregon  at  a  cost  of  $7.000,  represents 
an  ideal  type  of  an  Indian  woman. 


IT.  Wheeler,  O.  D.,  The  Trail  of  Lewis 
and  Clark,  Volume  I,  page  126. 


The  statue  made  by  Mr.  Zimm  which 
stood  at  the  end  of  one  of  the  espla- 
nades, between  the  Liberal  Arts  and 
Manufacturers'  buildings  at  the  St. 
Louis  Fair  not  only  portrayed  the 
true  type  of  a  Shoshone  woman,  but 
also  mirrors  our  heroine's  nature. 
Accordingly  with  the  assistance  of 
this  sculptor  and  the  writings  of  Lewis 
and  Clark  we  are  able  to  grasp  and 
realize  to  a  great  degree  what  was  the 
character  thus  delineated  and  why  our 
guide  is  entitled  to  be  classed  as  noble. 
Lewis  wrote  on  July  28,  1805:  "She 
does  not,  however,  show  any  distress 
at  these  recollections,  nor  any  joy  at 
the  prospect  of  being  restored  to  her 
country;  for  she  seems  to  possess  the 
folly  or  the  philosophy  of  not  suffer- 
ing her  feelings  to  extend  beyond  the 
anxiety  of  having  plenty  to  eat  and  a 
few  trinkets  to  wear."  This  mood  of 
Sacajawea,  that  most  familiar  to  the 
explorers,  seems  to  be  a  striking  char- 
acteristic of  the  Indian.  That  they 
are  capable  of  real  feeling,  those  who 
have  studied  the  subject  the  most  em- 
phatically affirm.  This  manifested  it- 
self in  Sacajawea's  case  to  such  a  de- 
gree that  it  astonished  Lewis  and 
Clark  when  she  met  her  brother,  the 
Shoshone  chief,  on  August  17,  1805. 
These  exhibitions  of  real  feelings  are 
sc  seldom  that  they  challenge  the  av- 
erage observer  to  represent  them  as  a 
common  trait  of  the  Indian.  The 
characteristic  of  the  Indian  women 
seems  to  have  been  their  stoical  obedi- 
ence to  their  condition  of  servitude. 
This  quality  was  not  foreign  to  Saca- 
jawea's people.  We  remember  the 
calm  resignation  of  the  Shoshone 
women  when  Lewis  surprised  them 
when  he  came  through  the  pass  ap- 
proaching their  valley.1*  No  cry  nor 
sound  passed  their  lips ;  they  sat  with 
bowed  heads  expecting  death  and 
waited  for  a  fatal  blow.  That  Saca- 
jawea was  not  devoid  of  this  senti- 
ment the  records  of  the  journals  give 
ample  illustrations.  This  stoicism 


12.  Lewis  and  Gark  Journals,  Volume 
I,  page  387. 


(Snlten 


was  the  foundation  of  Mr.  Zimm's 
conception  of  the  heroine  and  ex- 
plained to  him  her  fortitude,  her  calm 
endurance  and  patient  suffering. 
There  was  a  certain  amount  of  natural 
and  legitimate  curiosity  in  her  nature, 
however,  as  borne  witness  to  by  Cap- 
tain Clark  after  she  had  pleaded  to 
be  allowed  to  accompany  them  from 
their  inland  camp  to  the  ocean's  beach. 
"The  poor  woman  stated  very  ear- 
nestly that  she  had  traveled  a  great 
way  with  us  to  see  the  great  water,  yet 
she  had  never  been  down  to  the  coast 
and  now  that  this  monstrous  fish  was 
also  to  be  seen,  it  seemed  hard  she 
should  not  be  permitted  to  see  neither 
the  ocean  nor  whale,  so  reasonable  a 
request  could  not  be  denied."  This, 
then,  is  what  we  see  in  Mr.  Zimm's 
statue:  "a  stoical,  patient  figure,  on 
its  face  an  expression  of  searching 
curiosity."  The  sculptor  obtained  a 
pure  type  for  his  model,  Virginia 
Grant,  who,  not  particularly  anxious 
after  her  contact  with  civilized  life  to 
part  her  hair  and  have  it  fall  down  her 
back,  brought  the  pompadour  down 
reluctantly.  Her  dress  is  patterned 
after  the  Minnetance  by  whom  Saca- 
jawea  was  so  long  kept  in  captivity. 
The  papoose  on  Sacajawea's  back  is 
modelled  after  the  child  of  William 
Sitting  Bull,  son  of  the  great  Sioux 
chief. 

Thus  we  have  Sacajawea  represent- 
ed in  her  true  character,  the  patient, 
plodding  type  looking  ever  westward 
toward  the  goal  of  the  expedition. 

To  recapitulate  in  the  briefest  pos- 
sible terms  commensurate  with  clear- 
ness, the  preponderance  of  evidence 
establishes  the  fact  that  the  Sacajawea 
who  lived  on  the  Wind  river,  or  Sho- 
shone  Reservation  in  Wyoming  is  the 
Indian  woman  Sacajawea  who  acted 
in  the  capacity  of  pilot,  guide  and  in- 
terpreter to  Lewis  and  Clark  in 
1805-6. 

In  the  years,  even  the  generations, 
that  have  become  history  since  the 
performance  of  these  services  for 
Lewis  and  Clark,  no  one  has  offered 
herself  in  evidence  as  this  "Lost  Wo- 


man;" there  is  no  record  of  any  per- 
son endeavoring  on  the  behalf  of  Sac- 
ajawea to  advance  the  claim  of  any 
other  Indian  woman  for  this  enviable 
position;  repeated  and  continual 
efforts  have  been  made  by  a  host  of 
interested  and  enthusiastic  investiga- 
tors to  obtain  a  clew  which  would  ulti- 
mately lead  to  this  identity  and  yet  no 
one,  impostor  or  otherwise,  has  made 
a  claim  for  this  recognition,  excepting 
in  the  case  at  hand  of  this  heroine  of 
the  Shoshone  Valley. 

If  our  Sacajawea  is  the  Sacajawea, 
why  did  she  fail  to  herald  the  truth 
which  her  third  and  fourth  genera- 
tions now  relate  with  pride?  Was  it 
a  matter  over  which  an  Indian  would 
be  anxious  to  proclaim  that  she  was 
instrumental  in  leading  into  the  In- 
dians' territory  the  first  white  men 
who,  with  their  civilization,  eventually 
would  occupy  and  possess  the  hunting 
grounds  and  force  the  red  man  to 
other  fields?  Even  if  the  act  were 
one  of  extreme  bravery  and  worthy  of 
praise,  would  not  the  perpetrator  for 
this  reason  be  silent  before  her  tribe, 
only  dreaming  of  the  past,  occasion- 
ally reciting  the  incidents  of  the  deed 
to  her  children  and  thus  by  word  of 
mouth  transmitting  a  mighty  inheri- 
tance to  her  children's  children  and 
only  upon  interrogation  imparting  the 
facts  to  the  white  man?  Sacajawea 
never  volunteered  information  on  the 
subject  as  all  of  the  evidence  distinctly 
exhibits.  Again,  the  white  man 
would  be  equally  tardy  in  admitting 
that  it  was  only  through  the  efforts  of 
a  red  woman  that  the  expedition  was 
a  possibility.  Thus  viewed  from 
either  side  we  have  good  and  suffi- 
cient reason  for  silence. 

Captain  Clark,  with  his  erratic  re- 
gard for  phonetic  spelling  wrote  the 
name  Sacajawea  and  Sarcargarwea, 
never  Sakagawea  or  Sakakawea. 
The  author  of  the  "Conquest"  at  the 
time  of  the  unveiling  of  the  statue  at 
Portland,  in  1906,  learned  from  a  per- 
sonal interview  with  Judge  W.  R. 
Shannon  of  California,  whose  father 
was  one  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  party, 


of  3firat 


to  fflroaa  Ammra 


that  the  Wyoming  pronunciation  of 
the  word  agrees  exactly  with  that  of 
the  Sacajawea  his  father  many,  many 
times  had  pronounced  when  telling 
about  the  trip.  He  strongly  and  im- 
movably asserted  that  the  name  should 
be  SacsJAlVea.,  and  was  so  persistent 
in  his  statements,  which  certainly 
bore  authenticity,  that  this  pronuncia- 
tion was  finally  accepted  by  the  Port- 
land people. 

The  finding  of  the  letter  from  Cap- 
tain Clark  to  Charboneau  written 
almost  immediately  after  their  separa- 
tion, a  century  after  it  was  written, 
furnishes  the  strongest  link  in  the 
chain  of  evidence.  Here  for  the  first 
time  we  can  associate  the  name  of 
Sacajawea's  son  of  the  reservation 
with  that  of  the  child  carried  on  her 
back  to  the  coast;  again,  this  "Bap- 
tiste"  was  in  St.  Louis  as  Sacajawea's 
son  in  1820;  this  same  Baptiste  was 
seen  and  known  as  Charboneau's  son 
as  Baptiste  in  Wyoming  where  he  was 
with  James  Bridger  and  acting  as  a 
guide  and  explorer.  Wyeth  and  Bon- 
neville  in  1832-5,  and  Fremont  in 
1842-3  corroborates  this  statement. 

The  strongest  direct  testimony, 
however,  is  that  given  by  Captain 
Kennedy  who  saw  "Baptiste  Char- 
boneau" at  Fort  Laramie  in  1842." 

The  recognition  at  once  of  Captain 
Kennedy's  cousin  by  "Baptiste  Char- 
boneau" as  being  the  son  of  his  guar- 
dian, Captain  Clark,  must  be  carefully 
considered ;  the  Sioux  chiefs  greeting 
young  Clark  as  the  son  of  their  "Red 
Hair  Chief"  must  not  go  unnoticed; 
the  fact  that  these  Indians  had  been 
hundreds  of  miles  from  Fort  Laramie 
when  they  encountered  Lewis  and 
Clark  must  be  accepted.  If  these  In- 
dians could  have  wandered  so  far 
South  on  their  hunts  it  would  not 
have  made  it  impossible  for  Saca- 
jawea to  have  also  come  that  distance, 
either  then,  before,  or  afterwards; 


13.  Fort  Laramie  is  on  the  old  Overland 
Trail  situated  a  few  days'  travel  east  of  the 
Shoshone  Valley  where  this  tribe  of  In- 
dians then  as  now  lived. 

483 


and  further,  the  fact  that  Sacajawea, 
being  much  younger  than  her  hus- 
band, would  after  his  death  desire  to 
make  her  home  with  her  son.  This 
all  must  be  taken  into  consideration 
and  form  a  bulwark  of  evidence  which 
it  is  difficult  to  successfully  assault. 

That  the  newly  discovered  Saca- 
jawea had  an  older  son  than  Baptiste, 
this  in  place  of  refuting  the  claim  to 
be  established  has  only  strengthened 
the  case  in  controversy. 

The  statements  presented  by  Dr. 
Irwin  who  knew  Sacajawea  on  the 
reservation  in  the  sixties  and  at  that 
time  believed  the  two  Sacajaweas  to 
be  the  same,  is  strong  testimony,  for 
not  only  was  Dr.  Irwin  a  man  of  edu- 
cation, but  one  of  unquestioned  integ- 
rity. This  was  at  a  period  when  the 
expedition  did  not  particularly  engage 
the  attention  of  the  public ;  it  was  too 
long  from  the  time  of  the  journey  and 
too  far  from  the  period  when  interest 
had  become  renewed  (incident  to  the 
expositions  to  celebrate  the  expedi- 
tion). Dr.  Irwin  was  isolated  from 
the  outside  world  and  drew  these  con- 
clusions unaided  except  from  the 
reading  of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Jour- 
nals before  coming  to  Wyoming  and 
the  direct  evidence  obtained  from 
Sacajawea  by  him.  Mr.  Patten  not 
only  corroborates  this  statement, 
which  was  also  given  by  Reverend 
Roberts,  but  he  himself  had  come  to 
this  same  conclusion  in  1872. 

These  three  men,  Irwin,  Patten  and 
Roberts,  must,  through  the  important 
positions  they  occupied,  be  classed  as 
intelligent,  accurate,  trustworthy  and 
capable  of  arriving  at  results  without 
jumping  at  hasty  conclusions,  of 
which  an  ordinary  traveler  might  be 
accused.  They  all  three  lived  among 
these  Shoshones  for  years,  working 
with  them  in  the  endeavor  for  their 
betterment  spiritually,  mentally  and 
domestically. 

The  last  arguments,  not  the  most 
conclusive  however,  are  that  there  are 
scores  of  inhabitants  of  Wyoming, 
living  or  having  lived  in  this  beautiful 
and  fertile  valley14  who  have  not  only 


Unman 


iff?  Hag  tn  %  Ofolten 


heard  Sacajawea  tell  of  her  mountain, 
plain  and  coast  adventures,  but  her 
sons  have  recited  the  story  as  told  by 
the  mother,  that  the  children's  chil- 
dren have  this  history  sacredly  stored 
in  their  hearts  and  that  the  fourth  and 
fifth  generations  of  our  patient,  stoic, 
unselfish  and  unerring  guide  are 
learning  of  this  journey  which,  to 
them  as  to  those  who  have  read  of  it, 
seems  as  yet  a  myth,  an  act  perpe- 
trated on  "the  happy  hunting 
grounds." 


14.  This  is  the  reservation  which  in 
part  was  thrown  open  to  settlement  in  1906. 
Many  of  the  Indians  opposed  this  sale  to 
the  government  and  as  a  consequence  there 
has  been  engendered  a  bad  feeling  between 
those  who  favored  the  segregation  and 
those  who  opposed  the  movement.  In  Jan- 
uary, 1907,  some  of  these  disgruntled  In- 
dians lay  in  ambush  to  murder  Reverend 
Roberts  on  his  return  from  a  county  fune- 
ral. His  long  acquaintance  with  the  move- 
ments of  the  Indians  prevented  a  fatal  dis- 
aster. After  observing  their  actions  he 
changed  his  direction  and  reached  the  flats 
where  the  Indians  did  not  dare  pursue. 


THE     NOBLER     RACE— BY    FRANK    P.    FOSTER,    JR. 

HAIL  to  the  honor  of  woman,  Out  in  the  open  we  battle, 

Sisters  and  mothers  and  wives,  Free,  where  the  sun  shines  clear. 

Hail!  to  the  name  of  the  nobler  race  We  do  not  watch  and  wait  at  home, 

That  leads  the  nobler  lives.  Haunted  with  nameless  fear. 

Where  is  there  faith  like  a  woman's — 
Purer  than  beaten  gold — 
Or  courage  to  enter  the  shadow  of  death, 
Are  there  men  with  hearts  so  bold  ? 

She  cannot  fight  in  the  open, 

Free,  where  the  sun  shines  clear, 

She  wrestles  with  foes  far  greater  than  ours, 

She  conquers  the  awful  fear. 

We  have  read  of  the  courage  of  heroes 
Who  follow  at  Duty's  call, 
Who  face  the  fight  with  power  and  might, 
Soldiers  and  sailors  and  all — 

We  honor  the  man  of  strenuous  life, 
We  place  him  above  the  rest, 
But  what  of  the  woman  of  womanly  ways, 
Whose  fortitude  is  the  best? 


Then  take  this  word  to  our  women, 
Sisters  and  mothers  and  wives, 
Take  this  word  to  the  nobler  race, 
That  leads  the  nobler  lives. 


Men,  when  you  enter  the  battle, 
Free,  where  the  sun  shines  clear, 
Pray  God  for  a  woman's  courage 
To  suffer  and  conquer  fear. 


484 


f&tfr  on  att  Ammnm  Storing  11*00*1 

Abttrntarra 

on  thr  IjUjli  &raa  in  ihr 

3Firnt  Day  a  of  Autrrirau  (Tnm  mrrrr  o* 

WIjFn  IJrtuatrrrtng  nmfi  a  ilriiHprroua  (Prrnpation 

anil  Baring  «*n  OHinac  ty*  ^azarba  nf  fcramatuiljti!  j*  Journal 

nf  fcamnrl  Ifogt,  an  Carlu  Amrrlran  &r  a  Ckqrtatn.  Sorn  in  1  744  J*  ®ranflrrih»H 


BY 

JULIUS  WALTER  PEASE 

Now  iif  His  Nnnrnr-THiRD  YEAR  AND  A  GRANDSON  OF  CAFTAIN  SAXUKL  HOTT 


the  courtesy  of  Mr.  Julius  Walter 
Pease,  of  New  Britain,  Connecticut, 
who  is  the  grandson  of  the  writer  of 
the  manuscript,  in  his  ninety-third 
year.  He  recalls  hearing  his  mother, 
who  was  the  daughter  of  the  narrator, 
tell  of  her  father's  experiences  much 
the  same  as  here  recorded,  and  also  of 
hearing  her  tell  of  scenes  in  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution. 

On  the  Sloop  "  Dove"  bound 
for  the  far  Mediterranean 

"In  less  than  one  month  after  my 
arrival,  I  again  embarked  on  board  of 
the  sloop  'Dove,'  Captain  Meigs, 
bound  to  Italia.  In  about  eight  or 
ten  days  after  our  departure  we  ob- 
served a  heavy  rolling  sea,  which  ap- 
peared very  singular,  as  we  had  but 
very  moderate  weather  for  three  or 
four  days  previous  to  our  observing 
this  strange  tumult  in  the  watery  ele- 
ment. This  weather  continued  until 
about  one  of  the  clock  the  next  day, 
when  a  heavy  gale  of  wind  set  in  from 
the  southward  and  westward.  Every 
exertion  to  save  the  vessel  proving 
useless,  we  gave  ourselves  up  for  lost. 
The  vessel  soon  after  upset.  Captain 
Meigs  being  in  the  cabin  at  the  time 
was  with  much  difficulty  saved  from 
drowning.  We,  however,  made  a 
shift  to  hang  on  to  the  upper  gunnel 
for  the  span  of  ten  hours,  which 
brought  night,  but  gave  us  no  encour- 
agement, as  the  storm  continued  to  in- 
crease. The  vessel  being  laden  with 
live  stock  on  deck  and  lumber  in  the 
hold,  with  some  barrels  of  flour,  kept 


adventures  of  an 
early  American  sea-cap- 
tain  relate  experiences  in 
IL  the  first  days  of  the 
American  Republic  that 
are  fully  as  interesting  as 
the  pages  of  the  ancient 
journal  which  told  of  life  on  the  high 
seas  off  the  American  coast  in  the  pre- 
revolutionary  days,  fugitive  wander- 
ings along  the  desolate  Atlantic  shore, 
adrift  on  the  ocean  in  a  storm,  and 
the  seafarer's  home-coming  after 
many  tragedies  at  sea. 

After  fully  recovering  from  his  ex- 
posures and  terrible  sufferings,  Cap- 
tain Samuel  Hoyt  again  set  sail.  He 
here  relates  this  voyage  and  his  sub- 
sequent experiences  in  the  days  closely 
preceding,  during  and  following  the 
War  for  Independence. 

The  adventures  of  Captain  Samuel 
Hoyt  as  related  in  his  own  journal 
and  published  in  these  pages,  created 
wide  interest,  not  only  as  an  historical 
contribution  showing  the  indomitable 
courage  of  the  pioneer  Americans  and 
their  hardships  and  sufferings,  but  as 
a  narrative  of  the  sea.  An  eminent 
reviewer  pronounced  it  "a  true  sea 
story  more  fascinating  than  fiction." 
This  new  chapter  of  the  ancient  man- 
uscript has  been  transcribed  and  is 
here  recorded  from  the  original  now 
in  possession  of  Mr.  Henry  Stone  of 
Madison,  Connecticut,  who  is  the  son 
of  Stephen  Stone,  the  stepson  of  the 
rugged  seaman  who  inscribed  the  nar- 
rative, and  is  now  in  his  ninety-first 
year.  The  transcription  is  through 

485 


Slmmral  nf  (Eapiatn 


ijngt  —  Innt  in  1744 


her  on  the  surface  of  the  water, 
although  filled. 

"Soon  after  she  upset  we  ob- 
served the  boat  (to  our  great  sat- 
isfaction) was  lashed  to  the  wind- 
ward gunnel,  and  of  course  was  out  of 
water.  Upon  my  observing  the  lash- 
ing to  be  out  of  water,  I  made  a  shift 
to  get  to  it,  and  cut  the  boat  loose  with 
a  small  knife  I  had  saved  in  the  gen- 
eral consternation.  We  all  being 
without  clothes,  except  trousers  (our 
hats  having  been  washed  overboard 
some  time  before  night)  we  had  no 
knife  excepting  the  one  just  men- 
tioned, this  being  too  small  for  a  sail- 
or's use,  yet  notwithstanding  by  care- 
ful management  it  proved  a  means  in 
the  hand  of  Providence  of  saving  the 
whole  crew  from  a  watery  grave. 
Soon  after  the  boat  was  cut  loose  by 
this  small  knife,  we  made  a  shift  to 
get  her  into  the  water  the  leeward  side 
of  the  wreck. 

"After  trying  some  time  to  free  her 
from  the  water  which  was  in  her, 
without  success,  we,  however,  suc- 
ceeded at  length  in  clearing  the  coat 
of  water,  and  by  giving  her  a  large 
scope  of  rigging  for  a  painter,  we  suc- 
ceeded in  keeping  her  above  water. 
We  now  began  to  consider  what 
would  be  the  best  means  possible  for 
our  preservation.  After  reflecting 
upon  this  subject  a  short  time,  we 
unanimously  agreed  (as  we  had  no 
provision  or  anything  to  support  na- 
ture, except  about  one  gallon  of  rum 
which  we  found  washed  out  of  the 
cabin  in  a  small  keg)  as  soon  as  day- 
light appeared  to  risque  ourselves  in 
the  long-boat,  in  hopesof  falling  in  with 
some  vessel.  For  the  purpose  of  put- 
ting our  plan  in  execution,  we  hauled 
alongside  of  the  wreck,  and  found 
means  of  getting  the  topsail,  which  lay 
in  the  buckets.  We  next  undertook 
to  get  into  our  possession  the  topsail- 
yard,  which  with  much  difficulty  we  at 
length  effected.  After  much  labor 
we  succeeded  in  cutting  the  yard  in 
two,  and  making  a  mast  for  the  yawl ; 
the  topsail  with  a  slight  alteration 


answered  for  a  sail.  All  this  was 
accomplished  before  daylight,  a  small 
penknife  being  the  only  tool  we  had  to 
perform  our  night's  job  with. 

Wrecked  on  the  Atlantic  Ocean 
and  Adrift  in  the  Storm 

"When  daylight  appeared  we  cast 
off  from  the  wreck  and  commending 
ourselves  to  the  care  of  Providence, 
bore  away  before  the  wind.  One  man 
was  stationed  at  the  helm  to  steer  with 
a  broken  arm,  a  second  stood  on  his 
knees  to  bail,  while  the  two  others 
were  forced  to  lie  in  the  bottom  of  the 
boat  for  ballast ;  and  this  was  our  con- 
stant situation  while  we  remained  in 
it.  For  the  space  of  three  days  we 
were  driven  before  the  wind  without 
any  cessation  from  our  labor  of  steer- 
ing and  hauling  as  the  storm  appeared 
to  increase.  Neither  sun,  moon  nor 
stars  appeared,  and  exhausted  nature 
almost  sunk  under  the  severe  suffer- 
ings we  were  obliged  to  encounter. 
The  fourth  day  the  gale  broke  and  the 
weather  cleared  up,  the  wind  blowing 
as  near  as  we  could  guess  from  the 
northwest  The  sun  continued  to 
shine  through  the  whole  day,  and  at 
night  set  in  a  cloudless  sky.  Night 
coming  on  we  observed  a  heavy  black 
cloud  arise  out  of  the  southwest;  a 
storm  of  thunder  ensued.  As  soon  as 
the  thunder  and  lightning  ceased  a 
violent  gale  of  wind  set  in  from  the 
southwest.  Every  ray  of  hope  seemed 
to  vanish  and  we  expected  no  other 
than  that  one  hour,  or  even  half  an 
hour,  longer  to  live,  would  be  the 
utmost  of  our  probationary  time. 
When  daylight  appeared  we  discov- 
ered a  large  breaker  some  distance 
astern  and  concluded  among  ourselves 
that  the  moment  of  our  dissolution 
was  at  hand,  when  we  should  be 
buried  in  a  watery  grave.  When  the 
breaker  overtook  us  we  were  for  a 
while  buried  beneath  the  surface  of 
the  water.  The  wave,  however,  left 
us  in  a  much  better  situation  than  we 
could  possibly  have  imagined.  Upon 
our  wiping  the  water  from  our  eyes, 


0n  an  Ammran  QlraMng  Uraatl 


we  again  beheld  each  other  with  emo- 
tions of  joy  and  surprise.  We  imme- 
diately set  ourselves  to  work  clearing 
the  boat  of  water,  it  being  almost  even 
full,  (having  had  forethought  suffi- 
cient to  lash  the  bucket  to  the  boat  be- 
fore the  wave  overtook  us). 

"We  soon  cleared  the  boat  of  water 
and  again  secured  the  bucket  as  be- 
fore. We  had  but  just  time  to  secure 
ourselves  and  bucket  before  a  sec- 
ond wave,  similar  to  the  first, 
broke  over  us  with  great  furry. 
We,  however,  continued  to  stick 
to  the  boat  until  this  wave  had 
subsided,  when,  quitting  our  holds,  we 
again  succeeded  in  freeing  the  boat 
from  water;  the  wave  ensuing,  being 
the  third,  was  more  moderate,  and  we 
were  again  relieved  from  the  fear  of 
immediate  destruction.  We  remained 
in  this  perilous  situation  until  the  next 
day,  when  the  captain,  worn  down 
with  fatigue  and  trouble,  sank  under 
hardships  too  great  for  human  nature 
to  bear.  Nature  appeared  exhausted, 
and,  unable  to  support  himself  longer 
in  an  upright  position,  he  fell  down 
into  the  bottom  of  tlje  boat  unable  to 
help  himself  in  the  least.  One  man 
by  the  name  of  Hand  (it  seems  but  a 
tribute  of  justice  to  the  memory  of 
William  Hand  to  remark  that  he,  un- 
der God,  was  the  means  of  our  preser- 
vation. During  the  whole  time  of 
our  continuance  in  the  boat  he  was  re- 
markable for  calmness,  judgment  and 
perseverance,  and  after  the  captain 
was  deprived  both  of  strength  and 
reason,  Hand's  courage  and  patience 
were  not  exhausted  in  the  least),  was 
the  only  person  able  to  steer  the  boat. 

"About  the  middle  of  the  day  the 
sun  made  its  appearance  through  the 
clouds,  which,  excepting  one  day,  had 
been  hidden  from  our  sight  by  clouds 
and  darkness  ever  since  we  were  ship- 
wrecked. During  the  whole  period 
we  had  never  discovered  a  vessel  and 
all  hopes  of  life  seemed  to  be  taken 
away;  but  that  ever  gracious  Being, 
who  hears  the  cry  of  the  raven  and 
condescends  to  regard  the  minutest 

487 


occurrences  of  life,  saw  all  our  afflic- 
tion and  had  determined  to  grant 
them  relief.  About  three  of  the  clock, 
as  near  as  we  could  judge,  we  espied 
a  lofty  ship,  but  as  she  was  plying  to 
the  windward  and  we  were  obliged 
to  sail  before  the  wind,  the  probabil- 
ity of  our  being  discovered  by  the  ship 
was  so  small  that  we  in  a  measure 
gave  up  all  hopes  of  being  saved.  Yet 
was  the  hand  of  Providence  visible  -it 
this  time,  it  being  about  four  o'clock 
when  we  passed  the  ship.  We  had 
but  just  passed  her,  when  the  watch 
on  board  of  her  being  called,  the  man 
who  was  going  to  take  the  helm, 
stepped  forward  to  take  an  observa- 
tion of  the  weather,  and  looking 
around,  observed  our  boat  at  a  dis- 
tance, but  could  not  ascertain  what  it 
was,  as  it  instantly  disappeared  in  the 
hollow  of  a  sea.  He  stood  till  it  arose 
to  his  sight  the  second  time,  when,  be- 
ing convinced  it  was  in  reality  a  boat, 
he  cried  out  to  the  officer  of  the 
watch:  'A  boat!  A  boat!' 

Heroic  Struggle  Against  the 
Elements — and  a  Rescue  at  Sea 

"The  ship's  courses  were  immedi- 
ately hauled  up  in  compliance  (as  we 
afterwards  learned)  with  the  orders 
of  the  chief  officer  on  deck.  They 
soon  gave  her  stern  way,  by  throw- 
ing her  topsail  aback  (the  wind 
blowing  too  fresh  to  admit  of 
their  heaving  about,  and  standing 
down  for  the  purpose  of  catching 
us)  and  proceeded  down  for  us; 
after  coming  within  hail,  an  offi- 
cer on  board  of  the  ship  called  out  *o 
us  to  be  of  good  courage,  saying  at 
the  same  time  to  his  men  on  board: 
'Get  a  line  ready,  my  boys,  we  will 
soon  catch  them.'  When  the  ship 
came  alongside  of  us,  the  first  mate 
(to  whose  generous  exertions  we 
were  at  this  time  indebted)  asked  us 
if  we  could  hold  on  to  a  rope.  We 
replied  that  we  thought  ourselves  too 
much  exhausted  by  long  abstinence 
and  fatigue  to  perform  any  service 
that  required  much  bodily  strength. 


Slmtnral  nf  (Eaptein 


ijmjt  —  Unrtt  in  1744 


He  then  directed  us  to  fasten  it  to  the 
boat  by  taking  two  or  three  turns 
round  the  forethought  after  having 
passed  it  through  the  ringbolt.  A 
rope  was  then  thrown  us,  and,  we 
obeying  the  mate's  directions,  were 
soon  alongside  of  the  ship.  We  were, 
however,  so  much  exhausted  that  we 
found  it  impossible  to  gain  the  ship's 
deck  without  assistance.  The  mate 
seeing  the  condition  we  were  in,  com- 
manded some  of  his  men  to  jump  into 
the  boat  and  assist  us  in  getting  on 
board. 

"When  we  found  ourselves  once 
more  out  of  immediate  danger  our 
happiness  was  indescribable.  The 
mate  then  desired  us  to  make  our- 
selves as  comfortable  as  possible  while 
he  secured  the  boat  (it  being  a  very 
handsome  yawl).  Captain  Meigs  was 
too  far  gone  to  realize  what  had 
passed,  and  was  laid  gentle  on  the 
deck,  while  the  mate  was  hoisting  the 
boat  on  board.  The  captain  of  the 
ship  now  made  his  appearance  on  deck 
for  the  purpose  (as  it  appeared)  of 
inquiring  how  long  we  had  been  in 
the  boat  and  whether  we  had  lived 
without  food  for  any  length  of  time. 
Upon  his  being  answered  in  the 
affirmative,  he  replied:  'And  what 
would  have  become  of  you  if  it  had 
not  been  for  me?'  We  remarked  for 
answer  that  we  must  soon  have  per- 
ished. The  captain  then  turned  and 
went  below  where  he  remained  until 
the  Sabbath  ensuing.  We  were  then 
taken  to  a  fire  and  stripped  of  our  re- 
maining clothes  (which  were  shirts 
and  trousers)  as  they  had  not  been 
dry  a  single  moment  since  our  ship- 
wreck. Upon  the  mate's  inquiring 
which  we  stood  most  in  need  of,  vict- 
uals or  drink,  we  informed  him  that 
our  thirst  was  the  most  distressing. 
Accordingly  he  made  us  some  weak 
sling,  and  after  a  short  time  he  gave 
us  a  small  quantity  of  boiled  rice  to- 
gether with  a  small  piece  of  bread  and 
cheese,  which  seemed  more  like 
aggravating  when  relieving  our  en- 
raged appetites.  His  precaution  was 


undoubtedly  the  most  safe  method  he 
could  devise  for  those  incapable  of 
using  judgment  for  themselves.  After 
we  had  supped  we  were  removed  to 
another  apartment  and  furnished  with 
a  comfortable  field  bed,  and  as  we  had 
been  for  a  long  time  a  stranger  to 
'Nature's  kind  restorer,  balmy  sleep,' 
my  companions  soon  fell  into  a  sound 
sleep,  which  I  found  impossible  to  do, 
without  first  satisfying  in  some  degree 
my  enraged  appetite. 

At  the  Mercy  of  a  Strange 
Crew  after  Long  Suffering 

"I  had  not  remained  long  in  this 
situation  before  several  of  the  ship's 
crew  came  down  for  the  purpose  of 
getting  a  bite  of  cold- junk  (as  they 
termed  it).  Unfortunately  for  me, 
they  supped  in  the  same  room  where  I 
lay.  I  lay  all  the  time  they  were  at 
supper  entirely  still,  not  making  the 
least  noise  for  fear  of  being  noticed, 
wishing  to  keep  them  in  entire  igno- 
rance of  my  voracious  appetite  keep- 
ing me  awake  while  my  companions 
were  asleep.  After  they  had  finished 
their  repast,  they,  laying  aside  their 
victuals  and  drink,  returned  on  deck. 
As  soon  as  they  were  gone  I  crept  off 
from  my  bed,  and  being  too  feeble  to 
walk,  I  made  the  best  of  my  way 
toward  the  place  in  which  I  saw  the 
sailors  deposit  their  victuals,  on  my 
hands  and  knees.  Having  arrived,  I 
loaded  my  hands  with  meat  and  bread, 
and  leaving:  the  locker,  I  crept  to  a 
large  can  filled  with  water,  with  a  full 
determination  to  drink  only  three 
swallows;  but,  alas!  how  feeble  are 
our  resolutions  when  crazed  by  en- 
raged appetites !  I  put  it  to  my  mouth 
and  before  my  judgment  could  come 
to  my  assistance,  I  had  almost  emptied 
the  can.  I  now  undertook  to  crawl 
back  to  my  bed.  I  had  not  proceeded 
half  way  before  I  was  taken  suddenly 
ill  and  remained  where  I  was,  being 
totally  unable  to  proceed  farther.  I 
remained  in  this  situation  during  the 
remainder  of  the  night,  being  racked 


0n   an  Amfriran   Srafcing 


with  the  most  excruciating  pains  that 
man    ever    suffered    by    imprudence. 
"Having  no  one  to  blame  except 
myself,  I  determined,  if  I  must  die  by 
my  own  hand,  to  leave  the  world  in 
ignorance  of  the  nature  of  my  com- 
plaint.   A  little  before  day,  oppressed 
nature  seemed  to  exert  itself  to  her 
utmost,  and  after  having  discharged 
the  contents  of  my  stomach,   I    felt 
myself  so  much  relieved  that  I  was 
enabled   to  regain   my  bed.     In   the 
morning    the    mate    came    down    to 
see    how    we    fared,    and    when    he 
learnt     what     I     had     been     about 
through    the    night,    he    exclaimed: 
Thank     God     that     you     are     still 
alive.'      In    consequence    of   the    hu- 
mane attentions  of  our  new  friends, 
Captain  Meigs  and  crew  gradually  re- 
gained their  health.    I  remained   ill 
much  longer  than  any  of  my  compan- 
ions on  account  of  my  imprudent  con- 
duct.    The  Sabbath  morning  after  we 
had  been  taken  on  board  the  ship,  the 
boatswain,  who  had  charge  of  Captain 
Warner's  watch,  had  the  politeness  at 
eight  of  the  clock  to  go  down  and  in- 
form him  of  the  time,  that  he  might 
as  usual  give  orders  to  call  another 
watch.    The  captain  replied  that  he 
would  tell  him  whether  it  were  eight 
o'clock  or  not.     He  then  took  a  quad- 
rant and  came  up  with  a  disturbed  air, 
and  after  looking  some  time  at  the 
sun,  said :  'It  is  not  eight  yet.'    After 
this  his  manners  continued  to  be  very 
singular  during  the  forenoon,  and  his 
motions  were  unusually  precipitant. 

Sad  Fate  of  Ship's  Captain  who 
Loses  his  Life  in  Delirium 

"At  twelve  o'clock  the  mate  took  his 
observation  and  went  below  to  per- 
form his  necessary  labor  of  naviga- 
tion. In  the  meantime  the  captain 
was  on  deck,  and  after  advancing  to 
the  side  of  the  ship,  took  a  handker- 
chief from  his  pocket  and  applied  it  to 
his  eyes.  He  then  (after  taking  It 
away  from  his  eyes)  looked  around  to 
see  if  anyone  observed  him,  and, 
thinking  himself  unnoticed,  actually 
489 


proceeded  to  tie  it  over  his  face.    The 
man     at     the     helm     had     narrowly 
watched  all  his  strange  manoeuvres, 
and  instantly  cried  out:   The  captain 
is  going  overboard!'    The  mate  then 
ran  from  the  cabin,  seized  hold  of  his 
clothes  just  as  he  was  plunging  over 
the  side  of  the  ship  and  pulled  him  in 
with   such   fury   that  they  both   fell 
backwards    on    deck.     After    strug- 
gling a  few  moments,  he  disengaged 
himself  from  the  mate  and  ran  up  to 
the    forecastle,   and   made   a   second 
attempt  to  leap  overboard,  being  pre- 
vented by   some  of  the  sailors;    he 
seemed  to  be  more  calm;    while  the 
officers   held   a   consultation    for   the 
purpose  of  determining  what  was  best 
to  be  done  with  Captain  Warner.    As 
they  considered  it  to  be  a  hazardous 
thing  to  put  their  commander  under 
close  confinement,  they  chose  rather 
to  watch  him  on  deck.     They  accord- 
ingly placed  him  aft,  where  he  contin- 
ued walking  the  remainder  of  the. day. 
He  soon  after  became  agitated  and 
often  prayed  earnestly  with  an  audible 
voice.    At  the  close  of  his  prayers  he 
would  exclaim  with  much  emphasis: 
'Oh,  if  I  must  be  buffeted,  I  must  be !' 
Towards  night  his  agony  appeared  to 
increase  and  he  prayed  with  greater 
frequency   and   earnestness.      In   the 
evening  a  light  being  placed  in  the 
binnacle,  as  the  captain  walked  past 
it,  the  light  discovered  to  us  large 
drops   of   sweat   standing   upon   his 
•forehead. 

"Not  long  after  he  imagined  that  he 
saw  a  fire-ship  and  directed  the 
helmsman  to  change  his  course.  The 
mate  (by  the  name  of  Se wards)  en- 
deavored to  pacify  him,  and  ordered 
the  man  at  helm  to  steer,  as  he  had 
done  before.  The  captain  insisted 
that  it  was  a  fire-ship  and  that  it  was 
making  towards  them  very  fast.  He 
then  ran  to  the  helm  and  placing  it 
hard  up,  ordered  the  yards  to  be 
quared  immediately,  apparently  with  a 
view  to  our  preservation;  yet  after 
some  time  Mr.  Sewards  prevailed  on 
him  to  let  him  take  it,  and  in  order,  if 


Hountal  nf  Captain  &atra»l  ingt— lorn  in  If44 


possible,  to  divert  him,  called  out: 
'Boys,  get  up  the  guns  on  deck ;  it  is 
the  devil  that  Captain  Warner  sees; 
silver  will  kill  him.  We  will  put  all 
the  money  we  have  into  the  guns  and 
shoot  him.'  But  the  captain's  mind 
was  too  gloomy  to  be  amused  by  this 
stratagem.  Shortly  after,  he  remarked 
that  the  ship  was  near  at  hand  and 
took  a  speaking  trumpet  and  hailed 
her.  He  then  applied  it  to  his  ear  as 
if  to  hear  the  reply. 

"After  listening  a  while  he  again 
put  the  trumpet  to  his  mouth  and 
cried  out:  'Oh!  Do  spare  me  a 
little  longer!'  After  again  wait- 
ing as  if  to  know  the  result,  he 
mournfully  exclaimed:  'Oh!  if  I  am 
to  be  buffeted,  I  must  be!'  He  then 
observed  that  the  boat  was  coming 
from  the  fire-ship,  and  said:  'Boys, 
man  the  sides.'  Accordingly,  two 
men  descended  to  the  side  of  the  ship 
with  their  hats  under  their  arms. 
This  was  only  customary  civility  and 
performed  to  honor  gentlemen  when 
entering  and  returning  from  a  ship. 
He  then  made  the  compliments  which 
are  usual  when  gentlemen  of  distinc- 
tion came  on  board,  and  said:  'Sir, 
will  you  please  to  walk  below?'  and 
immediately  repaired  below  into  the 
cabin,  where  he  continued  fifteen  or 
twenty  minutes.  So  novel  and  sur- 
prising was  the  same  that  not  a  loud 
word  was  spoken  on  deck  during  the 
whole  time. 

"When  Captain  Warner  again  came 
on  deck  he  seemed  to  compliment  a 
departing  stranger,  and  gave  orders 
to  man  the  sides.  His  orders  were 
immediately  obeyed  and  two  men  de- 
scended as  before.  He  next  made  a 
short  prayer,  and  afterwards  took  a 
gold  watch  from  his  pocket  and 
offered  it  to  the  mate.  'Here,'  said 
he,  'Mr.  Sewards  is  my  watch;  keep 
it  to  remember  me,  for  I  have  not  long 
to  stay  without.'  'I  don't  know  what 
you  mean,  Captain  Warner,'  rejoined 

Mr.   S ,  'by  not  having  long  to 

stay;   I  don't  want  your  watch,  for  I 
have  one  of  my  own.'    The  captain 


then  laid  it  on  the  binnacle,  and  Mr. 
Sewards,  thinking  it  unsafe  to  have 
him  remain  longer  on  deck,  prevailed 
on  him  to  go  below.  Having  occa- 
sion shortly  after  to  leave  the  cabin, 
he  directed  one  of  the  people  to  re- 
main in  it,  and  if  anything  happened 
to  call  for  help.  It  was  not  long  be- 
fore the  man  cried  out,  and  when  Mr. 
Sewards  came  to  his  assistance  he 
found  Captain  Warner  suspended  out 
of  the  cabin  window.  They  both  suc- 
ceeded in  drawing  him  in,  and  after 
shutting  the  windows,  Mr.  Sewards 
stationed  three  men  before  each  win- 
dow to  guard  them. 

"After  this  Captain  Warner  con- 
tinued walking  for  a  few  minutes. 
All  on  a  sudden  (to  the  astonish- 
ment of  the  whole)  he  seemed 
actuated  by  supernatural  springs,  for 
turning  upon  his  heel  (as  he  was 
walking  from  the  windows)  he  ap- 
peared to  spring  at  least  the  distance 
of  eighteen  or  twenty  feet,  passing  out 
of  the  window  head  first,  and  carrying 
it  together  with  the  frame  and  case- 
ment along  with  him.  Mr.  Sewards 
then  hastened  on  deck,  and,  bursting 
into  tears,  gave  orders  to  have  the 
ship  immediately  put  in  stays.  He 
then  repaired  aft  and  called  out :  'Cap- 
tain Warner!  Captain  Warner!'  with 
a  loud  voice,  but  received  no  answer. 
After  they  had  made  two  unsuccess- 
ful attempts  to  heave  the  vessel  in 
stays,  he  (the  mate)  ordered  to  have 
the  boat  immediately  cleared. 

At  Leeward  Islands  after 
Several  Tragedies  at  Sea 

"After  the  men  had  obeyed  their 
officer's  commands  in  clearing  the 
boat,  they  inquired  if  it  were  best  to 
throw  the  boat  over,  as  nothing  was  to 
be  seen  or  heard  of  the  captain.  Mr. 
Sewards  made  answer  that  he  thought 
it  would  be  entirely  useless  to  throw 
the  boat  over,  adding  that  the  captain 
went  off  very  strangely  without  leav- 
ing any  wake  on  the  surface  of  the 
water,  which  was  discernible  to  any 
man  aboard,  or  even  without  leaving 

490 


0n  an  Amtrtratt  SraMtuj 


them  any  room  to  conjecture  what 
had  become  of  him.  The  former 
mate  (now  master)  of  the  ship  then 
gave  orders  to  have  the  light  sails  all 
taken  in  and  the  others  closely  reefed, 
and  continued  them  in  a  similar  situa- 
tion, (notwithstanding  the  lightness 
of  the  breeze)  until  the  next  day, 
when  his  men  enquired  the  reason  of 
his  shortening  sail,  as  the  captain  was 
irrecoverably  lost.  He  replied  that 
the  ship  and  cargo  were  Captain 
Warner's  and  that  if  the  devil  had 
such  power  over  him,  he  knew  not 
how  much  he  might  have  over  his 
property.  Mr.  Sewards  continued  to 
prosecute  his  voyage,  and  thirty-seven 
days  after  arrived  at  Antigua.  Just 
at  evening  we  approached  the  mouth 
of  Param  Harbour,  where  we  an- 
chored during  the  night. 

"In  the  morning  we  were  much  sur- 
prised to  find  that  Mr.  Boling,  our 
then  chief  mate,  did  not  as  usual  make 
his   appearance.     After   waiting   im- 
patiently for  some  time  Captain  Sew- 
ards sent  to  his   stateroom   and  ex- 
pected to  be  informed  that  he  was 
within  sick  or  dead,  but  upon  investi- 
gation it  was  found  that  neither  he 
nor  anything  belonging  to  him  was  on 
board.     We  afterwards  learned  that 
the  night  preceding  his  elopement  he 
had  privately  hailed  a  boat  of  negroes 
and  prevailed  on  them  to  convey  him 
to  one  of  His  Majesty's  ships-of-war, 
choosing  rather  to  be  anywhere  than 
in    that    melancholy    place     (as    he 
termed  it.)    After  sailing  up  the  Har- 
bour Captain  Sewards  landed  us  in 
the    same    destitute    circumstance    of 
money  and  clothes  as  we  were  when 
taken  on  board  the  ship.     A  number 
of  gentlemen  soon  collected  on  shore 
and    inquired    of    Captain    Sewards 
where    he   was    from.     'Portsmouth, 
N.    H.,'   was   his   reply.     They   then 
asked  him  what  news  he  brought.    He 
answered  that  it  was  very  bad,  and 
proceeded  to  inform  them  of  our  hav- 
ing been  taken  up  by  him  when  almost 
famished  for  the  want  of  food  and 
rest.      He  then  proceeded  to  inform 


them  of  the  awful  event  which  had  de- 
prived him  of  his  captain. 

"As  soon  as  Mr.  Sewards  had 
finished  his  narrative  these  humane 
gentlemen  gave  us  an  invitation 
to  walk  uo  with  them  to  a  Public 
House,  which  stood  near  by,  and 
after  feeding  and  clothing  us,  had 
a  subscription  made  up  for  the 
purpose  of  alleviating  our  pecuniary 
wants  for  the  present.  We  had  been 
in  port  but  a  few  days  when  to  our 
great  joy  we  learned  that  Captain  Vail 
(one  of  our  former  acquaintances) 
was  just  arrived  at  the  port  of  St. 
Johns  in  the  same  Island.  All  of 
us  (except  Capt.  Meigs)  repaired 
thither  immediately,  where  we  met 
with  a  kind  reception  from  our  old 
friend,  Captain  Vail.  About  eight  or 
ten  days  after  we  arrived,  Captain 
Meigs  made  his  appearance  laden 
with  presents  which  he  had  received 
from  his  truly  noble  and  disinterested 
patron  in  Param. 

The  Sea-farer's  Home-coming 
Back  in  old  New  England 

"Soon  after  I  embarked  on  board  a 
vessel  bound  for  New  London  in 
North  America,  which  was  short  of 
hands,  and  after  a  passage  of  four- 
teen days  (having  been  about  three 
months)  arrived  safe  in  New  London, 
and  from  thence  proceeded  home  by 
land ;  found  my  friends  well  at  Guil- 
ford  and  pleased  at  my  return.  They 
were,  however,  much  surprised  at  my 
coming  home  alone,  and  still  more 
were  they  surprised  by  hearing  the  re- 
cital of  my  voyage.  Captain  Meigs 
and  one  of  my  brothers  in  tribulation 
had  the  happiness  of  reaching  home 
the  same  evening  on  which  I  arrived. 
Next  day,  being  Sabbath,  Captain 
Meigs,  myself  and  the  sailor  who 
accompanied  the  Captain  home,  at- 
tended Divine  Service  and  jointly 
offered  up  a  tribute  of  Gratitude  and 
Praise  to  our  Almighty  Preserver  and 
Benefactor,  who  had  saved  us  amidst 
the  furious  Seas !  In  the  interval  be- 
tween the  meetings  Wm.  Hand 


3J0urtral  of  (Eapiatn  Samuel  ifngt — Snm  in  1744 


arrived.  He  attended  public  worship 
in  the  afternoon  and  returned  public 
and  hearty  thanks  to  Him,  whom  the 
winds  and  seas  obey,  for  his  safe  re- 
turn to  his  family  and  friends. 

"After  a  sufficient  length  of  time 
had  elapsed  since  my  arrival  I 
inquired  of  every  person  which  I 
thought  likely  to  be  able  to  give 
me  any  information  about  Captain 
Seward,  but  without  any  success, 
until  near  three  years  afterwards, 
when  I  saw  the  former  boatswain 
of  the  ship  and  learned  from  him 
that  after  we  left  the  ship  the 
hands  became  frightened  and  would 
continue  in  her  no  longer;  that  Cap- 
tain Seward  offered  to  advance  him 
to  the  office  of  Chief  Mate  if  he  would 
remain  with  him,  but  that  he  (the 
boatswain)  was  unable  to  reconcile 
his  mind  to  the  idea  of  staying,  and 
consequently  obtained  a  dismission; 
that  the  Captain  shipped  another  crew, 
but  they  also  became  timid  and  de- 
serted the  ship. 

"After  Captain  S had  dis- 
charged his  cargo  he  took  a  freight 
of  sugar  for  London,  but  was 
forced  to  hire  laborers  by  the  day  to 
load  the  vessel.  He  was  then  obliged 
to  contract  with  a  ship's  crew  only  for 
the  run,  and  when  he  reached  London 
was  again  left  alone.  And  being  very 
much  discouraged  he  sold  the  ship 
and  cargo  to  free  himself  from  any 
further  embarrassment,  and  had  never 
(to  his  knowledge)  made  any  returns 
of  the  voyage  previous  to  that  period. 
But  to  return  to  my  narrative. 

A  Voyage  on  the  Brig  «  Delight " 
to  Barbadoes in  1763 

"Near  the  close  of  the  year  1763  I 
again  embarked  on  board  a  brig, 
called  the  'Delight,'  bound  to  Barba- 
does. The  repeated  losses  which  I 
had  sustained  sat  heavy  on  my  mind 
and  I  resolved  once  more  to  attempt 
repairing  them.  I  shall  omit  men- 
tioning particulars  for  fear  of  tres- 
passing upon  the  patience  of  my 
reader,  and  only  observe  that  after  a 


quick  and  pleasant  passage  we  arrived 
at  our  destined  port  in  high  spirits  and 
good  health.  Soon  after  our  arrival 
at  Barbadoes  we  landed  our  cargo, 
and  leaving  the  captain  to  dispose  of 
the  property  (the  Mate  taking  charge 
of  the  Brig)  proceeded  to  Salt 
Tudas  (?)  for  the  purpose  of  procur- 
ing a  load  of  salt.  When  we  arrived 
at  that  place  we  found  ourselves  un- 
der the  necessity  of  transporting  the 
salt  the  distance  of  one  mile  by  land 
over  a  rough  and  almost  barren  coun- 
try. This  so  much  impeded  our 
progress  that  fourteen  days  elapsed 
before  we  had  finished  loading  the 
Brig.  During  this  time  a  great  part 
of  our  provisions  being  exhausted, 
and  the  Island  without  inhabitants,  we 
could  obtain  no  provisions  to  recruit 
our  almost  exhausted  stores  without 
endangering  our  lives  and  property, 
as  Great  Britain  and  Spain  were  at 
open  hostilities  and  we  on  a  Spanish 
coast  surrounded  by  enemies;  we 
were  obliged  to  proceed  on.  Not- 
withstanding our  scanty  allowance, 
ten  days  after  we  left  the  Island,  our 
small  store  of  provision  being  divided 
we  found  to  our  sorrow  that  twenty 
biscuits  and  four  pounds  of  meat  per 
man  was  all  we  had  to  depend  upon 
during  the  remainder  of  our  voyage, 
which  proved  very  long. 

"Thirty  days  elapsed  before  we 
were  able  to  obtain  a  fresh  supply. 
In  the  meantime,  after  our  provisions 
were  exhausted,  we  betook  ourselves 
to  a  new  occupation,  even  that  of 
catching  rats,  which  was  all  we  had 
to  subsist  on  for  the  space  of  five  days. 
Even  these  animals  were  so  embold- 
ened by  hunger  that  they  frequently 
sallied  forth  from  the  scaling  of  the 
vessel  and  attacked  us  when  asleep. 
Several  of  our  people  were  badly  bit- 
ten by  them,  losing  large  pieces  of 
flesh  from  our  hands  and  feet.  Dur- 
ing the  passage  we  had  never  spoken 
a  vessel,  and  as  we  had  often  experi- 
enced contrary  winds,  hope  the  only 
friend  of  the  unfortunate,  had  almost 
taken  his  flight  from  on  board  our 


nn   an  Am*riran   ©racing 


famished  ship.  Just  as  the  time  that 
we  made  the  N.  American  Coast  we 
fell  in  with  a  vessel  bound  to  the  West 
Indies,  of  whom  we  obtained  some 
fresh  supplies  of  provision,  which  so 
much  enlivened  the  ship's  crew  that 
joy  was  perspicuous  in  every  counte- 
nance, and  every  eye  sparkled  with 
hope  of  soon  again  beholding  their 
beloved  friends.  Soon  after  we  part- 
ed with  the  vessel  that  supplied  us ;  a 
favorable  breeze  sprang  up,  and  in  the 
space  of  four  days  we  arrived  in  Guil- 
ford,  found  our  friends  all  in  good 
health  and  pleased  at  our  safe  return, 
after  an  absence  of  five  months  and 
ten  days. 

Bound  for  the  Island  of 
Jamaica,  West  Indies,  in  1764 

"In  June  1764,  I  again  shipped  on 
board  the  same  Brig  and  set  sail  for 
Jamaica.  Fortune  at  length,  seeming 
tired  of  opposing  one  who  had  so  long 
been  her  sport,  made  some  amends  by 
giving  us  fair  winds  and  a  quick  mar- 
ket. Soon  after  we  arrived  in  port 
one  of  the  mates  sickened  and  died. 
We  soon  accomplished  our  business 
in  port  and  set  out  on  our  return 
home.  Not  long  after  we  left  Jamaica 
we  were  overtaken  by  a  terrible  hurri- 
cane, which  carried  our  mast  by  the 
board,  and  left  us  a  complete  wreck, 
for  the  winds  and  seas  to  toss  us 
wherever  Providence  saw  fit.  Through 
the  protecting  hand  of  Heaven  our 
lives  were  preserved,  but  at  the  close 
of  the  hurricane  our  vessel  presented 


us  with  a  dreary  prospect,  not  having 
a  strand  of  rigging  on  deck  except  the 
main  ropes.  We,  however,  by  un- 
wearied exertions,  erected  jury  masts, 
which  in  seventeen  days  (the  weather 
being  good)  brought  us  to  our  de- 
sired haven,  viz. :  Guilford. 

"After  remaining  with  my  friends  a 
short  time  I  again  made  a  voyage  to 
Jamaica.  It  proved  to  be  fortunate, 
and  no  unusual  event  occurred  during 
my  absence  from  Guilford.  Subse- 
quent to  my  return  I  continued  at 
Guilford  several  months,  and  was 
busily  employed  in  repairing  a  small 
house,  which  I  had  just  purchased. 
Not  long  after  I  engaged  another  trip 
for  the  West  Indies,  but  was  pre- 
vented by  a  fall  from  my  house,  which 
at  first  I  looked  upon  as  a  severe  mis- 
fortune, but  Providence  meant  it  for 
my  good.  The  vessel  in  which  I  had 
designed  to  sail  was  (owing  to  con- 
trary winds)  sixty  days  on  her  home- 
ward bound  passage  without  being 
able  to  reach  the  American  coast  dur- 
ing which  time  the  person  who  sailed 
in  my  room  was  lost  overboard,  and 
they  were  finally  obliged  to  return  to 
the  West  Indies  before  they  could  ter- 
minate the  voyage." 

The  journal  of  Captain  Hoyt  now 
enters  upon  a  narration  of  his  experi- 
ences in  the  years  just  before  and 
during  the  American  Revolution. 
His  thrilling  story  of  adventures  in 
these  "knighthood  days  in  America" 
make  another  interesting  chapter. 


3tet   llamas   tit  Ammra 


Br  CLARA  EMERSON  BICKFORD 


BROUGHT    TO    AMERICA    FROM     PARIS    BY    PRESIDENT    MONROE 

Purchased  by  Judge  Philip  Norbonne  Nicholas  of  Richmond,  Virginia,  from  President  Monroe,  and  now 
belonging  to  Miss  Elizabeth  Byrd  Nicholas  of  Washington.  Wood  is  hard,  yellow,  picked  out  with  gold  and 
female  figure  and  scroll-work  in  bronze;  covering  sky-blue  satin  with  yellow  cording  around  cushions 


CENTURIES     before     the 
Christian  era  the  Egyp- 
tians had  chairs  of  wood 
with  cane  seats  and  large 
and      easy      arm-chairs 
with      cushioned      seats 
and   beautiful   decorated 
couches  and  wall  hangings.    This  was 
an  age  of  magnificent  leisure,  and  the 
Egyptian   physical   civilization   seems 
to  have  been  as  carefully  organized 
as  that  of  modern  Europe  and  was 
maintained  for  a  time,  which  dwarfs 
by  comparison  all  the  epochs  of  Eu- 
rope.    The   Assyrians   are   shown   in 
their  bas-reliefs  seated  on  couches  and 
thrones,     with    bedside    tables     and 
stools,    vases    and    dishes    of    varied 
form.     The  tables  are  lower  than  the 
couches,  as  would  be  more  convenient. 
The  ancient  Persians  and  the  people 
of   Asia    Minor   had    rich    furniture. 


The  people  of  India  have  been  makers 
of  magnificent  articles  of  mingled  use 
and  beauty  from  time  immemorial. 
The  great  Empire  of  China  is  rich  in 
the  history  of  decoration  and  furni- 
ture, combined  with  custom,  tradi- 
tion, and  strong  family  and  ancestral 
feeling,  prolonged  through  untold 
centuries.  From  Greek  and  Roman 
antiquity  come  the  marble  tables  and 
lamp-stands.  The  bronze  articles  of 
utility  Pompeii  has  preserved  for 
modern  times,  but  little  else  has  been 
learned  with  any  certainty.  Small  ta- 
bles were  brought  to  the  distinguished 
guests  in  Homeric  times,  one  for  each 
guest.  The  custom  of  removing  the 
tables  with  all  on  them  and  bringing 
others,  was  also  a  later  Greek  prac- 
tice. In  the  Roman  triclinia  or  din- 
ing-rooms the  whole  table  was  re- 
movable at  one  time,  and  at  a  later 

494 


3n    tlj? 


FROM  LIBRARY  OF  NAPOLEON  I 


At  Malroaison,  and  given  by  Louis  Philippe  to 
Marquis  De  Marginy  of  New  Orleans.  This  model 
is  mahogany  and  has  survived  for  many  years 

time,  the  leg  or  upright  of  the  table 
was  made  permanent,  and  only  the 
top  movable,  and  intended  to  be 
changed  with  the  changing  services. 
Tablecloths  came  in  with  the  Em- 
peror Tiberius. 

In  America  the  well-to-do  cavaliers 
who  came  to  Jamestown  in  1607  were 
lovers  of  comfort  and  art  and  it  was 
not  long  before  they  began  to  import 
rich  furniture  from  Europe.  The 
next  century  was  one  of  magnificence 
and  many  of  the  homes  along  the  At- 
lantic coast  were  abodes  of  ease  and 
elegance. 

An  American  antiquarian,  Esther 
Singleton,  has  made  an  exhaustive 
study  of  the  evolution  of  household 
decoration  in  the  New  World,  and 
finds  that  America  is  to-day  a  treas- 
ure-house of  magnificent  heirlooms, 

40$ 


m*a    in    America 

many  of  which  have  descended  nine 
generations.  The  drawings  here 
shown  are  from  originals  found  in 
American  homes  by  Miss  Singleton 
and  recorded  in  her  book  by  Double- 
day,  Page  and  Company  of  New 
York.  The  history  of  furniture  is  so 
closely  related  to  intellectual  develop- 
ment that  through  it  may  be  reflected 
a  composite  of  a  people's  culture. 


BROUGHT 


1633 


The  first  comers  to  America  brought  many  oak 
chairs  with  rich  earrings  -  This  is  a  specimen  of  the 
beautifully  carved  oak  chairs  of  a  later  period 


EARLY    COLONIAL    MAHOGANY    CHAIRS    IN    AMERICA 

The  chair  on  the  left  is  similar  to  the  model  in  South  Kensington,  dated  1732— The  one  on  the  right  resembles 
the  models  dated  about  1750  —  Drawings  from  originals  by  Doubleday,  Page  and  Company  of  New  York 


BROUGHT    TO    AMERICA    BY    THE    ENGLISH    SETTLERS    FROM    LEYDEN 
Rush-bottomed  and  caned-seat  chairs  were  universally  used  during  the  seventeenth  century.      These 
specimens  are  in  the  possession  of   The  Connecticut   Historical   Society,    Hartford,  Connecticut 


£>ttwt  &?nwr  of  Ammran  Uruohrtum 


in 

which  Jmtntnrnt  Drfrat  uutr. 
litrurit  In  Ojlnrioua  Utrtortj  J*  Srprrastng 
tt|r  Hauagrra  of  Jlropr  rtg  an  lh,r  (Dntakirta  of  the  Artmj  j* 
Anrrootra  of  (Colonrl  ^rur£  HuiUugton.  Horn  1733.  atto  the  ijrroiain 
of  ^ia  Saagbtrra  urfjo    fcawa  ^ira  from  (Eaptarr  anu  Exrrution  > 

BY 

Louis  S.  PATRICK 

MARINKTTE,  WISCONSIN 
\Viio  HAS  MADE  AN  EXHAUSTIVE  STUDY  or  Tata  PHASE  OP  TUB  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION 


HE  American  Revolution 
made  many  strong  men — 
daring  fighters  who  were 
il  willing  to  lay  down  their 
lives  for  their  cause. 
There  is  another  type  of 
strong  manhood  that  took 
an  important  part  in  the  American 
triumph — men  whose  wit  and  in- 
vention thwarted  the  plans  of  the  en- 
emy and  turned  imminent  defeat  into 
glorious  victory. 

This  is  a  true  story  of  what  might 
be  termed  the  "secret  service."  It  re- 
lates the  life  of  a  man  of  whom  little 
is  recorded  but  whose  services  to  his 
country  were  such  that  justice  should 
be  done  his  character. 

There  was  a  band  of  "lurking  mis- 
creants, not  properly  enrolled,  who 
stayed  chiefly  at  Westchester,  New 
York,  from  whence  they  infested  the 
country  between  the  two  armies,  pil- 
laged the  cattle  and  carried  off  the 
peaceful  inhabitants.  The  Whig  in- 
habitants on  the  edge  of  our  lines,  and 
still  lower  down,  who  had  been  plun- 
dered in  a  merciless  manner,  delayed 
not  to  strip  the  Tories  in  return.  Peo- 
ple, most  nearly  connected,  allied  fre- 
quently, became  the  most  exasperated 
and  inveterate  in  malice.  Then  the 
ties  of  friendship  were  broken,  then 
friendship  itself  being  soured  to  en- 
mity, the  mind  readily  gave  way  to 
private  revenge,  uncontrolled  retalia- 
tion and  all  the  deforming  passions 
that  disgrace  humanity.  Enormities 
almost  without  name,  were  perpetra- 


ted, at  the  description  of  which,  the 
bosom,  not  frozen  to  apathy,  must 
glow  with  a  mixture  of  pity  and  in- 
dignation." 

This  is  the  narrative  of  a  man  who 
undertook  the  breaking  up  of  these 
marauders  and  incurred  their  direst 
enmity ;  a  price  was  placed  on  his  head 
and  several  spies  sought  his  capture 
and  the  reward.  The  story  of  his  ex- 
perience is  most  entertaining. 

Whether  his  early  life  brought  him 
any  material  advantages  over  his  asso- 
ciates, or  that  he  enjoyed  greater 
privileges  or  opportunities  more  than 
parents  of  ordinary  means  and  culture 
could  give,  there  appears  to  be  no  sub- 
stantial evidence.  However,  traits  of 
character  indicative  of  the  future  man 
became  manifest  at  an  early  age.  The 
beginning  of  the  French  and  Indian 
War  found  him  ready  and  willing  to 
enter  the  military  service,  and  inspired 
by  the  love  of  adventure,  having  a 
fearless  and  independent  nature,  a 
resolute  character  coupled  with  a  mili- 
tary spirit,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  he 
enlisted  under  the  King's  proclama- 
tion and  marched  to  the  frontier  where 
he  saw  service  and  gallantly  and  cred- 
itably participated  in  three  campaigns, 
and  remained  in  the  service  until 
nearly  the  close  of  the  war.  He  was 
present  and  took  part  in  the  battle  of 
Lake  George,  where  he  saw  his  uncle 
killed  and  a  cousin  mortally  wounded. 
It  is  the  story  of  an  heroic  American 
youth. 


nf  (Eoton*!  fiubtngton — $0nt  in  1T39 


OLONEL  HENRY  LUD- 
INGTON  was  born  in 
1739  and  his  experiences 
were  those  known  only 
to  the  founders  of  the 
nation.  While  a  mere 
boy,  he  was  detailed  to 
escort  a  company  of  invalid  soldiers 
from  Canada  to  Boston.  This  peril- 
ous duty  and  journey  through  the  wil- 
derness, undertaken  in  the  dead  of 
winter  was  one  of  almost  incredible 
hardship  and  suffering.  At  times, 
compelled  to  subsist  upon  the  twigs 
of  the  trees  and  with  no  protection  at 
night  but  their  blankets  to  shelter 
them  from  the  inclemency  of  the 
weather,  the  gallant  young  leader 
braved  the  dangers  and  privations  of 
the  march  and  successfully  accom- 
plished the  duty  assigned. 

The  young  soldier  possessed  a 
genial  and  a  companionable  disposi- 
tion. Military  life  and  discipline, 
and  the  toil  and  hardship  of  the  cam- 
paign were  not  sufficient  to  hold  in 
check  his  buoyant  nature  or  to  re- 
press his  indomitable  spirit.  He 
loved  practical  jokes  and  was  always 
fond  of  putting  them  into  execution. 
On  the  march  to  Canada,  he  was 
ordered  with  other  men  under  the 
command  of  a  sergeant  to  proceed  to 
cut  out  a  road  for  the  army  through 
the  wilderness,  a  task  not  to  his  lik- 
ing. In  order  to  avoid  this  duty,  he 
cautiously  sought  his  tent,  disguised 
himself  and  soon  after  joined  the  com- 
pany, which  had  already  taken  up  the 
line  of  march.  As  he  came  up  with 
them,  he  ordered  the  sergeant  into 
the  ranks  and  took  command  himself. 
The  sergeant  was  inclined  to  dispute 
his  authority  and  to  resist,  but  of  no 
avail.  The  self-constituted  officer 
threatened  to  report  him  if  he  did  not 
obey  and  promptly  and  quietly  yield. 
The  ruse  and  the  disguise  was  so 
complete  that  no  one  recognized  him 
or  even  suspected  his  authority. 
AVhen  the  detail  returned  to  the  camp, 
quickly  and  unobserved  he  reached 
his  tent,  resumed  his  ordinary  dress, 
having  to  all  intents  and  purposes 


obeyed  the  order  of  his  superior  offi- 
cer and  performed  his  full  share  of 
the  work  ordered.  Not  so  with  the 
yielding  sergeant;  he  was  court-mar- 
tialled  and  punished.  The  young  sol- 
dier's superior  tact  and  naivete  saved 
him. 

Soon    after    his     Canadian     cam- 
paigns, young  Ludington  married  his 
cousin,  Abigail  Ludington,  a  daughter 
of    Elisha    Ludington    of    Branford, 
Connecticut.       This    event    occurred 
May  first,  1760.     The  young  couple, 
with  their  parents  and  the  members 
of  their  families,  left  Branford  and 
sought  a  new  home  to  the  westward. 
This  they  found  within  the  limits  of 
the  Phillips  Patent  which  afterwards 
became     Fredericksburgh     Precinct, 
Dutchess    County,    New    York,    and 
later  by  enactment  in  1812,  the  town 
of  Kent,  Putnam  County,  New  York. 
The  location  of  their  home  was  on  the 
north  end  of  Lot  Number  Six  of  the 
Phillips  Patent.     Only  one  other  set- 
tler had  preceded  them^  and  the  whole 
country  about  them  was  a  dense  wil- 
derness.    Family  tradition  alone  ex- 
plains why  this  selection  was  made. 
The  lands  were  fertile  and  cheap,  the 
pasture  for  the  stock  abundant  and 
easily  obtained,  the  water  good,  the 
place  healthy  and  pleasant  and  free 
from  many  of  the  ills  pertaining  to 
new   settlements.      However   encour- 
aging and  alluring  the  inducements 
were   for   settlement,  the   rocky  and 
rugged  hills  and  the  valleys  of  this 
region    had    obstacles    not    so    easily 
overcome.     To  till  them  and  to  bring 
them    into    cultivation    required    pa- 
tience and  industry.     The  young  pio- 
neer was  neither  discouraged  nor  dis- 
mayed   by    his    surroundings.       He 
planned  and  wrought  on  a  broad  scale. 
Fertile  acres  were  developed  and  his 
enterprise  and  industry  were  reward- 
ed  by   large   possessions.      Nor   was 
this  all ;  his  address,  capability  and  in- 
tegrity brought  him  influence  and  au- 
thority. 

Soon  after  Ludington's  entry  into 
Dutchess  County  in  the  Province  of 
New  York,  he  was  appointed  a  sub- 

498 


nf        Ammran 


sheriff.  He  took  the  oaths  of  office 
March  twelfth,  1763;  one  of  abjura- 
tion and  the  other  of  fealty  to  the  Sov- 
ereign, which  were  prescribed  for  offi- 
cers on  the  accession  of  George  the 
Third  to  the  throne  of  England. 
These  oaths  are  quaint  relics  of  a  by- 
gone custom  and  authority. 

His  oath  of  abjuration  declared  his 
belief  "that  there  was  no  transubstan- 
tiation  of  the  elements  of  the  bread 
and  wine  into  the  body  and  blood  of 
Christ  at  or  after  the  consecration  by 
any  person  whatsoever."  His  decla- 
ration of  loyalty  to  the  King  by  the 
second  oath  was  of  no  uncertain  char- 
acter. By  it  he  pledged  himself  to 
remain  faithful  to  the  King  and  to 
defend  him  against  all  traitorous  con- 
spiracies and  attempts  against  his  per- 
son, crown  and  dignity  to  the  utmost 
of  his  power,  and  particularly  to  up- 
hold the  succession  of  the  crown 
against  the  claims  of  the  pretended 
Prince  of  Wales,  who  had  styled  him- 
self King  of  England  under  the  name 
of  James  the  Third. 

At  this  time,  the  ominous  signs  of 
the  coming  storm,  the  'American  Rev- 
olution, were  visible.  Events,  particu- 
larly in  the  New  England  colonies, 
were  such  as  to  give  strength  and 
power  to  sentiment  of  open  rebellion, 
yet  it  is  evident  that  his  loyalty  to  the 
government  had  not  been  disturbed, 
nor  had  the  culminating  events 
swerved  him  from  his  adhesion  to  his 
oath,  neither  had  his  obligations  weak- 
ened to  his  Sovereign  from  the  char- 
acter and  nature  of  these  oaths.  His 
fidelity  remained  unquestioned  and 
William  Tryon,  the  captain-general 
and  governor  of  the  Province  of  New 
York,  under  the  forms  of  issuing 
commissions,  "reposing  especial  trust 
and  confidence,  as  well  in  the  care  and 
diligence,  as  in  the  loyalty  and  readi- 
ness to  do  his  Majesty  good  and  faith- 
ful service,"  appointed  him  captain  of 
the  fifth  company  of  the  second  bat- 
tallion  of  the  Fredericksburgh  Regi- 
ment of  Militia  in  Dutchess  County. 
Captain  Ludington's  commission  was 
given  in  the  city  of  New  York  on  the 


thirteenth  day  of  February,  1773,  and 
on  the  second  day  of  April,  1773, 
Henry  Rosenkranz  certified :  "that  the 
within  Henry  Ludington  had  taken 
the  oaths  as  by  law  appointed  and  the 
oaths  of  his  office."  He  retained  this 
command  until  the  commencement  of 
the  Revolution. 

However  loyal  Sheriff  Ludington 
may  have  been  in  his  allegiance  to  the 
authority  of  George  the  Third,  when 
the  fires  of  patriotism  were  awakened 
by  the  signal  guns  at  Lexington,  then 
self-interest  and  fidelity  to  the  King 
was  forgotten.  He  espoused  the 
cause  of  the  colonists  with  alacrity. 
The  time  for  action  found  him  vigi- 
lant, aggressive,  ready  to  meet  arbi- 
trary power  and  armed  operations. 
His  patriotic  zeal  made  him  an  unhes- 
itating, energetic,  open  patriot.  Once 
within  the  patriots'  ranks,  his  ardor, 
military  experience  and  judgment 
gave  the  cause  of  independence  a  zeal- 
ous defender  and  a  conspicuous  advo- 
cate. He  recognized  the  importance 
of  prompt  action,  believing  that  de- 
lays were  fraught  with  danger. 
Early  in  the  struggle,  he  took  decisive 
and  vigorous  measures  to  sustain  the 
Provincial  authorities  of  New  York. 
In  conjunction  with  Joseph  Crane, 
Jr.,  Jonathan  Paddock  and  Elisha 
Townsend,  Jr.,  who  were  leading 
men  and  influential  persons  in  his 
county,  he  addressed  a  letter  to  the 
Honorable  Council  of  Safety  of  the 
State,  defining  the  action  they  had 
taken  at  the  universal  call  of  the  peo- 
ple to  prevent  the  removal  of  flour 
from  that  part  of  the  state  and  to 
effect  the  detention  of  one  Helmes 
who  had  been  purchasing  wheat  and 
flour  and  was  then  moving  it  from 
Fishkill  towards  Newark.  This 
man's  presence  with  them  was  of 
doubtful  character  and  his  conversa- 
tion was  of  a  "disaffected  nature." 
The  well  "effected  people"  were  uni- 
versally displeased  at  this  state  of 
affairs.  "Nothing,"  said  they,  "but 
the  strongest  necessity  could  induce 
us  to  trouble  you  with  an  application 
of  so  extraordinary  a  nature,  but,  if 


nf  (Ealnnel  iCuMngian — itorn  m  1733 


we  are  esteemed  worthy  of  your  con- 
fidence as  friends  of  our  struggling 
country,  our  sincerity  will  atone  for 
what  in  common  cases  might  appear 
indecent."  "Our  invaded  state,"  they 
said,  "has  not  only  been  an  object  of 
special  designs  of  our  common  enemy 
but  was  obnoxious  to  the  wicked  mer- 
cenary intrigues  of  a  number  of  jock- 
ies,  who  had  drained  that  part  of  the 
State  of  the  article  of  bread  to  that 
extent  that  they  had  reasons  to  fear 
there  was  not  enough  left  to  support 
the  people." 

In  the  organization  of  the  Dutchess 
County  Militia  for  the  Revolutionary 
service,  previous  training  and  services 
gave  Colonel  Ludington  conspicuous 
prominence.  During  the  winter  of 
1775-6  he  was  appointed  a  second 
major  in  Colonel  Jacobus  Swartout's 
Regiment  of  minute-men  in  Dutchess 
County,  and  when  its  first  major, 
Malcolm  Morrison,  resigned,  Luding- 
ton was  appointed  in  his  place  March 
tenth,  1776. 

The  next  command  to  which  he  was 
nominated  was  that  of  lieutenant 
colonel.  The  general  committee  of 
the  county  decided  on  May  sixth, 
1776,  to  divide  and  reorganize  the 
southern  regiment  of  militia  into  two 
regiments.  The  regiment  of  which 
he  was  to  be  the  lieutenant  colonel 
included  all  the  militia  in  the  Fred- 
ericksburgh  Precinct  (except  the  mid- 
dle and  north  short  lots),  and  all  the 
militia  in  the  Phillips  Precinct  in 
Dutchess  County.  The  regiment  was 
to  remain  unregimented  until  the  offi- 
cers received  their  commissions,  but 
the  Provincial  Congress  of  the  Colony 
of  New  York  commissioned  him  colo- 
nel in  June,  1776,  his  command  being 
as  already  described.  This  commis- 
sion was  superseded  by  another  grant- 
ed to  him  by  Governor  George  Clin- 
ton, the  first  governor  of  the  State  of 
New  York,  issued  at  Poughkeepsie, 
May  twenty-eighth,  1778,  ordering 
him  to  take  command  of  the  regiment 
hithertofore  commanded  by  him. 
This  rank  he  held  throughout  the  war 
and  for  many  years  afterwards. 


The  locality  in  New  York  in  which 
Colonel  Ludington  lived,  and  to 
which  his  regiment  belonged,  was  in 
close  proximity  to  the  Neutral  Ground 
of  New  York.  It  was  the  shortest 
route  to  New  York  and  the  most  di- 
rect line  to  Connecticut  and  other 
points  in  the  farther  East.  The  im- 
portant post  of  West  Point  was  only 
twenty  miles  away,  while  to  the  west, 
three  miles,  rose  the  crest  of  the 
Highlands  of  the  Hudson,  overlook- 
ing Fishkill  and  Newburg  in  the  val- 
ley below.  Owing  to  the  directness 
of  the  route,  this  locality  became 
strategic  and  advantageous  to  direct 
the  movement  and  concentration  of 
troops  in  any  direction  whenever  an 
emergency  required.  The  ease  and 
readiness  by  which  his  command 
could  be  diverted  and  concentrated, 
brought  Colonel  Ludington's  Regi- 
ment into  active  and  constant  service 
in  the  counties  of  Dutchess  and  West- 
chester,  either  to  assist  the  regular 
troops  or  to  quell  the  turbulent  Tory 
spirit  of  that  section,  or  to  repress  the 
vicious  and  exasperating  conduct  of 
the  "Cowboys  and  Skinners,"  who  in- 
fested the  Neutral  Ground. 

"In  this  section,"  says  one  record, 
"the  condition  of  affairs  was  truly  de- 
plorable. Small  parties  of  volunteers 
on  the  one  side,  and  parties  of  Royal- 
ists and  Tories  on  the  other,  constant- 
ly harassed  the  inhabitants  and  plun- 
dered without  mercy  friend  and  foe 
alike.  To  guard  against  surprise  re- 
quired the  utmost  vigilance.  Within 
this  territory  resided  many  friends  of 
the  American  cause,  whose  situation 
exposed  them  to  continual  ravages  by 
the  Tories,  horse-thieves  and  cow- 
boys, who  robbed  them  indiscrimi- 
nately and  mercilessly,  while  the  per- 
sonal abuse  and  punishment  were 
almost  incredible." 

From  this  section  and  by  the  aid 
and  co-operation  of  these  lawless 
gangs,  General  Howe,  the  com- 
mander of  the  British  forces  in  and 
around  New  York,  obtained  largely 
his  supplies  of  cattle  and  grain. 
Colonel  Ludington's  activity  and  vigi- 

50° 


OATH  OF  ALLEGIANCE  TO  KING  GEORGE  III 

Sworn  to  by  Colonel  Henry  Ludington  on  March  ti,  1763,  In  Dutchess  County  in  the  Province 
of  New  York,  before  he  was  allowed  to  take  office  as  a  sub-sheriff— Accurate  Transcript 

I  do  Sincerely  Promise  &  Swear,  that  I  will  be  faithful  and  bear  true 

Allegiance  to  his  Majesty  King  George  the  Third,  and  I  do  Swear,  that  I  do  from 
my  heart,  Abhor,  Detest,  and  Abjure,  as  Impious  and  Heritical,  that  Damnable 
Doctrine  and  Position,  that  Princes  Excommunicated  and  Deprived  by  the  Pope, 
or  Any  Authority  of  the  See  of  Rome,  may  be  Deposed  by  their  Subjects  or  any 
other  Whatsoever,  and  I  do  Declare  that  no  Foreign  Prince,  Person,  Prelate  State 
or  Potentate,  hath  or  ought  to  have,  any  Jurisdiction,  Power,  Superiority,  Pre- 
eminence, or  Authority  Eclesiastical  or  Spiritual  Within  this  Realm,  and  I  do, 
Truly  and  Sincerely  acknowledge  and  profess,  Testify  and  Declare,  in  my  Con- 
science, before  God  and  the  World,  That  our  Sovereign  Lord  King  George  the 
Third,  is  Lawful  and  Rightful!  King  of  this  Realm,  and  all  other  Dominions  and 
Countrys  Thereunto  Belonging,  and  I  do  Solemnly  and  Sincerely  Declare,  that  I 
do  believe  in  my  Conscience,  that  the  person  pretended  to  be  Prince  of  Wales, 
During  the  Life  of  the  Late  King  James  the  Second,  and  Since  his  Decease,  Pre- 
tending to  be,  and  Takeing  upon  himself,  the  Stile  and  Title  of  King  of  England, 
by  the  name  of  James  the  Third,  or  of  Scotland  by  the  name  of  James  the  Eight,  or 
the  Stile  and  Title  of  King  of  Great  Britain,  hath  not  any  right  or  Title  Whatso- 
ever, to  the  Crown  of  this  Realm  or  any  other  the  Dominions  Thereunto  Belong- 
ing, and  I  do  Renounce,  Refuse  and  Abjure,  any  Aligence  or  Obedience  to  him 
and  I  do  Swear,  That  I  will  bear  Faith,  and  true  Alegiance  to  his  Majesty  King 
George  the  Third,  and  will  him  Defend,  to  the  Utmost  of  my  Power,  against  all 
Traiterous  Conspiracies  and  Attempts  Whatsoever,  Which  Shall  be  made,  Against 
his  Person,  Crown  or  Dignity,  and  I  will  do  my  Utmost  Endeavors,  to  Disclose  and 
Make  Known,  to  his  Majesty  and  his  Successors,  all  Treasons  and  Traiterous 
Conspiracies,  Which  I  shall  know  to  be  against  him,  or  any  of  them,  and  I  do  faith- 
fully promise  to  the  Utmost  of  my  Power  to  Support  Maintain  and  Defend,  the 
Successors  of  the  Crown,  against  him  the  said  James,  and  all  other  Persons  What- 
soever, Which  Succession,  by  an  Act  Entitled  an  Act  for  the  further  Limitation  of 
the  Crown  and  better  Securing  the  Rights  and  Liberties  of  the  Subjects  is  and 
Stands  Limited  to  the  Late  Princess  Sophia,  Electress  and  Dutchess  Dowager  of 
Hanover,  and  the  Heirs  of  her  Body,  being  Protestants,  and  all  these  things  I  do 
Plainly  and  Sincerely  Acknowledge  and  Swear  according  to  the  Express  words 
by  me  Spoken,  and  According  to  the  Plain  and  Common  Sence  and  Understand- 
ing of  the  Same  Words,  Without  any  Equivocation,  Mental  Evasion,  or  Senister 
Reservation  Whatsoever,  and  I  do  make  this  Recognition,  Acknowledgement, 
Abjuration,  Renunciation  and  Promise,  heartily,  Willingly  and  Truly,  upon  the 
True  Faith  of  a  Christian — So  help  me  God. 


AN   AMERICAN'S   OATH    OF   ABJURATION    IN  1763 

Sworn  to  by  Colonel  Henry  Ludington  when  appointed  to  the  office  of  sub-sheriff —Accurate 
Transcript  from  Originals  in  the  Collection  of  the  Poughkeepsie,  New  York  Literary  Club 

I  Do  Solemnly  and  Sincerely,  in  the  Presence  of  God,  Profess,  Testify 

and  Declare,  That  I  do  Believe,  that  in  the  Sacrament  of  the  Lord's  Supper  there 
is  not  any  Transubstantiation,  of  the  Elements  of  Bread  and  Wine,  into  the  Body 
and  Blood  of  Christ,  at  or  After  the  Consecration  Thereof,  by  any  person  what- 
soever, And  that  the  Invocation,  or  Adoration  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  or  Any  Other 
Saint,  And  the  Sacrifice  of  Mass,  as  they  are  Now  Used  in  the  Church  of  Rome, 
Are  Superstitious  and  Idolatrous,  and  I  do  Solemnly  in  the  presence  of  God,  Pro- 
fess, Testify  and  Declare,  that  I  do  make  this  Declaration,  and  Every  Part 
Thereof,  in  the  Plain  and  Ordinary  Sence,  of  the  Words  read  to  me,  as  they  are 
Commonly  Understood,  by  English  Protestants,  Without  Any  Evasion,  Equivoca- 
tion, or  Mental  Reservation  Whatsoever,  and  Without  any  Dispensation,  Already 
Granted  me  for  this  purpose,  by  the  Pope,  or  any  Other  Authonty  Whatsoever,  or 
Without  Thinking,  that  I  am  or  Can  be  Acquitted,  before  God  or  Man,  or  Absolved 
of  this  Declaration,  or  any  Part  Thereof,  Although  the  Pope,  or  any  other  Person 
or  Persons,  or  Power  Whatsoever,  Should  Dispence  with,  or  Annul  the  same,  and 
Declare  that  it  was  Null  and  Void,  from  the  Beginning. 

501 


0f        American  iktmUtttntt 


lance  frequently  thwarted  the  designs 
of  these  foes,  broke  up  their  combina- 
tions, secured  the  capture  of  their 
leaders  and  his  continual  activity 
and  effective  operations  against  these 
marauders  and  their  allies  incurred 
the  displeasure  of  General  Howe  who 
aroused  an  energetic  hostility  towards 
Colonel  Ludington.  To  effect  the 
capture  of  the  untiring  and  zealous 
officer,  dead  or  alive,  a  large  reward 
was  offered  by  the  British  officer. 
Inspired  by  this  incentive,  many  at- 
tempts were  made  to  capture  Colonel 
Ludington.  None  were,  however, 
successful. 

The  most  signal  attempt  to  capture 
the  brave  colonel  and  the  nearest  to 
success,  was  undertaken  by  a  notori- 
ous Tory  named  Prosser,  whose 
headquarters  were  in  the  vicinity  of 
Quaker  Hill,  Dutchess  County,  New 
York.  This  leader,  while  on  his  way 
to  New  York  with  a  large  band  of  his 
followers  to  join  the  British  forces, 
marching  in  the  night  time,  surround- 
ed Colonel  Ludington's  house  and  but 
for  their  timely  discovery  by  his 
daughters,  Sibbell  and  Rebecca,  would 
have  captured  him.  These  fearless 
girls,  with  guns  in  their  hands,  were 
acting  as  sentinels,  pacing  the  piazza 
to  and  fro  in  true  military  style  and 
spirit  to  guard  their  father  against 
surprise  and  to  give  him  warning  of 
any  approaching  danger.  They  dis- 
covered Prosser  and  his  men  and  gave 
the  alarm.  In  a  flash,  candles  were 
lighted  in  every  room  of  the  house, 
and  then  the  few  occupants  marched 
and  counter-marched  before  the  win- 
dows and  from  this  simple  and  clever 
ruse  Prosser  was  led  to  believe  that 
the  house  was  strongly  guarded  and 
did  not  dare  to  make  an  attack.  He 
kept  his  men  concealed  behind  the 
trees  and  fences  until  daybreak,  when 
with  yells  they  resumed  their  march 
and  hastened  southwards  towards 
New  York,  ignorant  of  how  they  had 
been  foiled  by  clever  girls.  A  pecu- 
liar incident  in  later  years  is  that 
after  Prosser  escaped  banishment  he 


returned  at  the  close  of  the  war  and 
settled  near  Colonel  Ludington. 

Colonel  Ludington's  life  was  in 
danger  at  another  time  and  by  the 
merest  incident  he  narrowly  escaped 
instant  death.  A  slight  noise  attract- 
ed attention,  while  he  was  eating  his 
evening  meal,  and  this  slight  warning 
was  the  means  of  saving  his  life.  The 
open  shutters  were  instantly  closed 
and  protected  him  from  his  assassins. 
This  incident  was  related  to  him  after 
the  war  by  one  of  his  neighbors,  who 
was  a  member  of  the  party,  and  re- 
marked: "Oh,  it  is  too  bad  to  shoot 
him  while  he  is  eating." 

The  colonel's  most  vigilant  and 
watchful  companion  was  his  sentinel 
daughter,  Sibbell.  Her  constant  care 
and  thoughtfulness,  combined  with 
fortuitous  circumstances,  prevented 
the  fruition  of  many  an  intrigue 
against  his  life  and  his  capture. 

As  unremitting  as  Colonel  Luding- 
ton's efforts  were,  the  Tories  re- 
mained diligent  in  collecting  and  drill- 
ing bands  of  men  for  actual  service  in 
the  Royal  Army.  Captain  Joshua 
Nickerson,  a  noted  Tory,  collected  a 
large  force  of  men  over  the  swamp  in 
the  eastern  part  of  the  precinct  for 
this  purpose  and  thorough  prepara- 
tions were  made  to  take  them  to  New 
York.  Colonel  Ludington,  having 
been  apprised  of  Captain  Nickerson's 
intention  and  having  obtained  accu- 
rate information  as  to  the  place  of 
rendezvous  and  their  numbers, 
through  a  tenant  who  had  enlisted 
with  Nickerson,  marched  a  sufficient 
force  at  night  and  captured  the  entire 
number  and  lodged  them  in  jail  at 
Poughkeepsie.  The  tenant  was  sub- 
sequently released. 

Captain  John  Holmes  was  another 
of  the  active  Tories  in  this  section. 
His  occupation,  that  of  a  horse  racer, 
gave  him  some  opportunities  and  he 
was  the  most  wary  of  them  all.  The 
British  authorities  supplied  him  with 
money  to  use  as  a  bounty  for  recruits. 
He  gathered  privately  a  large  number 
of  men  and  concealed  them  in  a  scrub 
oak  field  in  Fishkill  Plain.  Colonel 


PLEDGE  OF   THE   PATRIOTS   TO   FREE   AMERICA 

Signed  by  Americans  in  1776  —  Accurate  Transcript  from  Original  in  Possession  of  the 
Misses  Patterson  of  Patterson,  New  York— Colonel  Henry  Ludington  renounced  his  former 
oaths  and  signed  this  document  at  the  Beginning  of  the  American  Revolution 

Persuaded  that  the  salvation  of  the  rights  and  liberties  of  America  depend, 
under  God,  on  the  firm  union  of  its  inhabitants  in  a  vigorous  prosecution  of  the 
measures  necessary  for  its  safety,  and  convinced  of  the  necessity  of  preventing 
anarchy  and  confusion  which  attend  a  dissolution  of  the  powers  of  government, 
WE,  THE  FREEDMEN,  FREEHOLDERS,  and  INHABITANTS  of  DUTCHESS,  being  greatly 
alarmed  at  the  avowed  design  of  the  Ministry  to  raise  a  revenue  in  America,  and 
shocked  by  the  bloody  scene  now  acting  in  Massachusetts  Bay,  do  in  the  most  sol- 
emn manner  resolve  never  to  become  slaves,  and  do  associate,  under  all  the  ties  of 
religion,  honor,  and  love  to  our  country,  to  adopt  and  endeavor  to  carry  into  exe- 
cution whatsoever  measures  may  be  recommended  by  the  Continental  Congress,  or 
resolved  upon  by  our  Provincial  Convention,  for  the  purpose  of  preserving  our 
constitution  and  of  opposing  the  several  arbitrary  acts  of  the  British  Parliament, 
until  a  reconciliation  between  Great  Britain  and  America,  on  constitutional 
principles  (which  we  most  ardently  desire)  can  be  obtained;  and  that  we  will  in  all 
things  follow  the  advice  of  our  General  Committee  respecting  the  purposes  afore- 
said, the  preservation  of  peace  and  good  order  and  the  safety  of  individuals  and 
property. 


PLEA     FOR     PROTECTION     FROM    THE     ENEMY 

Accurate  Transcript  from  Original  Letter  Written  by  Colonel  Henry  Ludington  after  he 
had    espoused   the   cause   of    American    Independence     and     his    oaths    to     the     King 

DUTCHESS  COUNTY,  30,  DECEMBER,  1776. 
GENTN. — 

Nothing  but  the  strongest  necessity  could  induce  us  to  trouble  you  with  an 
application  of  so  extraordinary  a  nature,  but  if  we  are  esteemed  worthy  your  con- 
fidence as  friends  to  our  struggling  country  our  sincerity  will  atone  for  what  in 
common  cases  might  appear  indecent  Our  invaded  State  has  not  only  been  an 
object  of  the  especial  designs  of  our  common  enemy,  but  obnoxious  to  the  wicked, 
mercenary  intrigues  of  a  number  of  engrossing  jockies  who  have  drained  this  part 
of  the  State  of  the  article  of  bread  to  such  a  degree  that  we  have  reason  to  fear 
there  is  not  enough  left  for  the  support  of  the  inhabitants.  We  have  for  some 
months  past  heard  of  one  Helms  who  has  been  purchasing  wheat  and  flour  in  these 
parts,  with  which  the  well  affected  are  universally  dissuited. 

This  man  with  us  is  of  doubtful  character,  his  conversations  are  of  the  dis- 
affected sort  entirely.  He  has  now  moving  from  Fishkill  toward  Newark  we  think 
not  less  than  one  hundred  barrels  of  flour,  for  which  he  says  he  has  your  permit, 
the  which  we  have  not  seen. — However,  we  have,  at  the  universal  call  of  the  people, 
"concluded  to  stop  the  flour  and  Helms  himself  until  this  express  may  return.  We 
ourselves  think  from  the  conduct  of  this  man  that  his  designs  are  bad. 

We  have  the  honor  to  be  your  humble  servts. 

HENRY  LUDINGTON. 
JOSEPH  CRANE  JR. 
JONATHAN  PADDOCK. 
ELIJAH  TOWNSEND. 

To  the  Honorable  the  Council  of  Safety  for  the  State  of  New  York. 


503 


0f  (EnUmel  ffiubmgtnn — Itora  in  1733 


Ludington,  learning  of  the  secret 
gathering,  moved  at  night  with  a 
strong  attachment  of  men,  surrounded 
Holmes  and  succeeded  in  capturing 
him  and  his  troop  after  a  severe  strug- 
gle. They  were  taken  to  Poughkeep- 
sie  and  imprisoned.  Holmes  would 
have  been  hanged  for  his  traitorous 
conduct  but  for  the  personal  exertions 
of  his  captor  who  pleaded  in  his  be- 
half with  Governor  Clinton. 

Colonel  Ludington  was  closely 
identified  with  the  first  secret  service. 
The  home  and  the  labors  of  the  fam- 
ous Revolutionary  spy,  Enoch  Crosby, 
the  original  of  Cooper's  "Harvey 
Birch,"  were  in  the  territory  com- 
manded by  Colonel  Ludington.  This 
humble  individual,  a  shoemaker  by 
occupation,  while  traveling  about  the 
country  pursuing  his  occupation 
among  the  people,  obtained  informa- 
tion of  the  utmost  importance  to 
Washington.  Colonel  Ludington 
knew  his  secret  and  his  object  and 
aided  him  and  sheltered  him  in  the 
performance  of  his  delicate  and  haz- 
ardous mission.  To  further  prose- 
cute this  service,  Colonel  Ludington 
furnished  numerous  successful  spies 
from  his  own  regiment,  and  with 
Washington  planned  many  enter- 
prises to  obtain  definite  and  trustwor- 
thy information  concerning  the  move- 
ments, numbers  and  intentions  of  the 
British  forces.  His  services  also  ex- 
tended to  the  Commissary  Depart- 
ment in  purchasing  supplies  for  the 
use  of  the  army.  Entries  in  an  old 
account  book  show  transactions  at 
Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  and  also 
at  Annapolis,  Maryland. 

New  York  was  slow  to  formulate 
a  state  and  it  was  among  the  last  to 
act.  When  the  time  for  action  came, 
however,  it  perfected  an  organization 
famed  for  its  liberality,  effectiveness 
and  ample  provisions.  Every  de- 
partment was  admirably  officered  and 
every  possible  precaution  was  taken 
to  enforce  and  execute  the  laws  and 
to  punish  the  enemies  of  the  state. 
The  legislature  appointed  commis- 


sioners to  quell  and  subdue  insurrec- 
tion and  disaffection  in  the  counties 
of  Dutchess  and  Westchester.  These 
commissioners,  Colonel  Henry  Lud- 
ington, John  Jay  and  Colonel  Thomas, 
were  directed  to  co-operate  with  a 
similar  one  in  the  Manor  of  Living- 
ston and  were  authorized  to  call  in 
the  aid  of  the  militia  if  necessary,  and 
commanded  to  use  every  reasonable 
means  to  effect  the  detection  and  cap- 
ture of  spies  and  the  secret  agents  of 
the  enemy. 

An  instance  of  Colonel  Ludington's 
experiences  is  the  case  of  Malcolm 
Morrison,  at  one  time  a  first  major  in 
a  regiment  of  minute-men,  who  was 
charged  with  accepting  the  protection 
of  the  British  government  and  with 
raising  a  company  of  soldiers  for  its 
service.  The  charge  was  sustained 
by  the  oaths  of  several  witnesses. 
The  committee  resolved  to  commit 
him  to  the  Ulster  County  jail  Janu- 
ary fourth,  1777,  there  to  remain, 
awaiting  the  pleasure  of  the  commit- 
tee or  such  order  as  the  future  legis- 
lature of  the  state  might  make  con- 
cerning him.  While  in  Kingston  jail, 
Morrison  on  February  nineteenth, 
1777,  petitioned  the  representatives  of 
the  state  in  convention  assembled, 
stating  that  he  had  always  been  ready 
in  advising  and  assisting  both  officers 
and  soldiers  in  the  public  business, 
and  in  a  most  generous  manner  had 
advanced  them  cash  for  their  relief 
and  was  a  considerable  amount  out  of 
pocket  on  that  account,  none  of  which 
had  been  paid  back,  except  the  £6  lent 
Colonel  Ludington  and  William  Grif- 
fin to  enable  them  to  find  out  the  per- 
nicious plot  of  John  Miller  and  Con- 
stant Nickerson.  The  power  and  the 
authority  that  Colonel  Ludington  had 
in  these  matters  appears  in  the  testi- 
mony of  Matthew  Patterson,  an  affi- 
ant before  the  Committee  on  Conspir- 
acies, who  testified  that  there  was  a 
man  in  the  room,  meaning  Colonel 
Ludington,  who  if  he  knew  what  At- 
kins, another  affiant,  had  said,  would 
immediately  send  him  to  Congress, 
but  he  did'  not  deem  it  expedient  to 


50+ 


garret  &mrir?  nf  tlj?  Am*riran  firoalutum 


mention  it  to  him  (Colonel  Luding- 
ington). 

Washington  selected  Colonel  Lud- 
ington as  an  aid-de-camp  at  the  battle 
of  White  Plains  and  afterwards  com- 
plimented him  for  his  meritorious  ser- 
vice, gallant  conduct  and  soldierly 
bearing.  The  expedition,  consisting 
of  two  thousand  men,  sent  out  to  de- 
stroy the  stores  and  munitions  of  war 
collected  at  Danbury,  Connecticut, 
under  the  command  of  General 
Tryon,  reached  that  place  Saturday, 
April  twenty-sixth,  1777.  The  guard, 
too  small  for  protection  and  too  weak 
for  effective  resistance,  withdrew. 
Preparations  were  immediately  made 
to  harass  the  enemy.  A  messenger 
was  dispatched  to  Colonel  Ludington 
to  summon  him  to  aid  in  the  defence 
of  the  place.  He  arrived  in  the  even- 
ing of  that  day.  The  members  of 
Colonel  Ludington's  regiment  were  at 
their  homes  which  were  miles  apart 
and  scattered  over  a  wide  territory. 
To  summon  them  was  no  easy  task. 
There  was  no  one  ready  to  do  it. 
Sibbell,the  young  daughter  of  Colonel 
Ludington,  a  girl  of-  sixteen,  volun- 
teered to  do  this  service.  She  mount- 
ed her  horse,  equipped  with  a  man's 
saddle  (some  members  of  the  family 
say  without  saddle  or  bridle),  and 
galloped  off  on  the  road  in  the  dead 
of  night  to  perform  this  courageous 
service.  The  next  morning  by  break- 
fast time,  the  regiment  had  taken  up 
the  line  of  march  and  was  in  rapid 
motion  towards  Danbury,  twenty 
miles  distant.  The  British  were  in 
full  retreat,  but  in  such  force  as  to 
prevent  an  open  attack  by  the  forces 
under  the  command  of  Silliman, 
Wooster  and  Arnold,  who  pursued 
them  until  they  escaped  to  their  boats 
at  the  Sound.  The  expedition  was  a 
costly  one  to  them.  The  loss  as  esti- 
mated was  from  three  hundred  to 
four  hundred  men — more  extensive 
than  Lexington  in  comparison  to  the 
numbers  engaged. 

The  British  in  the  campaign  of 
1777  had  a  grand  object  in  view. 
They  intended  to  penetrate  New  York 

505 


and  to  dismember  the  colonies.  To 
execute  this  plan,  Burgoyne  and 
others  were  to  proceed  from  the 
northward  and  westward  to  meet  at 
Albany  and  proceed  down  the  river 
until  they  formed  a  junction  with  the 
forces  under  Clinton  from  the  south- 
ward, and  by  this  masterly  stroke  to 
obtain  possession  of  the  commanding 
points  of  the  state  and  to  effect  the 
isolation  of  the  New  England  Colo- 
nies. Unexpected  difficulties,  numer- 
ous delays  and  the  rapid  augumenta- 
tion  of  the  American  Army  prevented 
Burgoyne  from  accomplishing  his 
part  of  the  project.  Messengers  were 
dispatched  to  Sir  Henry  Clinton  to  in- 
form him  of  the  circumstances  of 
Burgoyne  and  to  urge  him  to  make  a 
diversion  in  his  favor  and  with  such 
force  as  to  scatter  the  half-disciplined 
provincials.  Clinton,  eager  to  com- 
ply, was  waiting  reinforcements. 
Washington  had  drawn  a  large  force 
from  Putnam  in  the  Highlands  to  aid 
operations  elsewhere  and  left  him 
with  a  force  composed  principally  of 
militia  from  New  York  and  Connect- 
icut. Putnam,  apprehending  no 
movement  up  the  river,  had  dis- 
charged nearly  ten  hundred  of  these, 
leaving  his  effective  force  only  fifteen 
hundred  men.  Clinton,  on  the  arrival 
of  reinforcements,  organized  an  ex- 
pedition, the  chief  object  of  which 
was  to  create  a  diversion  in  favor  of 
Burgoyne.  On  Saturday,  October 
fourth,  1777,  the  expedition  proceed- 
ed up  the  river  with  a  force  of  fifty 
hundred  men  and  landed  at  Tarry- 
town.  At  this  point,  under  orders 
from  Putnam,  Colonel  Ludington  was 
stationed  with  five  hundred  men. 

Clinton  sent  a  flag  of  truce  with  a 
peremptory  demand  to  surrender 
themselves  as  prisoners  of  war.  While 
parleying  with  the  flag,  the  enemy  en- 
deavored to  surround  the  militia  and 
effect  their  capture,  but  Colonel  Lud- 
ington, perceiving  the  object  of  Clin- 
ton, ordered  a  retreat  and  withdrew 
to  a  place  of  safety.  The  British  then 
withdrew. 

Colonel  Ludington's  report  of  this 


0f 


—  itorn  in  1T39 


affair  to  General  Putnam  was  made 
during  the  afternoon  of  the  fourth  of 
October,  and  after  detailing  the  condi- 
tions in  the  vicinity  and  describing 
the  arrival,  landing  and  force  of  the 
British  in  this  undertaking,  he  re- 
reported  : 

That  under  command  of  Governor 
Tryon,  they  immediately  took  the  heights 
above  Tarrytown,  and  from  thence  kept  the 
heights  until  they  thought  they  had  got 
above  our  little  party,  but  luckily  we  had 
got  above  them  and  paused  at  Mr.  Young's, 
where  we  thought  best  to  move  towards 
them,  where  we  were  in  open  view  of 
them,  and  found  them  to  be  vastly  superior 
to  us  in  numbers,  and  moved  off  to 
Wright's  Mills.  Having  no  assistance 
more  than  our  little  party  belonging  to  our 
regiment,  I  found  on  our  retreat,  before 
we  got  back  to  Young's,  they  had  sent  for- 
ward a  flag,  but  found  it  was  in  view  of 
trapping  us,  as  they  had  flanking  parties, 
who  we  discovered,  in  order  to  surround 
us,  but  after  clearing  the  regiment,  I  rode 
back  and  met  the  flag  within  a  quarter  of 
a  mile  of  their  main  body.  The  purport  of 
his  errand  was  that  Governor  Tryon  had 
sent  him  to  acquaint  me,  if  we  would  give 
up  our  arms  and  submit,  they  would  show 
us  mercy  or  otherways,  they  were  deter- 
mined to  take  us  and  strip  the  country. 
Sent  in  answer:  That  as  long  as  I  had  a 
man  alive,  I  was  determined  to  oppose 
them  and  they  might  come  on  as  soon  as 
they  pleased.  We  have  not  lost  a-  man 
and  the  last  move  of  the  enemy  was  from 
Young's  towards  the  Plains. 

The  exigencies  of  the  situation 
brought  Colonel  Ludington  into  ser- 
vices other  than  the  purely  military. 
The  Continental  Army  had  purchased 
large  supplies  of  grain  and  hay  in 
Eastern  Dutchess  County,  New  York, 
and  Western  Connecticut.  In  order 
to  transport  it  rapidly  and  to  other- 
wise facilitate  the  movement  of  these 
supplies,  it  became  necessary  to  im- 
prove the  roads.  William  Duer  on 
behalf  of  General  Mifflin,  the  Quarter- 
master General  of  the  Continental 
Army,  informed  the  committee  that  it 
was  necessary  that  the  roads  toward 
North  Castle  and  Rize's  Ridge  in 
New  York  should  be  repaired.  The 
committee,  acting  promptly  on  this 
matter,  ordered  the  repairs  to  be  made 
and  directed  that  Colonel  Ludington 
should  detach  one  hundred  men  from 


his  command  and  assign  them  to  this 
duty.  It  was  also  important  that  the 
roads  and  bridges  should  be  in  good 
condition  on  account  of  the  move- 
ments of  the  British  from  the  north- 
ward. Washington  also  had  these 
matters  under  his  personal  attention, 
and  to  meet  any  emergency  that  might 
arise,  he  ordered  three  brigades  of 
troops  into  the  Fredericksburgh  pre- 
cinct. On  their  march  these  troops 
encamped  on  the  meadow  near  Colo- 
nel Ludington's  house  and  remained 
over  night. 

While  Washington  was  in  the 
Fredericksburgh  precinct  in  1778,  he 
was  on  several  occasions  a  guest  at 
the  house  of  Colonel  Ludington  and 
once  in  the  company  of  Count  Ro- 
chambeau.  Other  distinguished  men 
of  the  period  enjoyed  the  hospitality 
of  Colonel  Ludington.  Among  these 
were  William  Ellery,  a  member  of 
Congress  from  Massachusetts,  who 
on  the  twentieth  day.  of  October 
mounted  his  horse  at  Dighton,  pro- 
posing to  ride  to  York,  Pennsylvania, 
five  hundred  miles  distant,  where  he 
was  to  resume  his  congressional  du- 
ties. He  was  accompanied  by  Fran- 
cis Dana  and  his  servant.  A  sketch 
of  his  trip  has  been  preserved,  relat- 
ing the  incidents  of  his  journey.  On 
the  fifth  of  November  they  left  Litch- 
field,  Connecticut,  intending  to  reach 
Peekskill,  but  when  they  arrived  at 
Danbury  they  were  persuaded  to 
abandon  the  route  because  of  the  To- 
ries and  horse  thieves  and  the  impos- 
sibility of  reaching  Peekskill  that 
night.  Unable  to  secure  lodgings  in 
Danbury,  the  Fishkill  route  was 
taken,  and  they  reached  the  house  ^i 
Colonel  Ludington  where  they  re- 
mained over  night. 

Ellery  describes  his  experience  at 
this  place  and  the  state  of  affairs  in 
the  immediate  vicinity: 

"Here,  mens  meminisse  horret,"  we  were 
told  by  our  landlady  that  the  Colonel  had 
gone  to  New  Windsor,  that  there  was  a 
guard  on  the  road  between  Fishkill  and 
Peeksskill  and  one  of  the  guard  had  been 
killed  about  6  miles  off,  and  that  a  man 

506 


§>errrt  Satiric?  nf  tlj?  Amfriratt 


not  long  before  had  been  shot  on  the  road 
to  Fishkill  not  more  than  three  miles  from 
their  house  and  a  guard  had  been  placed 
there  for  sometime  past  and  had  been  dis- 
missed only  three  days.  We  were  in  a 
doleful  pickle,  not  a  male  in  the  house  but 
Francis  Dana  and  his  man  and  William 
Ellery,  and  no  lodging  for  the  first  and  the 
last  but  in  a  lower  room,  without  shutters 
to  the  windows  or  locks  to  the  door.  What 
was  to  be  done?  In  the  first  place,  we 
fortified  our  stomachs  with  beefsteak  and 
strong  drink  (grogg)  and  then  went  to 
work  to  fortify  ourselves  against  attack. 
Dana  asked  whether  there  were  any  guns 
in  the  house,  two  were  produced.  One  of 
these  in  good  order.  Nails  were  fixed  over 
the  windows,  the  gun  placed  in  the  corner, 
a  pistol  under  each  of  our  pillows  and  the 
hanger  against  the  bed-post  Thus  accou- 
tred and  prepared  at  all  points,  our  heroes 
went  to  bed.  Whether  Francis  Dana  slept 
William  Ellery  cannot  say  for  he  was  so 
overcomed  with  fatigue  and  his  animal 
spirits  with  beef  etc.,  that  every  trace  of 
fear  was  utterly  erased  from  his  imagina- 
tion and  he  slept  soundly  until  morning 
without  any  interruption  save  that  at  mid- 
night as  he  fancieth,  he  was  awakened  by 
his  companion  with  the  interesting  ques- 
tion, deliverd  in  a  tremulous  voice,  "what 
noise  is  that?"  He  listened  and  soon  dis- 
covered that  the  noise  was  occassioned  by 
some  rats  gnawing  the  head  of  a  bread 
cask.  After  satisfying  the  knight  about  the 
noise,  he  took  his  second  and  finishing  nap. 
The  next  day  it  snowed  and  rained.  We 
continued  at  Colonel  Ludington's  until 
afternoon,  when  the  fire-wood  being  gone, 
we  mounted  and  set  off. 

Colonel  Ludington's  residence  was 
built  prior  to  the  Revolution  and  in 
style  similar  to  almost  every  house  of 
the  period,  two  stories  in  front  and 
one  in  the  rear.  Huge  doors  divided 
in  the  middle  with  ponderous  latches 
gave  entrance.  The  front  was  orna- 
mented by  a  piazza,  within  large 
and  spacious  rooms,  their  ceilings  low 
and  the  floors  nicely  sanded.  Wide 
halls  divided  the  rooms,  a  massive 
stairway  led  up  to  the  commodious 
chambers.  Immense  chimneys  rose 
within  the  structures,  each  with  wide 
fire-places  and  large  ovens.  While 
many  happy  incidents  are  inseparately 
connected  with  this  house,  it  pos- 
sessed historic  interest  from  its  asso- 
ciations and  for  the  many  plans  pro- 
posed and  developed  to  bring  success 
to  the  patriots'  cause  and  arms.  Its 


good  cheer  to  the  way-faring  man 
and  the  hospitality  to  its  guests  made 
it  famous  far  and  wide  during  the 
early  period  of  the  country's  history. 
Long  after  its  owners  had  passed 
from  life,  it  was  remembered  by  those 
who  had  been  sheltered  within  its 
walls.  It  remained  standing  until 
1838  when  it  was  torn  down. 

Many  places  of  trust  and  honor  in 
civil  life,  both  public  and  private, 
were  held  by  Colonel  Ludington.  In 
1772,  he  was  the  assessor  of  the  Fred- 
ricksburgh  precinct  and  was  the  su- 
pervisor in  1777-1778.  He  was  a 
member  of  the  legislature  of  New 
York,  having  been  chosen  for  the 
third  session,  meeting  at  Kingston 
first,  then  at  Albany,  and  closing  its 
proceedings  at  its  third  meeting  at 
Kingston,  ending  July  second,  1780. 
He  was  also  a  member  of  the  fourth 
session,  meeting  at  Poughkeepsie, 
September  seventh,  1780,  and  ending 
its  second  meeting  at  Albany,  March 
thirty-first,  1781 ;  and  afterwards  a 
member  of  the  ninth  session  conven- 
ing in  New  York,  January  twelfth, 
and  adjourning  May  fifth,  1786.  He 
was  elected  the  fourth  and  last  time 
as  a  member  of  the  legislature  for  the 
tenth  session,  which  body  met  in  New 
York,  January  twelfth,  and  finished 
its  labors  April  twenty-first,  1787. 
His  votes  are  recorded  with  the  ma- 
jority vote.  By  a  commission  dated 
March  twenty-sixth,  1804,  he  was  ap- 
pointed a  justice-of-the-peace  for  the 
town  of  Frederick,  Dutchess  County. 
This  office  he  held  for  many  years  and 
administered  its  duties  with  dignity. 
His  equitable  decisions,  on  common 
sense  principles  were  seldom  reversed. 
It  is  related  of  him  by  those  who  knew 
him  intimately  that  when  he  was  first 
appointed,  and  for  several  years  there- 
after, he  had  no  law  books  and  that 
he  made  his  decisions  without  prece- 
dent, but  they  were  almost  invariably 
sustained  by  the  higher  courts.  The 
idea  of  holding  courts  without  the 
statutes  was  considered  preposterous 
by  his  neighbors  and  at  length  he  was 
prevailed  upon  to  send  to  Poughkeep- 


in  173$ 


sie  to  make  a  purchase  of  a  set  of 
books  in  order  to  make  his  decisions 
in  accordance  with  the  statutes.  The 
books  were  purchased  and  judgment 
rendered,  but  it  was  not  long  before 
an  appeal  was  taken  and  his  decision 
was  not  upheld  by  the  higher  court. 
The  reversal  settled  the  question  of 
books  with  him  conclusively.  From 
this  time  he  laid  them  aside  and  de- 
clared he  would  never  make  another 
decision  from  them — and  he  did  not. 

Multifarious  and  constant  as  were 
his  public  and  private  duties,  his  in- 
terest in  other  affairs  was  not  ob- 
scured nor  lessened.  When  the  first 
academy  was  erected  in  Patterson, 
Putnam  County,  New  York,  a  school 
which  obtained  considerable  impor- 
tance during  its  time,  he  contributed 
the  timber  for  its  construction.  He 
built  and  operated  a  saw  and  a  grist 
mill, — the  first  one  built  in  that  sec- 
tion. It  was  erected  during  the  Rev- 
olution and  was  known  as  the  "Lud- 
dinton  Mill."  Its  reputation  gave  it 
great  custom  and  it  enjoyed  a  unique 
reputation  from  the  fact  that  the 
structure  was  raised  almost  solely  by 
women,  the  men  being  absent  in  the 
military  service  of  the  country.  The 
building  is  yet  standing  and  with 
some  alterations  and  improvements 
the  wheels  go  merrily  round  as  in  the 
days  of  yore,  but  the  old  saw  mill  has 
long  since  passed  out  of  existence, 
hardly  a  memory  of  it  remaining. 

Colonel  Ludington  in  personal  ap- 
pearance was  a  man  of  commanding 
presence.  He  was  above  the  medium 


height,  erect  of  figure,  with  prominent 
features  and  had  blue  eyes.  His  con- 
victions were  sincere  and  resolute. 
He  was  irreproachable  in  character 
and  determined  in  purpose.  His  bus- 
iness capacity  was  evidenced  by  the 
successful  manner  by  which  he  con- 
ducted his  private  affairs.  The  farm, 
the  mills  and  the  inn,  while  demand- 
ing a  large  share  of  his  attention,  did 
not  prevent  him  giving  thoughtful 
care  towards  the  performance  of  his 
public  duties. 

Colonel  Henry  Ludington  was  the 
oldest  son  of  William  and  Mary 
(Knowles)  Ludington  of  Branford, 
Connecticut,  where  he  was  born  May 
twenty-fifth,  1739.  His  ancestor,  Wil- 
liam Ludington  and  his  wife  Ellen 
were  of  English  origin  and  settled  in 
Charlestown,  Massachusetts,  about 
1632,  afterwards  removing  to  New 
Haven  about  1660,  and  it  is  recorded 
that  he  died  at  the  East  Haven  Iron 
Works  in  1663.  His  grandfather, 
William  Ludington,  was  a  prominent 
and  an  influential  man  among  the 
New  Haven  colonists,  both  in  church 
and  political  affairs.  His  parents 
were  of  the  intelligent  farmers  of  the 
New  Haven  Colony. 

Colonel  Ludington  died  January 
twenty-fourth,  1817.  The  end  came 
suddenly — almost  without  warning. 
In  the  village  churchyard  adjacent  to 
the  Presbyterian  church  at  Patterson, 
Putnam  County,  New  York,  lies  his 
remains,  suitably  marked  and  where 
also  are  interred  several  members  of 
his  family. 


HERITAGE  OF  YEARS— BY  HOWARD  ARNOLD  WALTER 


Swift  phantom  strokes,  borne  from  a  distant  bell 

Peal  sweetly—  as  the  shadowy  clock  of  Time 

Numbers  the  years  in  soft,  melodious  chime. 

Truthful  the  tale  their  brazen  voices  tell 

Of  many  summers  spent,  or  ill  or  well. 

Of  sorrows  mingling  thick  with  Joys  sublime, 

Angelic  deeds  with  whisperings  of  crime, 


And  marriage  music  merged  in  funeral  knell. 
The  time  for  preparation  overpast, 
Behold  the  heritage  the  years  have  given ! 
A  vision  broad,  to  view  and  understand, 
A  courage  brave  to  face  a  work  so  vast, 
A  willing  hand  to  lift  earth  nearer  Heaven, 
Broad  mind,  brave  heart,  and  ever-ready  hand. 


508 


Mttltam  Jgn4ott— An  immigrant  to 

tti  1030 


Att  <£xfnrb  (Srafcttat?  tufa  (Earn*  in  tlje  Bfostmi  (Hontinrnt  aa 
an  Jnftian  JUrafcrr  anil  fcrttUfc  an  tiff  Erail  J*  ^*  Arnmuilairl> 
Wralttj  anb  3famtiir&  a  Jamtta  tntjirlf  faa 
Eton-aUg  to  Am*rtran  f rngrrBB  j*  Natlfanlrl 
(Enntrowrag  tottlj  ttf*  JJgnrlfnn  3Familg  ourr  ^tfi  Nowl  ^ 
nf  ll|?  tarlg  Attwrlrau  Pwnprrfl  •*  Brarrihrb 

BY 

BLANCHE  NICHOLS  HILL 

OP  NEW  YORK 


HEN  America's  great- 
est novelist,  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  wrote 
"The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables"  the 
Pynchon  family  pro- 
tested against  what 
they  considered  an  unwarranted  use 
of  the  family  name  in  the  story. 
One  of  the  novelist's  strongest  char- 
acters was  stern  old  Colonel  Pyncheon 
— Hawthorne  spelled  the  name  with 
"e,"  but  the  Pynchon  family  invaria- 
bly omitted  it.  Another  of  his  char- 
acters was  Hepzibah  Pyncheon  and 
her  heroic,  self-sacrificing  love  for  her 
brother  Clifford, — and  there  was  little 


Phoebe  Pyncheon,  the  only  illuminat- 
ing ray  in  the  decaying  old  house. 

Hawthorne,  when  informed  of  the 
disfavor  of  the  Pynchon  family  in  be- 
ing incorporated  into  his  admirable 
picture  of  the  dignified  and  austere 
Puritan  period,  made  an  apology. 
The  family  in  its  sense  of  dignified  re- 
pose and  propriety  considered  that  the 
celebrity  of  the  novel  brought  them 
into  an  undesired  notoriety  which  to 
them  was  offensive. 

The  Pynchon  family  treasures 
among  its  heirlooms  the  letter  of  apol- 
ogy from  the  distinguished  American 
novelist,  and  Hawthorne  refers  to  the 
incident  in  a  letter  to  his  sister  Louisa, 
dated  Lenox,  May  20,  1851 : 


HAWTHORNE'S  TROUBLES  EXPLAINED  IN  LETTER  TO  HIS  SISTER 
"How  do  you  like  'The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables?'  Not  so  well  as  'The  Scarlet  Letter,'  I  judge 
from  your  saying  nothing  about  it.  I  receive  very  complimentary  letters  from  poets  and  prosers, 
and  adoring  ones  from  young  ladles;  and  I  have  almost  a  challenge  from  a  gentleman  who  com- 
plains of  my  Introducing  his  grandfather,  Judge  Pyncheon.  It  seems  that  there  was  really  a  Pyn- 
cheon family,  formerly  resident  in  Salem  and  one  of  them  bore  the  title  of  Judge  and  was  a  Tory  at 
the  time  of  the  Revolution, — with  which  facts  I  was  entirely  unacquainted.  I  pacified  the  gentle- 
man by  a  letter." 


•Ptiitam  IJgnrlfnn — Smmtgnmt  tn  Ammra,  Ifi3fl 


No  apology  was  really  necessary, 
Hawthorne  having  really  written 
from  his  own  experience  rather  than 
from  his  imagination,  for  in  another 
letter  he  refers  to  the  curse  which, 
according  to  those  who  knew  him 
best,  oppressed  and  affected  him,  and 
was  brought  upon  the  family  by 
Judge  Hawthorne  of  Salem,  the 
aforesaid  malediction  having  been  in- 
voked by  Rebekah  Nurse,  who  was 
condemned  to  death  by  the  judge  in 
his  official  capacity.  Matthew  Maule 
was  Hawthorne,  and  Phoebe  was  in- 
spired by  Hawthorne's  wife.  The 
episode  of  the  Pyncheon  deed,  which 
was  lost  and  restored  after  it  was 
valueless,  was  suggested  by  similar 
facts  in  the  Hawthorne  history. 

It  is  of  this  Pynchon  family  that  I 
shall  here  relate:  While  doubtless 
there  have  been  members  of  the  Pyn- 
chon family,  who  with  Yankee  fore- 
sight, accumulated  their  share  of  this 
world's  goods,  they  possessed  another 
equally  strong  New  England  charac- 
teristic, for  the  American  branch  of 
the  Pynchon  family  has  been  more  or 
less  identified  with  the  intellectual  and 
scholastic  life  of  the  country  rather 
than  with  the  commercial  world,  as 
the  Hawthorne  view  implied,  the 
English  members  claiming  Oxford  for 
their  Alma  Mater  and  the  American 
Pynchons  matriculating  at  Harvard, 
Trinity  or  Yale. 

The  name  is  one  of  the  oldest  in 
England  and  as  far  back  as  1277-8,  in 
the  sixth  year  of  King  Edward  First, 
Richard  Pinchon,  a  citizen  of  Lon- 
don, bequeaths  his  property  to  his 
daughter  Agnes.  Many  of  these  old 
wills  are  very  quaint.  That  of 
Nichas  Pynchon,  citizen  and  "bocker" 
of  London,  indicates  that  he  was  a  de- 
vout believer,  for  he  says,  February 
15,  1528:  "I  bequeath  and  recom- 
mend my  soul  unto  Almighty  God, 
my  maker  and  my  redeemer  and  to 
the  most  glorious  Virgin  his  mother, 
our  lady  Saint  Mary,  and  to  all  'tholy 
and  Blissid  company  of  Saintes  in 
hevin.'"  After  carefully  providing 


for  his  family  and  his  church,  he 
leaves  among  other  charities  "ten 
pounds  to  be  applied  in  buying  coals 
in  the  Winter  season,  in  ten  years  next 
after  my  decease,  to  be  distributed 
amongst  the  most  needy  poor  of  St. 
Nichas." 

Another  member  of  the  same  fam- 
ily, Wyllyam  Pynchon,  bequeaths 
"twenty  shirts  and  twenty  smocks  and 
forty  bushels  of  wheat  to  be  given  and 
divided  amongst  the  poor  folk  in 
Writtle  and  Roxwell,  and  that  the 
same  may  be  done  by  the  church  war- 
dens and  two  or  three  honest  men  of 
the  parish,"  thus  in  his  last  moments 
showing  a  shrewd  estimate  of  frail 
human  nature. 

A  common  legacy  in  those  wills 
were  rings  of  remembrance,  often  "of 
gold  of  weight  of  40  shillings,"  or 
"of  the  weight  of  3  pounds  5  shillings 
and  8  pence,"  and  the  scale  varies  in 
different  wills  according  to  the  degree 
of  friendship  or  obligation.  In  many, 
"a  black  cloak"  or  "a  black  gown"  is 
bequeathed,  that  the  beneficiary  may 
show  that  proper  respect  for  the  dead 
that  still  has  such  a  firm  hold  on  Eng- 
lish customs. 

Wyllyam  Pynchon  was  buried  at 
Writtle,  and  the  chancel  of  the  beau- 
tiful little  church  there  is  nearly  filled 
with  the  monuments  and  memorial 
tablets  of  the  Pynchon  family.  In  the 
church  in  Springfield,  England,  not 
far  from  Writtle,  there  is  a  tablet  on 
the  wall  of  the  vestry  room  with  the 
name  of  William  Pynchon  inscribed 
on  it  as  one  of  the  church  wardens, 
dated  1624.  This  is  the  William 
Pynchon  who  was  one  of  the  original 
patentees  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay 
Colony,  and  who  six  years  later  assist- 
ed in  bringing  that  charter  to  Amer- 
ica. He  was  educated  at  Oxford, 
matriculating  at  Hart  Hall,  after- 
wards Hertford  College,  October  14, 
1596,  when  he  was  but  eleven  years 
old.  It  was  in  1630  that  he  brought 
over  the  charter  in  a  fleet  of  three  ves- 
sels. In  the  same  year  he  founded 
Roxbury  and  six  years  later  Spring- 

510 


Jnwtter  nf 


Famtlg  in  Am*rira 


field,  Massachusetts.  This  last  named 
was  on  the  direct  Indian  trail  leading 
from  the  Narragansett  and  Pequot 
country  by  way  of  the  Westfield  River 
to  the  Mohawk  country  above  Albany, 
so  that  parties  of  Indians  were  con- 
stantly passing  his  door  in  every  di- 
rection. He  accumulated  wealth  by 
trading,  and  Warehouse  Point,  Con- 
necticut, just  below  Springfield,  re- 
ceived its  name  from  John  Pynchon's 
warehouse  situated  there.  So  great 
was  William  Pynchon's  influence 
among  the  Indians  of  the  West  as 
those  of  New  England,  that  the  Mo- 
hawks used  to  call  New  Englanders 
"Pynchon's  men." 

He  also  indulged  in  the  literary 
bent  of  the  family,  publishing  a  book 
entitled,  "The  Meritorious  Price  of 
Our  Redemption,"  which  being  anti- 
Calvinistic  in  its  views  so  stirred  up 
the  colony  that  the  book  was  ordered 
to  be  burned  and  the  author  cited  to 
appear  before  the  general  court. 
After  being  summoned  to  court  a  sec- 
ond time,  he  left  the  colony  in  Sep- 
tember, 1652,  and  returned  to  Eng- 
land. Two  copies  of  this  work  are 
extant.  One  is  at  the  Lenox  library 
and  the  other  is  owned  by  the  present 
head  of  the  family.  His  only  son, 
John  Pynchon,  remained  in  New 
England,  and  from  him  are  descended 
all  who  bear  the  name  in  America. 

One  of  the  most  illustrious  of  his 
descendants  was  Rev.  Thomas  Rug- 
gles  Pynchon,  who  from  1874  to  1883 
was  president  of  Trinity  College  and 
was  a  most  potent  agent  in  extending 
the  influence  of  the  college  as  well  as 
adding  more  buildings.  But  from  the 
time  he  entered  college  as  a  student 
until  his  death  in  October,  1904,  he 
was  closely  identified  with  the  work 
and  power  of  that  institution.  He 
was  ordained  at  Trinity  Church,  Bos- 
ton, and  from  1849  to  1&5S  nac^  charge 
of  churches  in  Stockbridge  and 
Lenox,  Massachusetts.  He  held  the 
degree  of  D.D.  from  Stevens  College, 
and  LL.D.  from  Columbia.  After  his 
death  a  large  part  of  the  old  family 

$n 


possessions  came  into  the  hands  of 
their  present  owner,  the  eighth  in  de- 
scent from  William  Pynchon,  the 
founder  of  the  American  branch  of 
the  family. 

Most  of  the  furniture  is  very  old 
and  of  that  severely  plain  and  massive 
type  so  long  associated  with  our  Puri- 
tan ancestors.  Exquisite  housekeep- 
ers were  those  female  members  of  the 
family,  for  few  marks  of  time  mar  the 
softly  glowing  mahogany.  One  of 
the  most  interesting  pieces  is  a  clothes 
press  with  deep  shelves  behind  two 
large  single-paneled  doors.  Below 
are  three  drawers,  with  brass  handles, 
the  design  showing  a  lion's  head  with 
a  ring  in  his  mouth.  A  similar 
"Cloaths  Prefs"  but  with  another  style 
of  feet,  is  shown  in  the  book  of 
Thomas  Chippendale,  who  thus  naively 
expresses  himself  on  the  title  page: 

"The  gentleman  and  cabinet  mak- 
er's director :  Being  a  large  collection 
of  the  most  elegant  and  useful  designs 
of  household  furniture  in  the  most 
fashionable  taste." 

The  mahogany  bed  is  handsomely 
carved  at  the  corners  of  the  head  and 
foot  boards,  just  enough  for  ornament 
but  not  enough  to  mar  the  beautiful 
grain  of  the  wood.  A  plain  massive 
bureau  of  the  same  red  mahogany  and 
with  severely  plain  wooden  knobs,  is 
filled  to  bursting  with  hand-woven 
linen.  There  are  huge  linen  sheets 
and  pillow  slips,  with  knitted  linen 
lace.  There  are  bedquilts  and  testers 
and  curtains,  and  a  beautiful  hand- 
made tufted  spread,  woven  double, 
with  the  pattern  picked  up  on  the  right 
side, the  design  beinga six-pointed  star 
in  the  center  with  a  Greek  key  pattern 
around  the  edge  above  the  twisted 
fringe.  The  latter  bears  in  precise 
cross-stitch  the  initials  of  Alicia  Van 
Epps  Murdoch,  a  daughter  of  Mis- 
tress Murdoch,  through  whom  the 
Pynchon's  became  allied  to  the  Hales. 
For  she  had  two  daughters,  one  of 
whom  married  William  Henry  Rug- 
gles  Pynchon,  of  Connecticut,  and  the 
other  Dr.  Enoch  Hale,  of  Boston,  who 


•PUUam 


—  Jfmmtgrant  to  Ammra,  1B3II 


was  an  uncle  of  Edward  Everett  Hale 
and  a  nephew  of  the  young  patriot, 
Nathan  Hale. 

There  is  her  portrait,  framed  in  a 
band  of  dull  gold.  What  a  sweet 
strong  face  it  is  under  the  white  cap 
and  framed  by  the  folds  of  the  white 
shawl,  with  its  narrow  border,  a  gay 
note  of  bright  cherry  relieving  the  de- 
mure Quakerish  effect  of  the  costume. 
Ah,  Polly  Miller,  more  than  your 
pointed  bowl  silver  spoons,  marked 
with  flamboyant  capitals,  and  your  pa- 
tiently woven  linen  sheets  and  baby 
garments,  filmy  and  fine  enough  for  a 
royal  infant,  is  the  legacy  of  the  char- 
acter you  left  behind  you  and  which 
reflects  itself  in  those  who  revere  your 
memory. 

There  is  another  quaint  bed,  a 
"bachelor  bed,"  as  they  called  single 
beds  in  those  days.  It  has  four  slen- 
der posts  and  is  the  prized  possession 
of  the  little  daughter  of  the  family. 
Whether  pride  of  race  is  dormant  in 
children  at  an  early  age,  no  one  can 
tell,  but  she  is  very  proud  of  the  little 
bed.  Environment  plays  its  part  in 
the  development  of  children  and  the 
practical  methods  of  modern  life  ap- 
peal to  her  just  as  strongly,  even 
though  she  be  but  six  years  old.  For 
example,  when  taken  recently  to  visit 
a  grand-aunt,  whose  home  has  no 
modern  innovations,  and  at  bed-time 
her  mother  told  her  to  mount  the  steps 
to  get  into  the  huge  four-poster  bed, 
with  its  well-shaken  feather-bed,  she 
objected,  wailing: 

"Oh,  mama,  I  don't  want  to  sleep 
on  a  big  fat  stomach." 

So  her  little  bed  has  been  fitted  with 
a  modern  spring  and  mattress. 

One  of  the  most  attractive  pieces  of 
furniture  is  the  old  mahogany  desk 
that  for  many  years  was  used  by  Dr. 
Enoch  Hale  in  his  office  in  Boston  and 
later  was  used  by  President  Pynchon 
at  Trinity.  If  it  could  speak,  what  a 
host  of  memories  the  solid,  substan- 
tial, respectable  piece  of  wood  could 
give  forth.  It  has  the  indescribable 
velvety  look  that  only  the  cabinet-fin- 


isher, Time,  can  give  to  mahogany. 
The  Hales  have  always  been  college 
bred  and  with  literary  proclivities  no 
matter  what  profession  they  followed. 
Enoch's  father  was  the  first  minister 
of  Westhampton,  and  his  uncle  Na- 
than, the  father  of  Edward  Everett 
Hale,  was  a  journalist.  Enoch  was 
educated  at  Harvard  but  decided  to 
minister  to  bodies  instead  of  souls. 
In  spite  of  the  demands  made  on  the 
busy  physician,  he  found  time  to  write 
various  pamphlets  and  treatises  rela- 
tive to  his  profession.  In  view  of  the 
recent  conflicting  opinions  among 
medical  authorities  regarding  the 
cause  and  cure  of  cerebro-spinal  men- 
ingitis, it  is  interesting  to  note  that 
one  of  the  earliest  of  these  pamphlets, 
published  when  he  was  but  twenty- 
four  years  old  and  in  the  first  year  of 
his  practice,  is  called  "The  History 
and  Description  of  the  Spotted  Fever, 
Which  Prevailed  in  Gardiner,  Maine, 
in  1814."  And  after  nearly  an  hun- 
dred years,  the  problem  has  not  even 
yet  been  satisfactorily  solved. 

On  the  left  side  of  the  desk  is  an 
octagonal  mat  worked  by  Enoch 
Hale's  wife.  It  is  in  cross-stitch  in 
wool  and  silk.  The  greens  and  blues 
are  softened  by  age.  It  serves  as  a 
mat  for  a  quaint  urn-shaped  inkwell 
of  dull  bronze,  exquisitely  modeled  in 
detail,  with  places  for  quill  pens  and 
a  tiny  seal.  Another  inkstand  of  the 
same  dull  bronze  is  more  modern  in 
appearance,  with  its  inkwell  at  either 
end  and  a  tray  for  pens,  but  it  was  evi- 
dently in  use  long  before  envelopes 
were  employed,  for  the  center  space  is 
occupied  by  a  small  candlestick,  the 
tiny  snuffer  hanging  by  a  wire  hook 
through  a  hole  in  the  side  of  the  can- 
dlestick, to  snuff  the  candle  when  the 
wax  had  been  melted  and  the  missive 
sealed.  A  rack  for  letters  or  papers 
of  the  same  bronze  is  an  artistic  de- 
sign formed  of  a  branching  spray  of 
holly. 

There  are  two  Davenports,  and 
nine  open,  low-backed  chairs,  uphol- 
stered in  haircloth.  These  are  asso- 


Oak  Cradle  made  about  1660  and  imported  to  America  from  an  old  Worcestershire  minor  house— It  hat 
incised  panels  and  border*,  with  a  panel  hood  at  the  head— The  rockers  arr  curved  at  the  tops  and 
are  held  in  the  very  ends  of  the  corner  posts — The  cushions  inside  are  covered  with  figured  vellet— This 
photograph  is  from  the  original  cradle  and  was  taken  for  Miss  Esther  Singleton's  volume  on  "The  Furniture 
of  Our  Forefathers"  and  here  presented  by  courtesy  of  Doubleday,  Page  and  Company  of  New  York 


jfcnmtor  nf  %  Pgnrtpm  Sfamilg   in  Amertra 


ciatccl  particularly  with  the  home  of 
Thomas  Pynchon,  in  whose  parlor 
they  stood  for  many  years. 

There  is  a  graceful  Hepplewhite 
table,  with  folded  top  and  slender 
legs  inlaid  with  a  beautiful  pattern  in 
satinwood.  The  old  sideboard  is 
massive  and  plain,  following  the  gen- 
eral style  of  the  desk  and  clothes 
press.  Furniture  was  built  for  use  in 
the  early  struggling  days  of  the  colo- 
nies. But  only  great  care  and  careful 
handling  could  have  preserved  the 
wine  and  spirit  glasses,  the  heavy  gob- 
lets, the  slender  decanters  and  the  ex- 
quisite china.  One  member  of  the 
family  owns  a  complete  set  of  old  blue 
and  white  Canton  china,  of  that  dull 
soft  blue  that  is  so  beloved  by  collect- 
ors and  is  valued  at  $1,500.  But  if 
collectors  should  ever  have  an  oppor- 
tunity to  bid  for  it,  which  is  unlikely, 
there  is  no  knowing  to  what  high  fig- 
tires  it  would  go. 

Quite  in  contrast  to  the  highly  pol- 
ished glass  is  a  pitcher,  which  will 
belong  to  the  ninth  generation  of 
Pynchons,  coming  through  the  moth- 
er's side  of  the  family.  It  is  espec- 
ially interesting  for  it  is  a  piece  of  the 
first  glass  made  in  the  colonies.  But 
whether  it  all  came  from  Jamestown 
in  1607  or  came  from  the  factory  in 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  which  was 
started  in  1629,  no  one  knows.  But  it 
is  very  old  and  the  edges  of  the  handle 
are  rough  and  the  glass  is  crude  in- 
deed when  placed  beside  two  beauti- 
ful fruit  dishes,  one  high  and  one  low, 
•of  the  old  English  cut  glass.  The 
•edges  of  these  are  scalloped  and  an 
-engraved  pattern  of  grape  leaves 
makes  the  high  polish  of  the  plain 
portion  but  shine  the  more. 

There  is  old  china,  curious  pitchers 
of  graceful  shape,  bits  of  pewter  and 
old  plate.  There  was  a  plate-warmer 
of  china,  with  two  handles  and  made 
exactly  like  a  pewter  one  that  came 
from  the  Cogswell  family,  another  of 
historic  prominence,  but  it  has  become 
broken  or  lost.  There  is  an  interest- 
ing story  connected  with  the  pewter 


one.  It  was  kept  for  one  member  of 
the  family  who  was  always  late  to 
meals.  What  an  intimate  view  that 
chance  phrase  gives  of  the  mother  of 
the  household — tender  and  indulgent 
and  with  a  proper  pride  that  her  culi- 
nary art  should  not  be  spoiled  by  the 
laggard.  But  imagination  can  only 
finish  out  the  picture  and  whether  the 
late-comer  was  the  staid  and  dignified 
head  of  the  family,  busied  with  many 
cares,  or  a  handsome  lad  with  impet- 
uous way,  full  of  the  many  interests 
and  subject  to  the  allurements  that 
appeal  to  us  when  we  are  young,  or  a 
little  beauty  who  had  but  to  smile  and 
the  rest  of  the  family  obeyed  her  bid- 
ding, no  record  remains. 

Even  some  of  the  children's  play- 
things have  been  preserved.  There  is 
a  much  worn  miniature  bed  with  four 
posts.  It  is  almost  gone  now,  but  no 
wonder,  considering  how  many  gene- 
rations of  young  mothers  have  put 
their  dollies  to  bed  in  it.  Speaking 
of  dolls,  there  are  two  treasured  care- 
fully for  many  years.  Both  are  very 
small  and  made  of  wood,  their  feat- 
ures carved  and  painted.  One  of 
them  is  brave  in  a  frock  of  buff  cotton 
with  pantalets  of  the  same,  and  her 
muttonleg  sleeves  shirred  at  the  inner 
arm  would  serve  as  a  model  for  the 
present  mode.  The  paint  on  her 
cheeks  is  still  fresh  and  her  carved 
comb  is  a  good  imitation  of  shell. 
The  other  doll  is  an  inch  taller  and 
represents  a  bride.  Her  veil,  falling 
over  her  modest  face  is  hanging  in 
shreds  and  tatters,  and  the  sight 
brings  sadness,  so  emblematic  is  it  of 
life  and  those  other  brides  whose 
heart  illusions  have  faded  away  long 
before  their  veils  had  lost  their  pris- 
tine freshness. 

There  are  heavy  curtains  of  curious 
colors.  There  is  an  old  blue  and 
white  Staffordshire  washbowl  and 
pitcher.  There  is  a  curious  brazier 
and  a  low  silver  candlestick  with 
carved  ornament  around  the  edge,  and 
the  handle  is  twisted  into  a  graceful 
curve,  and  many  other  quaint  and  in- 


Htlliam  $Iyudf0n — 3mmujrattt  in  Ammra,  1H30 


teresting  objects,  each  with  its  hidden 
history  and  clustering  memories. 

There  are  old  books  and  old  letters 
and  papers  which  have  come  down 
through  the  centuries.  Among  them 
is  a  letter  from  William  Pynchon  to 
Governor  Winthrop,  bearing  the  en- 
dorsement of  the  latter.  A  piece  is 
torn  from  the  blank  space  of  the  last 
page  and  tradition  has  it  that  the  gov- 
ernor with  true  Yankee  thrift,  saved 
the  scrap  for  future  use.  Paper  was 
a  valuable  commodity  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Col- 
ony. The  original  seal  of  the  family 
is  not  in  existence,  but  there  are  seve- 
ral old  seals  of  later  date. 


Among  his  other  classmates  were 
Sylvanus  Griswold  of  Lyme ;  Daniel 
Humphreys,  G.  S.  Hobart,  judge  of 
the  United  States  District  Court  and 
United  States  Senator  from  Xew 
York ;  Sir  Edmund  Fanning,  lieu- 
tenant-governor of  Xova  Scotia  and 
governor  of  Prince  Edward's  Island ; 
Rev.  Dr.  Abraham  Beach ;  Rev.  James 
Srovill;  Rev.  Samuel  A.  Peters. 
Joseph  Pynchon's  name  stands  sixth 
on  the  roll  of  the  class,  of  which  the 
membership  was  forty. 

He  married  Sarah  Ruggles,  the 
onlv  child  of  Rev.  Thomas  and  Re- 


NEW  HAVEN,  Sept.  a,  1757- 
DEAR  SIR: 

Yesterday  I  arrived  at  Old  Yale;  find  all  things  in  good  order;  all  things  prepared  for  com- 
mencement, except  gowning,  which  we  are  at  a  loss  where  to  get.  Therefore,  if  you  light  on  any 
at  Guilford  should  be  glad  if  you  would  engage  it,  and  send  word  as  soon  as  possible. 

Sir,  we  are  all  well,  and  want  nothing  but  your  good  company,  which  we  all  insist  on  having 
this  week  or  the  beginning  of  the  next  at  the  farthest.  We  are  in  great  eipectations  that  the  com- 
mencement will  be  private,  and  that  it  will  be  on  Friday  or  Saturday  of  next  week— the  reason  of 
this  conjecture  is  considerably  from  the  president's  proposing  to  give  all  liberty  to  go  home  on  next 
Saturday  that  shall  make  application  to  him  or  the  Tutors  therefor.  Pray,  Sir,  direct  a  letter  to 
Sir  Griswold,  engaging  him  to  call  jou  in  his  way  to  New  Haven,  on  the  beginning  of  the  next 
week.  If  you  want  tbe  opportunity,  pray  come  yourself  without  fail.  Please  excuse  the  incon- 
gruity of  this  epistle  since  it  comes  from  one  whose  mind  is  continually  harassed  and  perplexed  with 
the  thought  of  the  inevitable  ruin  and  destruction  that  is  impending  and  just  at  hand  upon  himself 
and  country.  Give  proper  regards  to  all  friends,  from  your  ever  sincere 

&  affectionate  friend  &  servant, 

JOSEPH  PYXCHOX. 
P.  S.    Chandler  &  Prynde  send  compliments. 


Another  branch  of  the  family  in- 
cludes the  Gilmans,  also  among  the 
foremost  in  the  educational  life  of  the 
country. 

Among  the  many  interesting  letters 
that  are  yellowed  with  time,  folded 
with  precision,  and  fastened  with 
seals,  is  one  written  by  Joseph  Pyn- 
chon, great-great-grandson  of  Wil- 
liam Pynchon  of  Springfield,  Massa- 
chusetts, to  his  classmate  Nathaniel 
Caldwell  of  Guilford,  Connecticut,  in 
1757<  from  Xew  Haven,  where  he  \vu- 
awaiting  the  Yale  College  commence- 
ment of  that  year. 


tecca  Ruggles,  the  minister  of  Guil- 
ford, Connecticut.  He  was  a  loyal- 
ist, and  passed  the  whole  period  of  the 
Revolutionary  War  in  the  city  of  Xew 
York.  At  the  close  of  the  war  in 
1782-3  he  became  the  leader  of  the 
famous  Loyalist  emigraticn  to  Xova 
Scotia.  He  returned  to  Connecticut 
in  1784  and  died  at  Guilford,  Xovem- 
ber  23,  1794. 

There  is  a  letter  of  Madame  Pyn- 
chon of  Springfield.  Massachusetts 
written  to  her  son  at  Cambridge,  and 
his  reply,  both  of  which  are  charac- 
teristic of  mothers  and  sons  of  every 
period. 


of  tlj?  ipgnrtpm  Sfamtlg   in  America 


SPRINGFIELD,  June  26, 1743. 

Dear  Son  Billy,  having  but  a  few  minutes  just  to  inform  you  of  our  welfare  and  our  friends.  I 
have  not  heard  from  you  since  you  first  went  down.  Would  be  glad  to  hear  of  your  circumstances. 
I  have  just  sent  by  Capt.  Colton  a  pair  of  yarn  stockings,  which  would  sent  6  weeks  sooner  if  I  had 
opportunity.  Hope  now  will  come  safe.  Would  just  inform  you  that  Cos.  Charles  Wimick  departed 
this  life  yesterday  was  6  months  sick.  Give  my  dear  Regards  to  all  friends  at  Cambridge  &  Boston. 
Brothers  and  sisters  send  their  love.  Accept  of  mine  from  your  loving  mother, 

KATHERINE  PYNCHON. 


This  lady  was  the  daughter  of  Rev. 
David  Brown  of  Springfield  and  at 
this  time  was  a  widow. 

We  know  that  Captain  Colton  de- 
livered the  yarn  stockings  and  the  let- 
ter safely  to  "Mr.  William  Pynchon 
in  Cambridge,"  for  this  is  his  reply : 


"These  must  all  be  kept  for  the 
children,"  she  said.  "Some  one  of 
them  will  care  for  and  appreciate 
them." 

Which  will  it  be?  The  eldest  son 
of  the  family,  who  at  present  is  as  full 
of  pranks  and  falls  into  as  many  ex- 


Honored  Madam  July  18,  1743. 

I  believe  I  shall  not  come  home  by  water,  but  have  determined  unless  some  very  convenient  op- 
portunity happens  so  that  I  can  ride  up  by  horse,  to  tarry  here  the  vacancy.  Madam  Larrabee,  and  m 
Betty  is  indisposed,  very  much,  and  the  Capt.  also.  I  invited  them  up  toComtbut  they  not  being  able 
to  come  I  saved  my  money  and  crtdit  too.  I  am  in  health,  have  gained  flesh  I  find  since  I  came  down, 

have  nothing  now  to  tell  you  off 

But  am  your  dutiful  son  WILLIAM  PYNCHON  JR. 


Human  nature  is  the  same  in  all 
generations  and  in  spite  of  the  stately 
form  of  expression  this  is  just  like  the 
letters  of  hundreds  of  college  lads  the 
land  over. 

Fortunately  all  these  interesting 
possessions  have  fallen  into  a  home 
where  they  will  be  cherished.  A 
neighbor  who  had  seen  the  wonderful 
linen  and  testers  suggested  what 
beautiful  frocks  they  would  make  for 
the  children.  The  mother  of  the  ris- 
ing generation  of  young  Pynchons 
was  aghast. 


citing  escapades  as  a  healthy  nine- 
year-old  is  capable ;  or  the  little  lady 
with  brown  curls,  who  loves  her 
great-grandfather's  bachelor  bed ;  or 
her  younger  sister,  too  young  to 
appreciate  anything  but  the  quaint 
wooden  dolls ;  or  the  chubby  baby 
whose  crib  lies  so  close  to  the  old 
carved  bed  that  his  fat  toes  may  touch 
its  sacred  wood  ?  However  it  be,  for- 
tunate it  is  that  these  heirlooms  are 
cherished,  not  for  their  value  in  the 
antique  mart,  but  for  the  memories 
they  bring  of  maids  and  men  who 
lived  in  days  that  are  no  more. 


Book  Plate  of  Reverend  Thomas  Ruggles  Pynchon 

President  of  Trinity  College,  Hartford,  Connecticut 

Descendant  of  William  Pynchon,  1630 


nf  £>ax0tt  Kittga  in  Ammra 


llnbrokrn  Einr 

lit'  Drarrnt  frum  £iUu-rt 

ihr  JFirst  Hi  HIM  IT  h  of  all  £nglano  in  ihr 

\h\ir  iztnht  iJiniuVrfc  to  William  OJrarg  of  ijau,lr0  Abbrtj  who 

rnmr  to  Amrrira  in  Hi  -il  anb  Jnurstrb  ton;  tutirr  jFortunr  in  "Hunuuu  ,* 

of  onr  of  tb.r  J^iret  }J  nuuntrrr.  in  the  Nrro  9orl&  ••*  Cinragr  t-.-.t  .1  liltr.hr  f» 


BT 

I)  WIGHT  TRACY,  M.D.,  D.D.S. 

CAMBRIDUE.     MASSACHUSETTS 

NEW  YORK  GENEALOGICAL  AND  BIOGRAPHICAL  SOCIETY  —  NEW    ENULANU    HISTORIC    GENEALOGICAL    SOCIETT 
MEMIIKK  OF-  TUE  SONS  OP  AMERICAS  REVOLUTION 


SHIS    is    the    tragedy    of    a 
scion  of  one  of  the  noblest 
families  of  Europe,  who, 
reared  in  an  ancient  pal- 
ace and  inheriting  one  of 
the  oldest  estates,  became 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of 
the  Xew  World,  invested  his  property 
in  vast  tracts  of  its  savage  lands,  came 
to  America  to  enter  into  its  develop- 
ment, lost  his  entire  fortune  and  died 
broken-hearted. 

It  is  the  story  of  a  man's  faith  in 
the  ultimate  greatness,  of  the  Western 
Continent  ;  his  belief  that  it  would 
arise  as  one  of  the  world's  richest  do- 
mains —  a  confidence  in  its  future  that 
led  him  to  abandon  a  life  of  Old 
World  luxury  and  ease  to  cast  his  lot 
against  fate  on  the  unknown  hem- 
isphere. As  far  as  his  knowledge  of 
it  is  concerned  his  conjectures  were 
wrong.  The  realization  of  his  dreams 
never  came  to  him  in  his  brief  day. 
He  lived  only  to  see  his  visions  dissi- 
pated, to  find  his  dreams  were  mir- 
ages, to  discover  that  the  soil  on 
which  he  stood  was  a  quicksand  that 
carried  him  to  misfortune. 

This  is  one  of  the  anomalies  of  his- 
tory. In  the  very  moment  of  failure 
the  embryo  of  success  was  unfolding 
—  a  success  so  full,  so  prodigal,  so 
stupendous  that  more  than  a  million 
of  the  peoples  of  the  earth  are  coming 
in  annual  pilgrimages  to  partake  of 
its  abundance. 


This  son  of  the  Saxon  kings  was 
right!  His  prophetic  visions  were  all 
too  true.  From  his  own  financial 
ruins  has  risen  a  great  nation  and  a 
great  race  to  which  he  contributed 
Saxon  energy,  Saxon  indomitability, 
Saxon  valor,  Saxon  integrity.  His 
loss  was  gain ;  his  failure  was  tri- 
umph. 

While  this  heroic  sacrifice  lends  ro- 
mance to  the  drama  of  American  his- 
tory, its  real  significance  is  in  the 
proof  that  the  best  blood  of  the  Old 
World  was  interested  and  actively  en- 
gaged in  laying  the  foundation  upon 
which  the  greatest  Republic  of  the 
earth  has  been  built.  It  is  of  especial 
interest  on  this  occasion  of  the  ter- 
centenary of  the  first  permanent  Eng- 
lish settlement  in  America  as  it  is  at 
this  shrine  that  its  first  scenes  were 
enacted.  As  a  contribution  to  the  lit- 
erature of  the  exposition  it  is  of  much 
value. 

The  discoveries  herein  related  are 
of  so  real  import  to  American  gene- 
alogical literature  that  brochures 
have  been  prepared  for  public  libraries 
and  private  distribution  by  the  author. 
Dr.  Tracy  in  a  letter  preliminary  to  its 
publication  says:  "In  my  investiga- 
tions I  have  not  found  a  town  under 
the  American  flag  on  this  continent 
but  has  descendants  of  this  Saxon 
blood.  I  have  found  it  in  far-away 
Australia  and  Honolulu,  and  have 
traced  it  into  most  of  the  civilized 
countries." 


S'7 


nf  S>axott  iinnarrlja  in  Amerira 


»      i     i-  jr      *        t 

.«.«.*    •  L     I*    *••»    »  fl    •'• 


ANCIENT    OLD    WORLD    MANOR    OF    THE    FIRST    TRACYS    IN    AMERICA 

Exhibit  i— The  birthplace  of  William  Tracy  who  came  to  Virginia  in  1620 — At  the  time 
of  the  Domesday  Survey  it  was  occupied  by  the  great-grandson  of  King  Ethelred 
— Print  from  rare  engraving  in  1712  when  the  estate  was  in  possession  of  William 
Tracy,  a  cousin  of  the  William  Tracy  who  had  come  to  America  ninety-two  years  before 


OME  years  ago  I  heard 
the  tradition  that  the  an- 
cient Tracys  in  America 
were  of  royal  descent ; 
that  the  blood  in  the 
veins  of  these  first 
American  settlers  was 
that  of  the  old  Saxon  kings.  Dur- 
ing my  long  life  I  have  listened  to 
countless  narratives  pertaining  to 
the  Tracys,  and  for  a  generation  I 
have  given  heed  to  them  all  and  have 
followed  every  clue  to  its  minutest 
•detail. 

It  is  a  matter  of  much  import  and 


its  revelations  are  vital  to  the  entire 
American  people,  for  it  is  in  the  se- 
crecy of  the  home  that  all  real  history 
is  begun.  Only  through  the  study  of 
the  family  groups  can  be  traced  the 
development  of  great  deeds  or  the  ev- 
olution of  government.  The  power 
behind  the  throne  in  all  nations  is  the 
family  circle  which  is  molding  the 
character  of  its  citizenship  and  mark- 
ing the  path  for  its  future. 

One  of  the  earliest  traditions  that 
came  to  me  was  that  the  Lieutenant 
Thomas  Tracy,  who  appears  first  in 
the  records  of  Salem,  Massachusetts, 

Hi 


Inbrnknt  ffitn*  nf  Imrni  frnm  ICtttg 


in  1636-7,  and  died  at  Xorwich,  Con- 
necticut, on  November  7,  1685,  was  of 
noble  birth  and  that  his  ancestors 
lived  on  the  Toddington  estate  in 
Gloucestershire,  England.  Although 
this  tradition  was  wholly  unsupport- 
ed by  evidence,  I  took  up  the  clue  and 
began  a  systematic  research.  I  found 
it  frequently  stated  that  Thomas 
Tracy  was  the  pioneer  of  the  Tracy 
family  in  America,  but  early  discov- 
eries led  me  to  believe  that  his  father 
came  with  him  to  the  New  World. 

After  thirteen  years  of  continuous 
investigation,  during  which  I  have 
devoted  my  entire  labors  to  establish 
the  Tracy  lineage,  I  am  here  pre- 
pared to  state  that  the  Tracys  are  of 
royal  descent  and  that  their  blood  is 
one  of  the  noblest  strains  of  the  Old 
World. 

I  shall  here  lay  before  you  my 
proof — not  mere  inferences  but  gene- 
alogical evidence  supported  by  exact 
transcripts  and  facsimiles  from  an- 
cient records  and  documents.  As  my 


investigations  completely  upset  the 
voluminous  genealogical  dicta  re- 
garding the  Tracys  in  England,  and 
wholly  disagree  with  the  mass  of  ma- 
terial that  has  been  collected  and  pub- 
lished on  the  subject,  I  realize  the  ne- 
cessity of  establishing  my  contention 
beyond  doubt.  This  I  shall  do  with 
photographs  of  original  letters,  docu- 
mentary proof  from  official  records, 
corroborated  by  sundry  testimonies 
from  authoritative  sources,  establish- 
ing the  genealogical  fact  that  the 
aforementioned  Thomas  Tracy  who 
died  at  Norwich,  Connecticut,  was 
born  in  Gloucestershire,  England ; 
that  he  was  the  son  of  \Villiam  Tracy, 
esquire,  of  Hayles  Abbey,  and  his 
wife  Mary  Con  way  of  Arrow,  War- 
wickshire ;  that  this  William  Tracy 
was  the  third  son  of  Sir  John  Tracy, 
the  knight  of  Toddington  castle,  and 
his  wife  Anne  Throckmorton.  With 
this  established,  the  line  runs  back  in 
unbroken  succession  to  Egbert,  the 
first  Saxon  king  of  all  England. 


TODDINGTON  IX  i8ag— XEARLY  FIVE  HUNDRED  YEARS  THE  SEAT  OF  THE  TRACYS 
Le  Sire  de  Tract,  a  Norman  Baron,  went  to  England  with  William  the  Conqueror  and 
fought  in  the  Battle  of  Hastings  in  1066— His  granddaughter,  Grace  de  Tract,  married 
Lord  Sudeley,  John  de  Maiftne.  son  of  the  Lord  of  Toddington,  connected  with  the 
royal  line  of  Saxon  kings— Rare  print   from  an  engraving  made  in   1840  in   London 


A  THOUSAND   YEARS    OF   LINEAGE  FROM  SAXON  KINGS 

Connecting  with  the  Tracys  in  America  through  William  Tracy  of  Virginia 
in    1620  and   Thomas   Tracy   of    Massachusetts   and  Connecticut  in    1636 

i.  Egbert,  first  King  of  all  England,  reigned  800-838,  his  son 
2..  Ethelwolf,  839-854,  his  fourth  son 

3.  Alfred  the  Great,  871-901,  his  second  son 

4.  Edward  the  Elder,  901-925,  his  second  son 

5.  Edmund  I,  941-946,  his  second 

6.  Edgar,  951-975,  his  first  son  by  second  wife 

7.  Ethelred,  978-1015,  his  youngest  daughter  Princess 

8.  Goda,  married  first  Walter  de  Maigne,  (de  Medantine,  de  Man- 
tese,  etc.)  a  Norman  Nobleman. 

9.  Rudolph  de  Maigne,  Earl  of  Hereford. 

10.  Harold  de  Maigne,  Lord  of  Sudeley  and  Toddington. 

11.  John  de  Maigne,  Lord  Sudeley,  married  Grace  de  Traci,  dau.  of 
Henry  de  Traci,  feudal  Lord  of    Barnstaple  and  grandau.  of  Le  Sire  de 
Traci  a  Norman  Baron  who  went  to  England  with  William  the  Conqueror 
and  was  in  the  battle  of  Hastings,  1066:  his  name  is  in  the  roll  of  Battle 
Abbey. 

12.  Sir  William  de  Traci,  son  of  aforementioned  John  de  Maigne  and 
Grace  de  Traci,  who  assumed  his  mother's  name  of  Traci ;  High  Sheriff, 
1269;  Knight,  1289. 

13.  Sir  William  de  Traci,  High  Sheriff,  1319. 

14.  Sir  Henry  de  Tracy. 

15.  Sir  Henry  de  Tracy. 

1 6.  Sir  John  Tracy,  High  Sheriff,  1359  to  1362. 

17.  Sir  John  Tracy,  High  Sheriff,  1363-8-70;  Knight  of  the  Shire, 
32-37~4O-and  43  of  Edward  III. 

18.  Henry  Tracy,  Esquire. 

19.  Sir  John  Tracy,  High  Sheriff,  1379. 

20.  Sir  William  Tracy,  High  Sheriff,  1416;  m.  Alice  de  la  Spine. 

21.  Sir  William  Tracy,  High  Sheriff,  1442-3. 

22.  Sir  William  Tracy,  High  Sheriff,  died  ante  21    Henry  VII,  High 
Sheriff  1513,  m.  Margery  Pauncefort  1449. 

23.  Sir  Henry  Tracy,  High  Sheriff,  m.  Alice  Baldington. 

24.  Sir  William  Tracy,  Knight,  m.  Margaret  Throckmorton. 

25.  Sir  William  Tracy,  m.  Agnes  Digby. 

26.  Sir  Henry  Tracy,  m.  Elizabeth  Bridges.     Will  proved  Sept.,  1557. 

27.  Sir  John  Tracy,  Knight,  m.  Anne  Throckmorton.     Knighted  1574. 

28.  Gov.  William  Tracy,  of  Hayles  Abbey  m.  Mary  Conway.     He 
qualifies  for  the  Societies  of  Americans  of  Royal  Descent  and  Colonial 
Governors.     Immigrated  to  Virginia  in  1620. 

29.  Lt.  Thomas  Tracy,  of  Massachusetts  and  Connecticut,  m.  three 
times.     Children  all  by  first  wife,  whose  name  is  unknown. 

From  this  progenitor  is  infused  the  blood  of  the  Saxon  Kings  into  the  American  Race— Its  descendants  are 
tcattered  throughout  the  Nation  and  the  world  —  Nearly  every  English-speaking  municipality  in  the  United 
States  has  this  Saxon  blood  in  its  composite  citizenship  —  It  has  been  traced  from  America  to  the  Orient,  to 
Australia  and  Honolulu,  and  to  most  of  toe  civilized  countries,  and  has  built  a  strong  race  of  men 


•Hnbrnlmt  Slitt?  nf  irsmtt  frnm  2Cmg  Egbert 


In  proof  of  the  unbroken  chain 
from  Egbert,  the  first  Saxon  king, 
down  twenty-eight  generations  to  Wil- 
liam Tracy  (28)  of  Hayles  Abbey, 
who  married  Mary,  the  daughter  of 
Sir  John  Conway,  of  Arrow,  County 
of  Warwick,  sister  of  Lord  Conway,  I 
present  a  photographic  reproduction 
of  the  two  pages  from  Britton's  Tod- 
dington,  published  in  1840,  and  an 
English  authority.  In  investigating 
these  lines  I  find  that  the  gene- 


alogists have  disaereed  on  certain 
points ;  but  the  main  contention  is  so 
well  established  that  these  exhibits  are 
conclusive  proof.  (Exhibits  2  and  3.) 
The  Tracy  lineage,  as  given  by 
former  genealogists  of  the  family, 
was  substantially  correct,  down  to  the 
children  of  Sir  William  Tracy, 
Knight  (24),  who  married  Margaret 
Throckmorton.  They  (the  genealo- 
gists), assumed  that  the  line  from  this 
Sir  William  (24)  was  through  his 


J1"?  T?™"1™0*'  or  T«»c»  FAMILY,  U  defended,  on  the  paternal  tide,  from  Ethelred,  who*  daughter,  God..  married  Walter. 
r  .Mauntz,  a  noble  Norman.  From  thU  marriage  came  Ralph,  who  wai  created  Earl  of  Hen-ford  by  hi.  uncle,  Edward 
thr  Cuntoor.  Harold,  «on  of  Halph,  married  Maud,  daughter  of  Hugh  Lupua,  Earl  of  Chester,  and  nephew  to  William  the 
Coaqwtar.  rm  Harold,  who  Kittled  at  Sudeley  aad  Toddingtoo,  bad  two  »ona,  Halph  and  John;  thr  Utter  of  whom  married 
Grace,  daughter  of  William  de  Traci,  natural  son  of  King  Henry  the  Firit,  Their  offspring  were  Ralph  and  William:  lh*  la»t 
assumed  hit  mother's  name  of  THACI,  and  retained  the  family  arm»  of  Sudtloy,  with  an  e*calop-«heli  for  difference. 


GO»A. 

•f 

RALPH,  Earl  of  llcrrfurd,  lired  In  U>«  reign  of  King  Edward  Uie  Cauftvor. 

T 

IlAioLn,*  Huron  of  Sudeley. 


Jail*  DcSfDCLEV,  Lori  nfS,,drlry7G«ACE,datighwr  of  William  deTrarr.orTrari.  Baron  of  Barnua|.le. 


Lrii,  HAROS  or  Si  nn  rv,  fuunHnl  the  Priory 
of  E«n«i  »v,  in  ih«  c.mnty  of  Warwick. 
f'vr  ttut  PfUiyrtt,  vttte  pagt  v. 


WILLIAM  De  TIACI.  UU  Toddinirini.,  A.C.  of  Lit  Btoilm  Ralph, 
by  tlit  irrt  i«  <>f  one  ki.i,:lii-i  t<t.  ua-.f.  Henry  II  t 


Oi.ivru  T«ArY,  1201,  paid  wuugetkt  2d  of  King  John,  H  one  of  the  Kuighu  »f  'tloiimicnliirr. 


Mil  Win  IAM  TIACV.  IJtt);  made  High  Sheriff  of  thr  Cmnty  of  (ilnicrtur  hy  the  Ba 
Unailr.  »  Kicn.li  knight,  «hu  wu  put  int.,  that  otfiit  hy  th«  kin'u't  pai 
uu.lrr  Edward  the  Kirn,  whittle*  he  wa>  aramlpanictl  hy  hit  ki 


of  lh*  Earl  of  Lricriirr'l 


rtCTtlrr't  party,  in  oppotition  1 

nf  the  Kniichti  of  CiUmcr»tmhire.  ISHO;  cmnaiinJtJ  la 
n,  Ralph  dt  iMidrley ;  and  wai  tbru-r  High  >hrnff  uf  UUMcatmliirr. 


;  Will  MJI  TRACY,  granted  in  ward,  tn  tjanmirr  Trr«ham.  129ft.  w.it  pmrnt  at  thr  t.nirnaiiHrnt  Wld 
at  Barntlaplr  by  Edward  thr  Smmd  ;  made  High  Sheriff  of  the  I'.mniy  of  ti:.,ntr»lrr.  1:110. 

T 


Hrxnv  T»AIY.  .Marger)-— J.4inAnrhrr.ofrml«r»Ua». 

•P 

lltx»v  TIACY. 

TIIO>IA<  TIACY,  Uigh  Sheriff  of  Olounwenhlr.  fr..m  ISM  to  l:i...' 
y 

SIB  J,.n«  T«AIY,  Knirht.  lli«h  Shniff.if  theC.mnlynf  Olnumirr.  I .W..1.  1.8.  7»  :  Kni,fl.l  of  the  Shirr.  M.  37.  <0.  «i.d  13d  of  Edward  I II  .  l.r  wK 
w»t  knightrrf.  and  app.nulrd  t.i  M«urr  the  low  Un.li  brtwern  Bri.U-1  and  Oh«icntrr.     He  gar»  the  advuwMu  «f  T.AIii.gton   to  the  AM»v  .<  l 

•J7il.  Edwari  III. 
y 

HEXIY  TBACT. 
y 

Jon,  TaaCY,  High  SlMruT of  the  County  of  Oloucvur,  1379. 
WILLIAM  T.ACT,  Hlgk  Sheriff  of  the  County  of  Ol«ice.irr.  ISoi. 


LINEAGE  OF  THE  TRACYS  IX  ENGLAND  FROM  ROYAL  LINE  OP  SAXON  KIN<;s 
Exhibit  j- Photographic  Reproduction  from  Genealogical  Chart  by  J.  Brltton  of  London  in  1840 


nf 


in 


i  nj-lne,  who  piarncd  the  daughur  and  .  .  :,i.,n  :  wbe 

of  Uc  U  S|,iur  and  Coiignbtn. 


i.f  tin-  realm.  1418;  married  Ali«,  toightar 
e  tht  Trtcyi  bare  •  right  to  quarter  the  arnu 


WILLIAM  TIACT,  Ili^h  Sheriff  <if  the  Cot 
of  UU-ucntcr.  lU-'a,..!  1443. 


WiLi.iAicTjucT,  High  Sh«r!ff=>MA»omv.  d»ug»n 


Alice— Hllgli  C.-Ur.of  Mol.nd, 
Co.  ol  I 


>,.  WILLIAM  T 

mi.  of  the  Hrtl  ..-I 

Kit  will,  directii-i. 

th.  err.:  •         .•!'   ,,f  lion,-.  !„• 

.idered  by  P.rker,  I  l,am--ll,.r  „(  \C. 

hi.  body  wan  ,,r,lrr,il  to  I*  exhunvd  and  bul 

this  Pa'rke-  <va>  diimilted,  ai.fl  fiut-d  £400. 


r  -Al.tri,  •laii(!liler  and  n-helr  of  Tliomai  Baldingt 
of  Adderbury.  C.,,,nly  ,,l  Dxiin. 

in,                    Richard  Tracy, 

Jl  HrnryVII. 

Sheriff  of  (V.'iic.  1J13.  wa 
raced  the  ref.-rn,,  i 

he  .)!.,  l;.l    b-   |.,|i    • 

t^pMAHOABCT.d.nsl.t-r               Richard  Trncv, 

'  ..r,«-k. 

Ralpli  Tracy, 

.  a.M,,nk,lnn:icd 
UToMlBftOD. 

EliM'*th, 
'    tiiar.J.-lm 

1.  ,    1      IB 

Annl 

\Vitli 

,        1 

1 
I 

M'ILLI»M  TMACT 

U'm.(i.,<vrr,  K«<|.         t,i  Wo-         l(arlur.i,   ila.  ',,f  Sir 

of  \Vone.ler.                                             (  i,»rlu,le.     By  will, 
he  |>,,»M*»H*>d  ttie  pru- 

dated    6th    Feb.    !.*<;; 

t  J.-liM  Brunei,  fir-t  I.,,r,l 

'4- 

proTed  .N-pl.  I.',',;. 

I  Midrley. 

Ilivt.  rvtr  fiwttiv. 

[ 

1                                        I.I' 

| 

Si«  Jo 

IIS  THACT,  Kiii«hle.l-A 

N-  x  ,  daughter  of  Sir  Tl,,>m»» 

Oilet  Tracy,  2d  .on,      Edward.         Franci..        Nicholaa  Tr. 

vv.         l>;,ii.,r.  mar. 

1  V       C^U, 

ren    KliMl.lh,    l,"4!      I' 

hrm  kn,.,rt,,n.  ,,J  Co,  • 

II,.:.  (...thl-llliF  Pick- 

,\:,ll  vK,i,« 

IliRli    > 

Wiitr  of  <)!<».   IS/8:  '  C 

hunt,    and    bird    at 

tin,.  1 

He^rtsp 
Wth.     ( 

nleJ  ditto,  20th  KlitA. 
Hi.  1W1;  bur.  atT.-d. 

Naui.Mn. 

gu.uii.gion. 

dingtnn 

• 

Sin  JOHN  TBACY,  lullght«d->>Ai 
by    Jamea    I.     UKin 

Olo..  wroe    n 


I                              I  II 

Sir  Thomas            William  Trarv,  Anth.mv  Tia 

Tracy.  Kl.  Ob.     mar.   Blarv,  <l'a.  <)>..  f-.l% 

inl^ndonjS.P.      ofSirJ.-lniC.m.  Il.>::n  •!•.„• 

««¥,   ,,f  Arrow,  Oli.: ST.  li.'. 

County  ot  War. 


othy,  niairird    K.I. 

l.d.  f'lle,t   IVI1   Of  Sir 

«r1    Bray.       2dlv 


l.,rd 


of 


wny. 


.•\Nrv,in»rricdl«.Sir' 
\Vm'.    H-.'.v;    L'.l.    Sir 

II.,,:,-,,,  Veil-,  Baron 
i,f  Tilbury,  by  whom 
the  hud  S  dauchteri. 
colicireun. 

•+•    - 


LINEAGE  FROM  SAXON  ROYALTY  TO  FIRST  TRACY  TO  IMMIGRATE  TO  AMERICA 
Exhibit  3 -Continuation  of  Chart  from  preceding  page,  completing  record  of  William  Tracy,  who  married 
Mary,  daughter  of  Sir  John  Conway,  of  Arrow,  County  of  Warwick,  sister  of  Lord  Conway  —The  record 
stating  that  he  died  without  issue  is  disproved  in  exhibits  on  following  pages,  and  this  William  Tracy 
of  Hayles,  who  came  to  Virginia  in  1620,  is  proved  to  have  had  a  son  Thomas  Tracy  with  him  in  America 


third  son  Richard,  down  to  a 
Thomas ;  and  that  this  Thomas  was 
the  Thomas  Tracy  who  was  on  rec- 
ord, first  in  Salem,  Massachusetts, 
1636-7,  etc. 

My  discoveries  prove  that  the  line 
continued  from  this  Sir  William 
(24),  not  through  Richard,  but 
through  his  (Richard's)  eldest 
brother,  Sir  William  (25),  the  heir  to 
the  Toddington  and  Sudeley  estates ; 
and  so  on  down  through  the  eldest 
sons  to  William  Tracy,  Esquire  (28), 
the  third  son  of  Sir  John  Tracy, 
Knight  (27),  who  married  Anne 
Throckmorton ;  and  that  this  William 
Tracy  (28)  came  to  Virginia  Sep- 
tember, 1620,  in  the  ship  "Supply" 
with  his  young  son  Thomas  (29), 
etc.,  where  he  was  a  Councillor  of 
State  and  Governor  of  Berkeley  Col- 
ony or  Hundred.  He  arrived  in  Vir- 


ginia, before  the  Pilgrims  landed  in 
Plymouth. 

This  line,  from  Sir  William 
Tracy,  Knight  (24),  down  to  Lieu- 
tenant Thomas  (29)  of  Norwich, 
Connecticut,  constitutes  the  "missing 
link"  in  the  line  which  has  been  so 
long  sought,  and  which  completes  the 
pedigree  chain,  -and  indissolubly  con- 
nects the  descendants  in  America  of 
this  Governor  William  Tracy  (28) 
and  his  only  son  Thomas  (29),  later 
Lieutenant  in  Norwich,  Connecticut, 
with  their  Royal  ancestors,  the  SAXON- 
KINGS  OF  ENGLAND. 

Britten,  in  his  Toddington  chart,  in 
the  account  of  the  children  of  Sir 
John  Tracy,  Knight,  (Xo.  27  in  this 
paper)  records  that  William  Tracy 
(28)  (brother  of  Sir  Thomas  Tracy, 
Knight)  married  Mary  Conway,  etc., 
and  died  s.  p.,  that  is,  without  issue. 


•Hnbrnlum 


nf  iment  frnm  King 


RICH    DRAWING    ROOM    IN    ANCIENT    TODDINGTON— THE    HOUSE    OF    THE    TRACYS 
Print  from  engraving  made  in  1840  when  the  estate  was  in  possession  of  Lord 
Sudeley  who  was  Charles  Hanbury  Tracy,  descendant  of  the  ancient  Saxon  Rulers 


This  "without  issue"  statement  is 
proved  to  be  an  error  by  the  records 
of  the  Virginia  Company  (Exhibit  7) 
which  show  that  the  William  Tracy 
(28)  who  went  to  Virginia  in  1620 
was  a  brother  of  Sir  Thomas  Tracy, 
Knight  (Exhibit  n)  and  that  he  took 
with  him  in  the  ship  "Supply"  his 
wife  Mary,  daughter  Joyce  and 
son  Thomas  (29)  and  this  Todding- 
ton  chart  of  Britton's  shows  that  the 
parents  of  these  two  brothers — Sir 
Thomas,  Knight,  and  William  (28) 
who  married  Mary  Conway,  etc., 
\\cre  Sir  John  Tracy,  Knight,  and 
Anne  Throckmorton  his  wife. 

William  Tracy,  Esquire,  (28)  w  • 
born  in  the  Toddington  Manor-house, 
\\here  his  ancestors  had  lived  for 
more  than  four  hundred  years. 

Sir  Robert  Atkyns,  in  his  history 
of  Gloucestershire  written  in  1712, 
gives  the  following  interesting  ac- 
count of  Toddington,  on  page  409 


and  a  picture  of  the  Manor-house,  as 
it  was  in  1712      (See  Exhibit  i)  : 

This  parish  lies  in  the  lower  part  of 
Kiftsgate  hundred,  six  miles  distant  north- 
east from  Tewksbury,  four  miles  north 
from  Winchcourt.  and  fourteen  miles 
north-east  from  Glocester.  Earl  Randulfe 
held  Todintun  in  the  reign  of  King  Wil- 
liam the  Conqueror,  his  son  held  it  in  the 
same  reign.  It  was  taxed  at  ten  hides; 
there  were  twenty-one  plow-tillages, 
whereof  three  were  in  demean;  there  were 
two  water-mills,  and  fifty  measures  of  salt 
belonging  to  the  manor.  This  together 
with  the  manor  of  Sudeley.  paid  a  yearly 
rent  of  40!  (pounds)  in  King  Edward's 
reign.  The  manor  of  Todington,  at  the 
Norman  conquest  was  held  of  the  manor 
of  Sudeley.  The  abbe  of  Tewksbury  had 
a  grant  of  Court-lest.  waifs  and  felons 
goods,  in  the  reign  of  King  William  the 
Second,  and  their  grant  was  allowed  in  a 
writ  of  Quo  Warranto  brought  against 
them  15  Ed.  I. 

The  family  of  the  Tracy?  have  been  very 
anciently  lords  of  this  manor,  and  is  de- 
scended from  the  blood  royal  of  the  Saxon 
kings  of  England.  Ethelred.  son  of  Kiii« 
Edgar,  obtained  the  crown  of  England  at 


rngemj  nf  S>a#mt  JHnnardfH  in  Ammra 


MONASTERY  FOUNDED  IN  1246  BY  EARL  OP  CORNWALL,  LATER  KING  OP  THE  ROMANS 

Exhibit  4— Hayles  Abbey  became  part  of  Toddington  in  1357,  and  was  occupied  by  William 
Tracy  when  he  became  interested  in  New  World  exploitations  which  resulted  in  his 
financial  ruin  and  the  establishment  of  the  Tracys  in  America  —  Rare  print  in  1712 


twelve  years  of  age,  979.  His  reign  was 
remarkable  for  his  long  and  bloody  wars 
with  the  Danes,  and  for  the  general  mas- 
sacre of  them  in  the  year  1002.  He  died 
1016  and  left  eight  sons  and  four  daugh- 
ters. GODA,  the  youngest  of  king  Ethel - 
red's  daughters  was  married  to  Walter  de 
Maigne  (or  de  Mantine  or  de  Mantes  or 
de  Mantz  etc.)  a  nobleman  in  Normandy. 
RALPH  (Rudolph  etc.)  son  of  GODA  and 
Walter  de  Maigne  was  Earl  of  Hereford. 
HAROLD  son  of  Ralph  was  lord  of  Sudeley; 
and  the  Tracys  do  now  give  the  same  arms 
as  this  lord  Sudeley  gave,  only  with  an 
escollup  shell  for  difference.  JOHN  the  son 
of  Harold  married  Grace  the  daughter  of 
(Henry  de)  Traci,  lord  of  Barnstaple  in 
Devonshire.  WILLIAM  TRACI,  second  son 
of  John,  lived  in  the  reign  of  King  Henry 
the  Second,  and  took  his  mother's  name 
Traci.  He  held  lands  of  his  brother  Ralph 
de  Sudeley  by  one  knight's  fee,  and  was  of 
the  same  name  (de  Maigne)  and  is  sup- 
posed by  some  to  be  one  of  the  four 
knights  who  murdered  Thomas  Becket 


archbishop  of  Canterbury.  OLIVER  TRACY, 
son  of  William,  lived  in  the  second  year 
of  King  John,  and  had  issue  SIR  WILLIAM 
TRACI  of  Todington,  who  lived  in  17  Ed.  I. 
and  was  granted  in  wardship  of  Lawrence 
Fresham  1298.  He  was  high-sheriff  of 
Gloucestershire  1319.  John  Archer  son  of 
John  of  the  ancient  family  of  Archers  in 
Warwickshire  married  Margaret  daughter 
of  this  Sir  William  Tracy  of  Todington,  in 
the  reign  of  Edward  the  Second. 

In  the  preceding  evidence  appears 
the  statement  that  "the  abbey  of 
Hayles  was  presented  to  Toddington, 
1357."  As  it  is  in  the  record  of  this 
abbey  that  I  shall  begin  to  establish 
the  relations  which  connect  this  line 
of  nobility  with  the  American  Tracys, 
I  here  present  my  investigations  of 
Hayles  Abbey.  (See  Exhibit  4.)  Sir 
Robert  Atkyns,  on  page  246  of  his 
"History  of  Gloucestershire,"  pub- 

5*4 


Inbrnkftt 


nf  i?ar?ni  frnm  King 


lished  in  1712,  makes  this  record  and 
gives  a  picture  of  the  Abbey  as  it  was 
at  that  date: 

This  parish  lies  in  the  lower  part  of 
Kiftsgate  hundred,  two  miles  distant  north- 
east from  Winchcomb.  and  seven  miles 
east  of  Tewksbury,  and  thirteen  miles 
north-east  from  Glocester.  It  is  so  called 
from  Haly,  which  is  Saxon  for  Holy. 
This  manor,  at  the  Norman  conquest,  fared 
like  the  rest  of  England.  It  was  taken 
from  a  Saxon  proprietor  and  given  to  a 
Norman.  ...  It  afterwards  came  to 
the  crown,  and  the  inhabitants  thereof 
were  then  discharged  from  the  hundred  of 
Winchcomb,  10  Hen.  III.  King  Henry  the 
Third  granted  it  to  his  brother  Richard 
earl  of  Cornwall,  who  in  this  place  founded 
the  famous  monestery  of  Hayles  30  Hen. 
III.  in  the  year  1246.  This  great  earl  was 
elected  king  of  the  Romans.  He  had  es- 
caped a  shipwreck ;  and  in  performance  of 
a  vow  made  in  the  extremity  of  danger  he 
erected  this  monestery,  and  placed  therein 
twenty  Cistertian  Monks,  and  ten  converts, 
which  he  brought  fromBeaylieu  in  France: 
ii  was  dedicated  to  the  Virgin  Mary,  and 
All  Saints,  by  the  bishop  of  Worcester,  the 
fifth  of  November  in  the  year  1251.  in  the 
presence  of  the  King  Henry  the  Third,  the 
queen,  thirteen  bishops,  many  noblemen 
and  three  hundred  knights.  This  great 
carl  and  his  wife  were  buried  here.  He 
died  1271 ;  she  died  in  the  year  1261 ;  so 
that  the  church  of  Hayles  contains  the 
ashes  of  an  emperor  and- .an  empress.  Ed- 
ward earl  of  Cornwall,  son  of  the  founder, 
was  likewise  buried  in  this  church, 
whose  burial  was  performed  with  great 
solemnity  in  the  year  1300;  King  Edward 
the  First,  and  a  great  concourse  of  noble- 
men, attending  at  the  funeral.  The  church 
and  most  of  the  buildings  was  consumed 
by  fire  in  the  year  1271,  which  was  but 
twenty  years  after  the  first  foundation ;  yet 
the  loss  was  estimated  at  8000  marks.  .  .  . 
The  abbot  and  convent  of  Hayies  paid  an 
annual  rent  of  i6/.  i6s.  lod.  Y2  for  Pinnock- 
shire,  27  Ed.  I.  which  rent  was  the  same 
year  settled  by  the  king  on  queen  Margaret 
as  part  of  her  dowry.  The  abbot  of 
Hayles  was  made  a  mitered  abbot  and 
summoned  to  parliament  1294.  Adam  le 
Hunt  grants  twenty  solidates  of  land  in 
Hayles  to  the  abbey  thereof  13  Ed.  II. 
The  abbot  of  this  monestery  took  part 
against  King  Henry  the  Fourth,  and  was 
hanged.  Abbot  Whaley  was  the  last 
abbot,  who  in  hopes  of  a  pension,  surren- 
dered it  to  the  king  Henry  the  Eighth  the 
twenty-fourth  of  December,  31  Hen.  VIII. 
This  monestery  was  valued  at  Disolution 
at  357/.  7s.  Sd  l/2.  Edmond.  the  son  of  the 
founder,  gave  some  of  Christs  Blood  to 
the  abbey;  and  at  the  Disolution  it  was  dis- 
covered to  be  the  blood  of  a  duck;  which 


was  weekly  renewed.  This  forged  miracle 
had  been  practiced  in  this  monestery  for 
many  ages ;  and  it  was  affirmed  of  it,  that, 
if  a  man  was  in  mortal  sin  and  not  ab- 
solved, he  could  not  see  the  blood ;  but  as 
soon  as  he  was  absolved,  he  might  plainly 
discern  it.  The  priest  shewed  it  in  a  cab- 
inet of  crystal,  richly  adorned ;  both  sides 
whereof  seemed  alike,  yet  one  side  was 
composed  of  thicker  crystal  than  the  other; 
and  until  the  penitent  had  paid  for  as  many 
masses  as  the  priest  thought  fit,  he  pre- 
sented towards  him  that  part  of  the  cabi- 
net with  the  thicker  crystal,  when  nothing 
could  be  seen ;  but  when  he  paid  well,  then 
the  thin  and  transparent  side  was  turned 
towards  him,  and  then  to  his  great  joy  he 
could  discern  the  blood.  This  miracle  had 
much  enriched  the  monestery.  One  of  the 
cloisters  is  yet  remaining  (1712).  After 
the  disolution  of  the  abbey,  the  scite  of  the 
monestery.  with  the  manor,  Hailes  wood 
Pinnock's  wood,  and  Hailes  park,  were 
granted  to  sir  Thomas  Seimore  I  Ed.  VI. 
who  being  attainted,  the  scite  of  the  mon- 
estery, with  the  rest  of  the  lands,  was 
granted  to  William,  marquis  of  Northamp- 
ton. The  manor  afterward  came  to  Wil- 
liam Hobbey.  esq.  [He  was  the  first  hus- 
band of  William  Tracy's  youngest  sister 
Mary  Tracy]  who  built  a  little  chapel  not 
far  distant  from  the  abbey,  wherein  he  lies 
buried ;  he  died  1603  aged  103.  The 
Tracys  soon  after  became  lords  of  this 
manor.  William  Tracy,  esq.  was  lord  of 
this  manor  in  the  year  1608. 

\Yith  the  family  seat  established  at 
Toddington,  I  now  turn  again  to  \Yil- 
liam  Tracy,  of  the  twenty-eighth  gen- 
eration, who  was  born  at  Toddington, 
and  emigrated  to  America  in  1620. 
The  first  record  of  him  in  Hayles  is 
from  "The  Names  and  Surnames  of 
all  the  Able  and  Sufficient  Men  in 
Body  fit  for  His  Majesty's  Service  in 
the  \Yars  within  the  County  of 
Gloucester."  compiled  by  John  Smith, 
in  August,  1608.  in  the  sixth  year  of 
the  reign  of  James  the  First,  giving 
his  servants  and  retainers  on  pages 
84-85:  Hayles 

William  Tracy  Esqr. 

Charles  Townsend  gent. 

John  Rawles 

John  Hicks  Sen-ants  to  the  said 

John  Staube         William  Tracy,  Esqr. 

John  Worley 

Henry  Carnall 

William  Carnall 

Thomas  Jeffrey 

William  Sexton 


5*5 


cf  S>axnn  iinnarrfya  in  Ammra 


Sir     Horatio     Vere     Knight     hath     one 
launce.  one  light  horse,  two  Corslets,  three     ' 
muskets  and  two  Calyv's  furnished. 

Britton's  chart  shows  that  Wil- 
liam Tracy's  youngest  sister  mar- 
ried this  distinguished  General  Hora- 
tio, Lord  Yere  of  Tilbury  (See  Ex- 
hibit 3),  and  the  paragraph  given 
above  shows  that  William  Tracy  was 
not  the  owner  but  a  resident  of 
Hayles.  The  form  of  ownership  in 
all  the  records  of  that  period  expli- 
citly states  the  ownership.  I  do  not 
know  of  an  instance  where  it  is  omit- 
ted. If  \Villiam  Tracy  had  been  the 
owner,  as  stated  in  one  of  the  preced- 
ing quotations  from  an  eminent  his- 
torian, which  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
was  merely  a  hasty  conclusion  with- 
out proof,  the  record  of  Hayles  would 
read :  "Hayles,  of  which  William 
Tracy,  esq..,  is  Lord."  This  fact 
i*  fails  to  state.  When  William 
Tracy  was  married,  his  father,  Sir 
John  Tracy,  knight,  gave  him  Hayles 
not  in  fee,  but  as  a  residence,  and 
there  he  lived  until  he  went  to  Vir- 
ginia in  September,  1620,  and  in  the 
usual  course  of  events  his  children 
were  born  in  Hayles.  The  ownership 
of  Hayles  fell  to  his  oldest  brother. 
Sir  John  Tracy,  Viscount  of  Rath- 
coole  (See  Exhibit  3),  who  had  sev- 
eral children. 

\Villiam  Tracy,  Esquire,  (28)  was 
one  of  the  first  of  those  of  gentle 
blood  to  become  interested  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  New  World,  and  he 
became  actively  engaged  in  promot- 
ing the  settlement  of  Virginia.  In 
the  "Records  of  the  Virginia  Com- 
pany," January  26,  1619,  now  pre- 
served in  the  Library  of  Congress, 
volume  I,  appear  these  entries: 

At  a  Great  and  General  Quarter  Count 
Holden  for  Virginia  at  Sr  Edward  Sandys 
House  neer  Aldensgate  the  Second  of  Feb- 
ruary 1619  (page  303). 


3  GRANTS  OF  LAND 

The  Third  of  Grants  of  Land  he  ac- 
quainted them  of  fower  sen-all  paire  of 
Indentures  lying  all  ingrossed  before  them 
granted  one  to  Mr  Robert  Heath  Recorder 


of  London  and  his  Associates,  the  s'cond 

4  PAIRE  OF  INDENTURES  ALLOWED 
to  Doctor  Bohune,  James  Swift  and  their 
Associates  for  Transportation  of  300  Per- 
sons. The  Third  to  William  Tracy  esquire 
and  his  Associates  for  Transportation  of 
500  Persons.  .  .  . 


28  Junij  (June)  1620:  William  Tracy  of 
Hayles  Esqr.  to  be  Councell  of  Estate  in 
Virginia. 

SUPPLY  OF  COUNCELLORS  IN  VIRGINIA 
Vppon  notice  from  Sr  George  Yeardley 
yt  the  Councells  in  Virginia  must  needs  be 
supplied,  the  Court  hath  now  chosen  mr 
Thorpe,  mr  Nuse,  mr  Pountus.  mr  Tracy, 
mr  Daved  Middleton,  and  mr  Bluett  to  be 
of  the  Councell  of  Estate  in  Virginia  (page 
379)- 


Sir  Edwin  Sandys  further  signified  that 
itt  was  then  allso  taken  into  their  consid- 
eracon  and  thought  fitt  that  the  Counscll 
of  State  in  Virginia  should  assemble  fower 
times  a  year  each  Quarter  once  for  one 
wholl  weeke  together  to  advise  and  con- 
sult upon  matter  Counsell  and  State  and  of 
the  generall  affairs  of  the  Colony  and  as 
there  shall  come  to  order  and  determine 
the  greater  matters  of  controversee  grow- 
inge  and  arising  between  the  Plantations 
there  being  now  added  a  good  number  of 
new  Counsell rs  to  the  former,  namely,  (as 
before  specified)  (page  479). 


Whereas  Credible  information  hath  been 
given  of  the  Death  of  Doctor  Bohune  mr 
Ouldsworth.  and  mr  Tracy  late  chosen  to  be 
of  Counsell  of  State  in  Virginia,     .     .     . 
(page  520). 


At  a  Court  Held  ye  24th  October  1621 : 
mr  John  Smith  moved  that  whereas  mr 
William  Tracye  afore  his  goinge  over  to 
Virginia  mas  arrested  2Ooli  (pounds)  prin- 
cipall  debt  for  well  he  put  in  bayle  wch 
suit  hath  since  proceeded  and  bine  psecuted 
soe  as  the  said  cause  was  ready  for 
judgment  whereof  stay  was  made  vntill 
some  witnesses  might  be  brought  in  to 
certify  of  the  said  mr  Tracycs  death.  In 
respect  whereof  and  for  that  hee  hath  re- 
ceaved  information  by  tres  that  the  said 
William  Tracye  dyed  in  Afrill  last  hee 
desires,  notice  of  such  as  came  lately  from 
Virginia  that  may  be  ready  vppon  occa- 
sion to  witness  the  death  of  the  said  gen- 
tleman touching  wch  the  Company  prom- 
esed  to  procure  him  as  many  as  they  could 
hereof,  (page  535). 

Evidence  of  the  intimate  relations 
of  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  with  the 


0f  9m?nt  frnm  King 


Virginia  promotion,  his  ultimate  im- 
migration into  America,  and  his  influ- 
ence as  a  counsellor  and  finally  gov- 
ernor of  the  first  permanent  English 
settlement  on  the  Western  Hemis- 
phere, is  conclusive  in  the  ancient  let- 
ters in  his  own  handwriting  and 
almost  indecipherable  documents  in 
which  he  is  frequently  mentioned. 
The  originals  are  deposited  in  the 
Lenox  Library  in  New  York  in  charge 
of  Mr.  \Vilberforce  Eames,  Librarian, 
to  whom  I  am  much  indebted  for  the 
privilege  of  taking  photographic  cop- 
ies. Many  of  the  letters  are  nearly 
past  translation  and  to  preserve  their 
contents  as  a  contribution  to  early 
American  history  they  have  been 
transcribed  and  published  in  the  Bul- 
letin of  the  New  York  Public  Library. 
The  first  one  which  I  shall  introduce 
is  a  letter  written  on  April  15,  1620, 
by  William  Tracy  to  John  Smith  in 
which  it  appears  that  Smith  had  ad- 
vised Tracy  to  buy  Throckmorton's 
share  in  the  Virginia  colony  of  Berke- 
ley Hundred  and  showing  that  he 
(Tracy)  was  acting  on  his  (Smith's) 
advice : 

Sr 

_I  was  glad  of  yor  letter  &  ye  good  nues 
of  Virginia,  but  sori  ye  ship  is  not  re- 
torned  god  send  her  a  hapi  Coming  &  all 
ouer  bisnes  hapili  to  go  on  to  gods  glori 
and  ouer  good  there  is  a  gust  Caues  yt  I 
<anot  met  at  gloster.  as  yo  lone  me  Con- 
dem  me  not  so  do  I  intret  my  Cosin  barkli 
what  so  ever  yo  to  agre  on  I  will  Con- 
sent vnto  be  Caues  I  am  asured  yo  will 
do  nothing  vnfitting  yo  selves  Yf  I  may 
Icnow  wher  to  met  my  cousin  barkli  ye 
first  nite  I  will  not  fayle  &  it  may  be  goe 
a  long  wi'th  him  to  london  Yf  not  with 
yo  yf  yo  go  from  ouer  parts,  but  at  lon- 
don there  shall  we  haue  tim  suffisient  to 
determen  all  I  am  now  binding  my  men 
I  haue  at  lest  20  promised  me  ye  most  part 
I  am  suer  of.  there  is  no  dout  of  more 
then  wee  men  at  this  to  Cari.  ti  all  of 
yousefull  trads  so  yt  we  may  leaue  those 
yt  ar  of  lest  imployment  tel  ye  next  going 
•do  as  you  plese  with  Sr  William  Throk- 
mortun  I  will  do  nothing  but  as  yo  aduiso 
me  Yf  I  proue  not  ferm  &  faythful  let 
me  not  be  held  worthi  ye  nam  of  a  Cris- 
tion  this  hoping  this  may  geve  yo  satis- 
factione  I  rest 

Yors  in  all  asurance 
15  Aprill  1620  WILLI  TRACY. 


[Addressed:]    To    my    worthi    frind    Mr 

John  Smith  this  nibli 

[  Endorsed :]   Mr  Tracys  letter  1620 

That  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  did 
purchase  Sir  William  Throckmorton's 
share  in  the  Berkeley  Hundred  Plan- 
tation in  Virginia  in  1620,  for  which 
he  paid  £75,  is  witnessed  by  the  fol- 
lowing accurate  transcript  from  the 
original  indenture: 

This  Indenture  made  the  seventh  day  of 
May,  1620,  in  the  xviijth  yeare  of  the 
rr.igne  of  our  soiuraigne  lord  king  James 
of  England  ff ranee  and  Ireland  and  of 
Scotland  the  liijth  Betwene  Sr  Willm 
Throkmorton  of  Clowerwall  in  the  County 
of  Gloucester  knight  and  baronet  of  the 
one  />arte  And  ]Villm  Tracy  of  Hayles  in 
the  said  county  Esq;  of  the  other  /»arte. 
\Yhcras  the  said  Sr  Willm  Throkmorton 
Sr  George  Yardley  knight  Richard  Berk- 
ley Esq;  George  Thorpe  Esq;  and  John 
Smyth  gen.  did  procure  from  the  Trcas- 
orer  and  company  of  Adventurers  and 
planters  of  the  city  of  London  for  the  first 
Collony  in  Virginia  by  the  advise  and  con- 
sent of  the  Counsell  of  the  same  One  In- 
denture of  Covenants  and  grants  sealed 
with  their  Comon  scale  bearinge  date  the 
third  day  of  fTebruary  in  the  xvjth  yeare  of 
his  maties  said  raigne  of  England  and  of 
Scotland  the  lijth  for  their  better  enablinge 
and  incouragcment  for  plantacon  in  Vir- 
ginia aforesaid  And  for  dyu^rs  other 
causes  purposes  and  intents  As  in  and  by 
the  same  Indenture  more  at  large  it  doth 
and  may  appeare.  .  .  .  Nowe  this  In- 
denture witnesseth  that  the  said  Sr  Willm 
Throkmorton  for  and  in  Consideracon  of 
the  some  of  75li  of  lawfull  mony  of  Eng- 
land well  and  truly  before  hand  payd  by 
the  said  Willm  Tracy  .  .  .  hath  given 
granted  assigned  and  set  over  .  .  . 
vnto  the  said  Willm  Tracy  his  executors 
administrators  and  assignes  All  and  singu- 
ler  the  interest  benefit  property  and  advan- 
tage whatsoever  w/n'ch  he  the  said  Sr 
Willm  Throkmorton  nowe  hath  or  by  anv 
waves  or  mcanes  whatsoever  shall  or  mav 
have  or  make  of  from  by  or  by  reason  of 
the  said  Indenture  or  of  any  grant  clause 
covenant  sentence  or  agreement  therein 
contayned  eyther  for  the  present  or  here- 
after to  come. 


Early  in  1620  William  Tracy  was 
granted  a  Captain's  commission  for 
"a  voyag  intended  to  Virginia :" 

WHKREAS  wee  the  Treasurer  Counccll  and 
Company  for  Virginia  for  the  better  ad- 
vauncenifM/  and  supporte  of  that  Planta- 
con haue  given  leaue  vnto  such  as  shall 


in  Ammra 


furnish  out  our  good  Shipp  of  Bristoll 
called  the  supply  of  the  burden  of  Three- 
score and  Tenn  Tuns  or  thereabouts  to 
passe  with  all  convenient  expedicon  vnto 
Virginia,  William  Tracy  Esquire  beinge 
ordained  to  be  the  master  and  Captaine 
therof  and  to  Comaund  and  governe  the 
said  Shipp  and  Marryners  and  alsoe  all  the 
passengers  put  abord  for  the  said  voyage 
to  be  landed  in  Virginia  for  a  particular 
plantacon  beinge  to  the  number  of  sixty 
five  persons  or  thereabouts  w//h  all  such 
necessary  provisions  as  are  shiped  for  their 
vse  and  necessary  releife  We  doe  there- 
fore hereby  Charge  and  Comaund  him  to 
take  his  direct  course  accordinge  to  his 
best  skill  and  knowledge  vnto  the  said 
plantacon  in  Virginia  and  there  to  land 
and  put  on  shore  all  the  said  persons  and 
goods  soe  shipped  of  what  kind  soeiurr. 
Straightley  chargeinge  and  Comaundinge 
the  said  William  Tracy  to  sett  saile  from 
England  with  the  first  oportunyty  of  wind 
and  to  make  all  possible  speed  he  may  to 
the  port  intended  and  not  to  Interupt  any 
shipinge  of  the  subjects  of  any  of  his 
Maty  ffrends  or  allies  or  any  other  who- 
soeucr  duringe  his  said  voyage.  .  .  . 
Iq  wittnesse  whereof  wee  haue  herevnto 
annexed  our  Comon  Scale.  Dated  by  or- 
der of  a  generall  Court  houlden  for  Vir- 
ginia the  twelfth  day  of  July  in  the  yeare 
of  our  lord  God  .1620.  And  in  the  eigh- 
teenth yeare  of  the  kings  Maties  raigne  of 
England  fraunce  and  Ireland  And  of  Scot- 
land the  three  and  ffiftieth. 
Sealed  in  presence  of. 
Fra :  Carter 


Sr  Consider  I  haue  manie  bisnesis.  &  non 

to  helpe  me.     .     .     . 

[Addressed:]     To    my    asured     frind    mr 

John  Smithe  at  ye  blue  lion  in  Chan- 

ceri  lane  this. 
[Endorsed  by  J.  Smith:]  Mr.  Traceys  \ettre 

about  his  dispatch  into  Virgynia,  June 

.1620.     .18.  Jac.  sent  mee  to  London. 


It  is  evident  that  William  Tracy  of 
Hayles  invested  heavily  in  the  devel- 
opment of  the  Xew  World,  for  nearly 
all  of  his  letters  are  of  a  business  na- 
ture regarding  Virginia  investments 
and  bespeak  his  honor  and  financi..! 
integrity  in  meeting  all  obligations 
promptly.  This  transcript  from  a  let- 
ter in  1620  upholds  this  contention  : 

tomorrow  by  gods  leaue  shall  I  pave  yo  a 
looli  at  leste  before  at  seuerall  times  95  ye 
rest  wzth  all  spede  shall  be  sent  in  as  I 
haue  agred  with  yor  man.  so  yt  within  10 
dayes  I  hope  to  pay  vnto  yo  sooli  with  vt 
allredi  payd  .  .  .  Yf  yo  all  will  Con- 
sent I  doute  not  but  yt  yo  will  take  paines 
&  Car  for  oner  bisnes  &  I  will  requit  yo 
with  my  paines  in  Virginia  &  so  will  rest 
in  all  asuranc 

Yor  ever  WILLI  TRACY 
I  canot  her  whether  my  cosin  barkli  haue 
taken  a  ship  or  not     Yt  Care  must  be  on 
yo  to    my  bisnes  will  not  suffer  me  to  seke 
after  on  &  without  on  all  is  nothing  good 


It  is  in  a  letter  written  by  William 
Tracy  just  before  sailing  for  America 
in  1620  that  he  mentions  his  family, 
"my  wife  &  dauter  &  sun."  It  is  this 
"sun"  that  I  prove  to  have  been  Lieu- 
tenant Thomas  Tracy  of  Massachu- 
setts and  Connecticut.  Therefore  I 
call  especial  attention  to  Exhibit  6, 
which  is  an  exact'photographic  repro- 
duction from  the  original  letter.  Ow- 
ing to  its  eccentric  orthography  it  is 
here  translated  according  to  accepted 
version  of  handwriting  experts  in  the 
service  of  the  Lenox  Library  at  New 
York.  I  contend  that  the  mention  of 
the  "dauter"  first,  giving  her  preced- 
ence over  the  "sun,"  is  a  positive  indi- 
cation that  she  was  the  older.  It  was 
the  irrevocable  custom  of  the  period  to 
give  the  sons  precedence.  Under  a 
monarchal  system  in  which  heredity  is 
law  and  the  lines  of  descent  are  estab- 
lished through  the  males,  the  daugh- 
ters were  never  mentioned  first  ex- 
cept through  a  distinct  superiority  of 
age.  In  an  instance  of  this  kind  it  is 
definite  proof  that  the  daughter  must 
have  reached  maturity  while  the 
"sun"  must  be  still  in  childhood ; 
otherwise  this  precedence  of  female 
over  male  could  not  have  occurred  in 
a  family  bound  fast  to  the  laws  of 
heredity  and  cherishing  as  sacred 
their  descent  from  the  Saxon  Kings. 
While  nothing  has  been  found  that 
gives  the  dates  of  birth  of  either 
of  William  Tracy's  children,  I  shall 
continually  corroborate,  this  statement 
that  the  "sun"  was  in  his  childhood 
when  his  father  came  to  America  in 
1620,  and  the  daughter  had  reached 
maturity.  This  is  the  translation  of 
the  letter  that  establishes  their  exist- 
ence: 

non  more  glad  of  yor  recoveri  then  I 
god   Continue  ye  increse  &  Continuanc  of 

s'8 


Inbrofom 


0f 


frnm  King 


*<5#£/2 

Mti&fet* 


. 


AUTOGRAPH  LETTER  OF  WILLIAM  TRACY  OF  HAYLES  AS  HE  LEAVES   FOR  VIRGINIA  IN  ifeo 

Exhibit  5—  Written  to  John  Smyth,  inviting  his  friends  to  dine  with  him  and  looking 
forward  to  an  opportunity  of  entertaining  th«m  in  Virginia  — Original  from  which 
this  almost  indecipherable  letter  is  taken  is  in  archives  of  Lenox  Library  at  New  York 


2% 


nf  S>a*mt  JUonarrlfB  in  Ammra 


AUTOGRAPH  PROOF  OF  WILLIAM  TRACY  OF  HAYLES  BRINGING  HIS  SON  TO  AMERICA 

Exhibit  6— Postscript  to  letter  written  to  his  intimate  friend,  John  Smyth,  first 
day  of  September,  1620,  in  which  he  enumerates  his  family  accompanying  him  on 
his  departure  for  Virginia— Original  in  the  archives  of  Lenox  Library,  New  York 


all  helth  &  hapenes  to  yo  I  will  say 
litell  becaues  I  hope  god  will  bring  yo 
spedili  hether  wher  yo  will  find  gret 
necleckte  hath  bine  such  as  will  hould  vs 
her  12  dayes  at  lest,  such  things  as  yo 
writ  to  haue  baut  shale  be  I  haue  retorned 
yo  ye  boke  &  2  writings  receued  of  yo 
I  shall  be  glad  to  se  yo  knowing  then  mi 
despach  will  be  much  ye  soner  w/zich  is  yt 
I  most  desier  so  hasting  to  rest  with 
god  send  yo  well  so  do  I  bid  yo  god  nite 
euer  being  Yors  in  all  loue 

WILLI  TRACY 
r.  September 

1620 

Commend  me  to  mrs.  smith  &  ye  rest  & 
tell  them  yf  I  must  eate  shepes  mogets 
with  them  a  bord  at  bristoll  thay  shall 
eate  at  land  in  Virginia  pocahikiti  with  me 
in  ernest  they  shall  be  wellcom  &  wee  will 
part  goyfulli 

I  haue  in  my  Compani  4  maid  saruants  3 
maried  wiues  &  2  young  Children  my  wife 
&  dauter  &  JMH  remem  mr  Portar  &  Con- 
sider ouer  ship  will  hould  but  45  men 
men  being  ye  mor  excelent  &  yousefull 
Cretuers  twer  111  to  Chauing  for  wemen 
ther  Cannot  be  Convenientsi  of  rome  for 
all  thes  a  suer  yor  selfe  mr  palet  I  hop 
will  be  with  mi  sune. 
[Addressed:]  To  mi  asured  frind  mr 

John  Smith  this. 
[Endorsed:]    mr    Traceys    l?//re    2.    sept. 

1620.     from  Bristoll. 


To  still  further  corroborate  the  con- 
tention that  the  order  of  precedence 
could  not  have  been  carelessness,  es- 
pecially with  a  man  in  whom  the  laws 
of  heredity  were  religiously  observed 
as  sacred  and  in  whose  veins  flowed  a 
blood  that  for  twenty-eight  genera- 
tions had  held  its  nobility  through 
these  laws,  I  introduce  an  accurate 
transcript  from  another  letter  written 
at  another  date  in  which  William 
Tracy  observes  the  same  form  of  pre- 
cedence "my  ivife,  dauter  &  sune:" 

.  .  .  my  howsold  will  be  my  wife 
dauter  &  sune  4  mayd  saruants  &  6  men 
so  then  for  ye  rest  as  mani  or  as  fewe  as 
yo  will  mr  palet  &  mr  gilfort  must  be  to 
more  of  my  Compani  so  I  shall  be  .16. 
parsuns  at  lest,  my  mening  is  all  these 
shall  be  Imployed  in  ye  Comon  bisnes 
twer  good  to  make  them  30.  I  haue  sente 
yo  letters  to  Consider  of  so  leaueing  yo  to 
god  Yor  ever  asured 

WILLI  TRACY. 

I  would  Cari  .10.  or  12  dogs  yt  would  be 
of  gret  youse  to  vs.    let  me  know  yf  thay 
will  let  vs  Cari  them. 
5  Juli  .1620. 
[Addressed:]    To  my  asured  worthi  good 

frind.     mr  John  Smith  this. 
[Endorsed:]     .     .     .     July  .1620. 

530 


Inbrnten 


of 


frnm  King 


IDENTIFICATION  OF  THE  FAMILY  OF  WILLIAM  TRACY  OF  HAYLES  IN  AMERICA 

Exhibit  7— Record  of  his  death,  April  8,  1621;  the  marriage  of  his  daughter,  Joyce, 
and  her  tragic  death;  and  the  return  of  his  son,  Thomas  Tracy,  to  England— The 
marginal  notes  are  in  the  handwriting  of  John  Smyth— Original  in  Lenox  Library 


The  arrival  of  William  Tracy  of 
Hayles,  and  his  wife,  daughter  and 
son,  in  America  is  evidenced  in  the 
photograph  of  a  portion  of  a  page  of 
the  record  of  the  Virginia  Company 
preserved  by  John  Smith.  I  call 
your  attention  to  Exhibit  7,  which 
is  the  original  list  of  "men  nowe 
sent  for  plantacon  in  Virginia,"  and 
is  dated  "3  September  1620."  In 
this  document  the  names  of  the  chil- 
dren are  revealed.  The  marginal 
notes,  recording  deaths,  are  in  the 
handwriting  of  John  Smyth  : 

3  September      A  list  of  men  nowe  sent  for 

1620.  plantacon  in  Virginia. 

Willm  Tracy  Esqr 

(dead  .8.  Apr.  1621.) 
Mary  Tracy  his  wife 

[slayne  and  dead  written  by  Smyth  in 
the     margin     and     then     stricken 
through] 
Thomas  Tracy  their  sonne 

(returned  for  Engl.) 
Joyce  Tracy  their  daughter 

(married  to  Capt.  Nath.  Powell,    both 
slayne) 

The  investments  of  William  Tracy 
in  Virginia  proved  financially  disas- 
trous. He  was  continually  called  upon 


for  funds  in  promoting  the  colony  and 
pathetic  appeals  show  that  his  entire 
estate  was  consumed  in  the  Xew 
World  speculation  which  proved  a  to- 
tal financial  loss.  Consequently  the 
son,  Thomas,  recorded  in  Exhibit  7, 
was  ultimately  left  destitute  in  Amer- 
ica, as  witnessed  by  letters.  This  is 
a  translation  of  Exhibit  8 : 

I  woulfd]  say  mor  but  know  not  what 
my  wif  is  ouer  whelme  with  grefe  at  bris- 
toll  we  onli  haue  this  vn  sarten  hop  yt  ye 
fayer  will  fornish  vs  with  a  ship,  mr  barkli 
laves  all  ye  fait  on  yo  but  all  ye  burden 
lieth  on  me.  yo  haue  nibli  he  hath  stok  I 
haue  nothing  but  verginia  &  yt  am  I  held 
from  to  Hue  in  shame  &  disgrase  in  Eing- 
land  for  gods  loue  howld  mr  felgate  sarten 
to  go  wi/h  vs  &  yf  we  must  go  from  bris- 
toll  w/Jich  is  my  desier  mak  hast  doune  & 
help  me  a  man  by  all  menes  &  by  gods 
help  it  will  be  for  ouer  good  I  hau  to  hun- 
dered  &  od  pounds  &  ye  3  in  mr  Webbes 
hand  this  will  I  ingage  for  to  furnish  & 
forward  this  Jorni  leaue  me  not  I  will 
neuer  leaue  yo  but  be  as  I  ought  &  so  will 
iv -t  Yors  WILI.I  TRACY 

14  Juli.  .1620. 

[Addressed:]   To  I  hope  my  frind  yt  will 
not  leaue  me  mr  John  Smith  this 

So  serious  became  the  financial 
straits  of  William  Tracy  through  his 


53' 


QJIt?  Jfrngnttj  nf  l^axnn  iHnnarrlfa  in  Ammra 


--3<frt 


^jg-dfa-^y?-  ^ 


PATHETIC  LETTER  OF  WILLIAM  TRACY  OF  HAYLES  CONFIDING  HIS  LOSSES  IN  AMERICA 

Exhibit  8— Written  to  John  Smyth  on  July  14,  1620,  when  in  despair  because  of 
his  financial  embarrassment  from  the  unprofitable  investment  of  his  entire  estate 
in  Virginia  which  left  his  family  destitute— Original  in  Lenox  Library,  New  York 


Unbroken 


of  iment  frnm  King 


Virginia  exploitation  that  he  became 
involved  in  debts  which  resulted  in 
much  humiliation.  In  a  letter  written 
to  him  by  Timothy  Gate,  a  kinsman,  in 
1620,  these  facts  are  made  plain  : 

Good  cosyn  I  bcare  a  parte  in  my  mind  of 
your,  vnhappines  I  receued  a  \cttre  from 
my  brother  Cuynter  which  my  cosyn 
Bridges  brought  me  vnto  Ockle  the  con- 
Unts  was  that  I  should  take  such  security 
for  his  mony  as  I  thought  fitting  from 
thence  I  went  with  him  vnto  Cleeue  from 
thence  to  Beckford  vnto  mr  Wakemans 
house  and  there  I  toocke  all  his  part  of 
tobacco  assigned  vr.der  hand  and  scale 
before  Wittnesses  with  mr  Wakemans 
consent,  my  brother  vpon  my  knoledg 
was  content  to  take  2000  pound  of  his  to- 
bacco, he  hath  formely  told  me  soe  and 
writt  soe  vnto  me  my  cosyn  was  content 
to  passe  his  corne  or  any  thing  he  had  for 
your  releaf  but  I  thought  that  sufficient 
and  that  yt  would  content  him  I  am  hartily 
sorry  he  should  deale  thus  cruelly  with 
you  I  writt  vnto  my  brother  what  I  had 
donne  and  that  he  would  release  you  ac- 
cording vnto  his  lettre  for  my  cosyn  Rob 
Bridges  he  is  soe  sensible  of  your  hin- 
derance  and  his  owne  discredit!  by  your 
Arrest  that  he  seemeth  vnto  me  as  I  pro- 
test vnto  you  infinitely  perplexed  in  his 
mind  he  hath  travelled  twise  vnto  my 
brother  and  backe  agayne  little  meats  and 
rest  serveth  his  turne.  he  would  doe  any 
thing  in  his  power  to  free  you  he  yowcth 
vnto  me  and  I  am  confident  he  will  per- 
forme  yt  if  you  can  procure  any  suerties 
he  will  with  all  speed  possibly  he  can  se 
them  discharged.  If  he  should  be  slack  I 
will  remember  him  but  he  is  as  carefull  of 
you  as  he  can  be  and  would  vndergoe  any 
losse  or  paynes  to  free  you  but  vpon  the 
suddayne  he  cannot  doe  what  he  would  or 
should  doe  herin  if  you  will  write  vnto 
me  to  speake  vnto  any  frend  you  haue  here 
If  my  payns  care  and  best  furtherance 
shall  not  be  wanting  for  I  desyre  god  to 
bleshe  me  and  myne  as  I  wishe  your  well- 
fayre  I  hope  the  Sea  wilbe  more  mercifull 
vnto  you  then  your  frends  are  hire  I  hope 
after  this  storme  you  shall  have  fayer 
weather  my  prayers  and  best  endevors 
shalbe  for  you 

I  rest 
your  kinsman 

in  affection 
TIM  GATE 

Ockle  Sept  22th 

[Addressed:]    To  my  worthie  good  cosyn 

mr  Willia  Tracy  att  Bristol  these. 
[Endorsed:]  mr  gates  lettre  to  mr  wyntour 

The  burdened  state  of  mind  and  the 
embarrassment  which  William  Tracy 
of  Hayles  suffered  because  of  his  ven- 


ture in  financing  the  American  expedi- 
tion is  confessed  in  a  letter  which  he 
wrote  to  his  friend,  John  Smith,  in 
which  he  feared  that  he  might  be 
forced  to  remain  in  England  in  want 
and  gave  way  to  his  discouragement 
with  the  words:  "When  all  is  gone  I 
cannot  live." 

SR 

Yf  yor  help  be  not  more  then  mr  barklis  I 
am  vndon  piti  my  destresed  Case,  &  sum- 
thing  yor  own  Credit  is  Ingaged  to  se  me 
prouided  to  go  &  those  ther  releued.  my 
trust  is  in  yo  and  out  of  ye  trust  in  yo  did 
I  prosed,  in  much  grefe  do  I  writ  ease 
my  lievi  hart  or  kill  it  outrit.  let  me  go  on 
ani  condisions  I  veld  to  yor  desier  thoth 
\nfit  I  should  run  so  gret  a  daingcr  &  yo 
go  on  sartenties  do  yor  will  so  I  may  not 
stay  to  want  at  home  mr  barkli  will  not 
send  but  by  ye  poule  &  tun  &  is  of  yor 
mind  yt  I  should  hier  ye  ship  by  ye  moneth 
to  tari  her  will  be  mor  lose  therefor  helpe 
yf  yo  Can  posibel  mr  barkli  will  Consent 
but  to  Cari  20  men  do  yor  best  to  get  me 
&  10  parsunes  or  as  mani  or  as  few  as  yo 
Can  or  think  fit  When  all  is  gon  I  Can- 
not line  therefor  send  me  whcr  I  must 
leue  my  trust  is  in  yo  fayle  me  not  I 
Can  say  nomore  but  leaue  all  to  yor  des- 
cresion  &  rest 

Yors 

WILLI  TRACY 
14.  Juli.  1620. 

I  leaue  much  to  mr  felgat  to  discorse  who 
sawe  mr  bark[I]ies  carig. 

We  lose  all  ouer  men  yf  we  go  not  nowe 
besids  putting  thcfm]   out  of  work  &  me 
out  of  crfdift. 
[Addressed:]  To  my  worth  good  frind  mr 

John  Smith  this. 
[Endorsed:]     ...     14      July      1620      by 

Toby  felgate. 

William  Tracy  was  held  for  a  debt 
of  200  pounds  incurred  in  fitting  the 
ship  "Supply"  for  the  voyage  to 
America.  Placing  this  responsibility 
on  William  Tracy  was  unjust  as  the 
debt  was  contracted  for  the  company 
and  not  for  the  personal  advantage 
of  William  Tracy.  There  was  an 
agreement  that  certain  amounts  should 
be  paid  by  certain  persons  in  furnish- 
ing the  ship  which  was  sent  out  from 
Bristol  in  September,  1620,  under  the 
command  of  William  Tracy.  This 
transcription  from  the  original  books 
of  the  company  at  that  date  proves 
that  William  Tracy  had  paid  his 
share : 


r0gmj  of 


Sent  to  mr  Tracy  vpon 

his    lr//res    after     I 

was   come  to  Nibley 

to        be        supplyed, 

whilst     he     lay     for 

wynd  at  Crockampil 

with  all  his  company 

&c xli 

Smo  total  of  this 
w  h  o 1 1  charge 
disbursed  till  this 
ships  departure 

.18.   Sept.    1620.         702! i    us  6d 

Wherof  4th  part  is       i/5li    125    lod  ob. 
Of  which  iiijta  pars  of 

I75li  I2s  lod  ob.  mr 

Berkeley      and      his 

partners     have    payd 

but 5oli 

The      residue      beinge 

125!  I2s  lod  ob.  is  to 

be     cast     upon      mr 

Tracy  by  agreement. 
Of    which  4ta  pars  of 

I75li    I2s  lod  ob.  mr 

Smyth  hath  payd  the 

wholl  for  mr  Thorpe. 
Of    which  4ta  pars  of 

I75li    I2s  lod  ob.  mr 

Tracy  hath  payd  the 

wholl    by   the   hands 

of  mr.  Smyth. 

Almost  driven  to  desperation  by  his 
financial  encumbrances,  William 
Tracy  pleaded  with  his  worthy  friend, 
John  Smith  of  Nibley:  "Send  me 
away  and  by  God's  leave  your  good 
shall  be  equal  with  mine.  ...  I 
have  put  myself  out  of  all  means  to 
live  here :" 

SR 

My  estat  is  such  yt  I  must  stir  yo  on  be 
yond  good  mannars,  neuer  mor  I  hop  to  be 
trobelsum  but  euer  laboring  to  make  satis- 
faksion.  send  me  away  &  by  gods  leaue 
yor  good  shall  be  equall  with  mine,  in 
god  my  Chefe  trust  is  nex  yo  as  his  Chefe 
instrument  to  finish  this  work  as  yo  loue 
me  youes  all  menes  to  take  a  ship  tel  yt  be 
don  I  shall  not  be  meri.  blam  me  not  for  I 
haue  put  my  selfe  out  of  all  menes  to  Hue 
here  &  am  dayli  in  extrem  expensis  which 
wekneth  my  to  wek  purse  for  so  gret  a  bis- 
nes  good  Sr  haue  a  felow  feling  with  me 
by  this  yo  may  se  my  longing  hart  to  be 
gon  to  ye  plase  wher  my  bisnes  is.  I  know 
you  vnderstand  faythfullness  &  Constanci 
is  such  yt  I  ned  say  no  mor  so  will  refer 
to  yor  best  Car  all  this  gret  bisnes  &  euer 
rest  Yors  to  comand 

2  August    1620.  WILLI  TRACY. 

[Addressed:]  To  my  worthi  good  frind  Mr 

John  Smith  of  nibley  this.  . 
[Endorsed:]  Mr  Tracyes  If/tre  .Aug.  .1620. 


iHnnardfs  in  Amerira 

In  the  midst  of  the  financial  diffi- 
culties of  William  Tracy,  one  John 
Bridges  writes  a  letter  to  John  Smyth 
in  which  he  speaks  of  William  Tracy 
as  his  cousin  and  offers  financial 
assistance.  It  must  here  be  noted 
that  in  Exhibit  3  it  is  shown  that  the 
grandfather  of  William  Tracy  mar- 
ried Elizabeth,  daughter  of  John 
Bruges  or  Bridges,  first  Lord  Chan- 
dos  of  Sudeley.  It  is  through  them 
that  I  shall  later  produce  corrobora- 
tive evidence  that  Thomas  Tracy  of 
Massachusetts  and  Connecticut  was 
the  son  of  William  Tracy  and  Mary 
Conway  left  destitute  in  Virginia. 
The  following  letter  and  Exhibit  9 
are  here  presented  to  still  further 
vouch  for  the  relationship  of  William 
Tracy,  of  Hayles  and  Virginia,  and 
the  Bridges : 

SR 

Nidinge  to  send  these  letters  to  my 
cosine  Tracy,  I  spake  with  mr  Thorne,  who 
tould  me  that  by  Sr  Willm  Throkmorton, 
and  your  selfe  my  cosin  Tracy  was  sett  at 
libertie — which  did  not  a  little  reioyse  me: 
I  will  not  trouble  you  with  many  lines  in 
this  letter,  by  cause  yf  my  cosine  Tracy  be 
gon,  I  desire  you  to  opene  his  letter,  yf  he 
be  with  you  I  knowe  he  will  acquaint  you 
with  what  I  haue  writ :  I  desire  that  you 
will  directe  me  what  course  to  take  for 
the  remouinge  of  the  action  into  the  Chan- 
sery,  and  I  will  followe  it  with  all  speed, 
or  yf  your  selfe  will  be  pleased  to  followe 
it,  all  chardges  shallbe  mine,  thus  beinge 
sorry  for  the  wronge  dune  unto  my  cosine 
Tracy  by  that  basse  extorcioner  winter,  I 
desire  to  heere  from  you  and  will  ever  rest 
your  assured  louinge  ffrend 

Jo :  BRIDGES 
Castlett  the  23th 
of  Sept.     1620 
[Addressed:]     To     my     mutch     respected 

ff rind  John  Smith,  esqr. :  at  nibley  be 

these  deliured. 
[Endorsed:]    mr  Bridges  .1.  lettre  to  mee 

Sept  .1620.  [with  seal] 

The  confidence  which  the  Virginian 
investors  reposed  in  William  Tracy  is 
demonstrated  by  his  appointment  as 
governor.  The  original  document 
addressed  to  George  Thorpe,  Mr. 
Tracy's  coadjutor,  and  signed  by 
Richard  Berkeley  and  John  Smyth,  is 
preserved  at  the  Lenox  Library,  and 
a  photographic  reproduction  of  a  por- 

534 


•Hnbrnknt  Kin?  of  Iment  frnm  King  lEgbrrt 


J L.    .~    —r7i/t>  •»••.*' 


T^/ 


t&t  Zti-       ~H 

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*#*+yf<~?- ,  ^^JJT^., 

J.  A     •    ,.  •/  ^  /./^  .  ^  «c-^f-^«-  H--.  ^  I'^yTT-^Tf 


^'z£$~M 


u^Z.  ^J^/xV  ^tf-^ 

ST.  <^1M^  *****  +~?  £-/t 


AUTOGRAPH  PROOF  OF  FINANCIAL  EMBARRASSMENT  OF  WILLIAM  TRACY  IN  VIRGINIA 
Exhibit  g— John  Bridges    to    John    Smyth,  September  23,   1620,  in  which   he 
speaks  of  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  as  his  cousin  and  offers  financial  assistance— 
This  letter  also  helps  to  identify  Thomas  Tracy  of  New  England  in  163688 
the  lost  son  of  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  and  Virginia— Original  in  Lenox  Library 


tion  of  it  is  here  presented  in  Exhibit 
10: 

[After  our  very  harty  comendacj'ons :  wee 
send  herewith  vnto  you,  a  Comission  to 
discharge  the  governem<*«/  and  authority, 
w/tich  last  yeare  was  by  vs  and  yourselfe 
conferred  vpon  Captayne  Woodleefe  wher- 
to  your  ownee  hand  and  scale  is  to  be 
affixed,  if  you  have  cause  to  niake  vse 
therof,  w/n'ch  we  leave  to  the  wisdome  of 
yourselfe  and  Mr  Tracy  we  have  conferred 
the  wholl  gourniem^nf  of  all  our  people 
and  affayres  ioyntly  by  one  other  Comis- 
sion vpon  yourselfe  and  Mr  Tracy  accord- 
inge  to  the  tenor  of  the  former  to  cap- 
tayne  Woodleefe]  makinge  noe  doubt  of 
your  prudent  vsage  therof,  profitably  also 
for  yourselves  and  v$.  .  .  .  With  our 
affectionate  comendac/ons  we  bid  you  har- 
tely  farewell  and  rest 

Yor  assured  loving  frends 

RICH.  BERKELEY.    JOHN  SMYTH. 
Stoke  Saturday 
10  Sept.  1620. 

The  financial  misfortunes  of  Wil- 
liam Tracy  of  Hayles  did  not  shake 


the  faith  of  his  colleagues,  who  held 
him  in  high  esteem  for  his  services  to 
the  first  permanent  English  settlement 
in  America  when  it  was  in  dire  need 
and  about  ready  to  abandon  the  conti- 
nent and  return  home  after  years  of 
poverty,  famine  and  massacre.  This 
is  shown  by  the  agreement  between 
Richard  Berkeley,  George  Thorpe, 
\Yilliam  Tracy  and  John  Smyth,  in 
which  Thorpe  and  Tracy  are  selected 
as  governors  of  the  colony  on  August 
28,  1620: 

Itm>  it  is  further  agreed  that  for  the  bet- 
ter augmentacon  of  the  number  of  their 
said  servants  and  collony  already  in  Vir- 
ginia That  another  ship  called  the  supply 
shall  in  the  month  of  September  nowe  next 
followinge  be  sent  from  the  said  port  of 
Bristoll  furnished  at  their  like  equall  costs 
and  charges  in  all  things  with  .540.  persons 
or  therabouts.  And  that  the  authority  and 
governemen/  of  the  said  men  and  all  others 
eyther  already  in  Virginia  or  hereafter  to 


nf  §>axmt  UlnnanrljjS  in  Ammra 


u 


^^^^^"^^^^^  fy*"^.*^  ,., 

,^u  5%^^^^^^u^^t^  xr 

*X^  ^  — 3  n^fl^-^nr*  ^^^SL-f.  4^K2r 

"^^•^-irv**  'l*^  '^^  r"01* a  ^  ^  VW^.  »f  *?*»»*  M?^6  ^-A  £-» 
«^  %/.  frf»— f, ^^  >*^  twU  u  %.-  ^.J,;  c^cLAA  «&  ^^^ , 


v».trv 


AUTOGRAPH  DOCUMENT  APPOINTING  WILLIAM  TRACY  OF  HAYLES  GOVERNOR  IN  VIRGINIA 
Exhibit  10 — Instructions  from  Richard  Berkeley  and  John  Smyth  to  George  Thorpe, 
September  10,   1620 — This  document  qualifies   for  membership  in  Society  of  Colonial 
Governors— The  original  is  now  in  the  archives  of  the  Lenox  Library  in  New  York 


be  sent  and  of  all  other  their  affayres  in 
Virginia  shall  be  in  the  said  George  Thorpe 
and  Willm  Tracy  Joyntly  as  sole  goucrn- 
ors  and  directors  of  all  manner  of  busi- 
nesses there  soe  longe  as  they  two  shall 
agree  in  one  and  not  be  divided  in  opyn- 
ion. 


of  them  shall  agree  vnto  and  deter- 
myne  of  in  wrytinge,  wherto  they  the 
said  Rich  Berkeley  and  John  Smyth 
fayth fully  promise  to  submit  themselves 
without  longer  contradiccon  argument 
or  gaynsayinge.  Given  Enterchangeablv 
vnder  their  hands  and  seales  the  day  and 


IDENTIFICATION  OF  WILLIAM  TRACY  OF  VIRGINIA  AS  SCION  OF  TODDINGTON  MANOR 
Exhibit  ii— Written  August  28,  1620,  appointing  William  Tracy  a  Governor  in  Virginia 
and  mentioning  him  as  brother  of  Sir  Thomas  Tracy,  Knight  of  Toddington,  and  son 
of  Sir  John  Tracy  of  Toddington,  direct  descendant  of  Saxon  Kings  -Lenox  Library 


In  concluding  this  agreement  a 
record  is  made  of  the  relationship  of 
William  Tracy  and  Sir  Thomas  Tracy, 
knight,  as  brothers.  See  Exhibit  n 
in  which  these  lines  appear : 

[In  case  of  disagreement  is  is  agreed 
.  .  .  ]  that  the  resolucon  determynacon 
and  proceedinge  shall  be  as  Sr  Willm 
Throkmorton  knight  and  baronet  Sr  Tho : 
Roe  knight  and  Sr  Tho :  Tracy  knight 
brother  of  the  said  Willm  or  any  two 


yeare    first    above    written.     (August    28, 
1620.) 

This  foregoing  record  corroborates 
the  pedigree  in  the  chart  offered  as 
Exhibit  3  at  the  beginning  of  this 
argument,  in  which  William  Tracy 
of  Hayles  and  Virginia  (cousin 
of  John  Bridges)  who  married 
Mary,  daughter  of  Sir  John  Conway, 
of  Arrow,  County  of  Warwick,  sister 

536 


Unbrnken  Sine  nf 


frnm  2£tug  lEgbrrt 


of  Lord  Conway,  is  proved  to  be  a 
direct  descendant  in  unbroken  line  of 
succession  to  Egbert  the  first  Saxon 
King  of  all  England.  Dritton's  chart 
records  William  Tracy  as  dying  with- 
out issue.  I  have  proven  this  errone- 
ous by  William  Tracy's  own  hand- 
writing and  by  the  records  of  Vir- 
ginia. He  had  a  son  and  his  name 
was  Thomas  as  witnessed  in  Exhibit 

7- 

In  this  same  Exhibit  7  it  will  be 
found  that  John  Smyth  in  his  own 
handwriting  entered  a  record  of  Wil- 
liam Tracy's  death  on  April  8,  1621,  in 
the  midst  of  his  financial  misfortunes 
in  Virginia;  that  his  wife,  Mary  (Con- 
way)  Tracy,  was  "slayne  and  dead," 
but  these  words  are  stricken  out ;  that 
his  daughter,  Joyce,  married  Captain 
Nath.  Powell,  and  both  were  slain ; 
and  finally  that  the  son,  Thomas 
Tracy,  "returned  for  England." 

With  this  tragical  ending  of  the 
American  speculations  of  a  scion  of 
the  House  of  Ethelred,  thr.  Saxon 
King,  I  rest  this  first  part  of  my  argu- 
ment and  turn  to  Lieutenant  Thomas 
Tracy  of  Massachusetts  and  Connecti- 
cut, from  whom  a  large  part  of  the 
Tracys  in  America  descend,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  proven  that  the  Tracy  expedi- 
tion to  Virginia  not  only  proved  a 
financial  disaster,  but  ended  in  a 
tragedy. 

The  words  "slayne  and  dead"  writ- 
ten by  John  Smyth  alongside  of  the 
mother's  name  show  conclusively  that 
she  was  not  in  Virginia  and  that  her 
whereabouts  was  unknown  by  her  late 
husband's  associates.  It  is  evident 
that  John  Smyth,  who  was  one  of  the 
closest  friends  of  her  husband,  had 
heard  that  she  was  "slayne  and  dead ;" 
but  the  crossing  out  of  the  line  signi- 
fies that  he  later  found  that  she  was 
living  and  therefore  obliterated  the 
entry.  If  she  had  been  living  in  Vir- 
ginia, John  Smvth  would  have  known 
it.  It  is  a  safe  conjecture  that  she 
had  gone  back  to  England  after  her 
husband's  death,  where  in  the  usual 
course  of  events  she  would  have  re- 


turned to  her  kin  at  Arrow  in  War- 
wickshire. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  the  record  expli- 
citly states  "Thomas  Tracy  their 
sonne  returned  for  England."  Ex- 
haustive searches  in  the  ancient  rec- 
ords of  England,  in  parish  books, 
courts  of  chancery,  English  grave- 
yards, and  fugitive  papers  and  letters 
in  antiquarian  archives,  have  failed  to 
give  one  word  that  even  mentions  his 
return  to  England.  Eminent  Ameri- 
can and  British  genealogists  have 
gleaned  the  country  to  find  an  entry 
that  would  throw  any  light  upon  the 
existence  of  Thomas  Tracy  in  Eng- 
land after  he  had  departed  from  Vir- 
ginia and  "returned  for  England." 

In  1636,  there  entered  the  town  of 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  an  Englishman 
by  the  name  of  Thomas  Tracy.  He 
had  been  in  Watertown,  Massachu- 
setts, and  came  to  Salem  with  refer- 
ences from  citizens  of  Watertown.  I 
here  present  Exhibit  12,  which  is  a 
photograph  of  a  portion  of  the  book 
of  the  Salem.  Massachusetts,  Records, 
and  contains  this  entry : 

By  the  Towne  represent.  2cl  of  the  first 
mo.  "1636-7.  p  38. 

Tho :  Trace  Reed  for  Ihahitant  vpon 
a  Certificate  from  diners  of  water  Towne. 
And  is  to  have  5  acres  of  Land,  [which  he 
may  haue  laid  out  when  he  hath  a  ticket 
from  me  that  he  hath  paid  me.]  In  short 
hand  by  the  Town  Clerk,  pp  40-81. 


De  Lands  or  By  the  Towan  repre- 

rec.    in    inhabitants          sentative    the   23th 

of    the     nth    mo. 

Anno  1636 

Mathew  Waller  Receiued  for  an  Inhabi- 
tant fr  a  Certifficate  from  mr  Atherton 
haugh.  pp.  40-81. 

Thomas  Trace  ship  Carpenter  reffered  to 
Certifficate.     pp  40-81. 
erased 
[40  Die  mensis  [*g*]  10  1637.    p  60. 

It  is  agreed  that  the  marsh  &  meadow 
Lands  that  haue  formerly  laved  in  comon 
to  this  Town  shall  now  be  appropriated  to 
the  Inhabitants  of  Salem,  proportioned  out 
vnto  them  according  to  the  heads  of  their 
families.  To  those  that  haue  the  greatest 
number  an  acre  thereof  &  to  those  that 
haue  the  least  not  aboue  haue  an  acre.  & 


JJrngmj  nf  §>a*ntt  iJlnnardfa  in  Amertra 


IDENTIFICATION    OF    THOMAS    TRACY     IN     AMERICA     IN  1636 

Exhibit  12— From  Town  Records  of  Salem,  Massachusetts,  in  which  his  name  is  enrolled 
as  an  inhabitant— This  document  with  much  corroborative  evidence  discovers  the  missing 
son  of  William  Tracy,  who  returned  to  England  after  his  father's  death  in  Virginia 


to  those  that  are  between  both  3  q'ters  of 
an  acre,  etc. 

When  the.  list  of  those  receiued  allot- 
ments was  written  by  Roger  Conant  he 
placed  first  the  figure  denoting  the  number 
in  the  family  and  then  the  name  of  the 
head  of  the  family  .  .  .  the  figures  fol- 
lowing the  names  denote  the  allotment. 
Thomas  Tracy  receiued  2  (quarters)  or 
half  an  acre,  p  101. 

This  Thomas  Tracy,  a  ship  carpen- 
ter, was  received  in  Salem  upon  the 
"certificate  of  divers  of  Watertown." 


The  fact  that  he  was  accepted  shows 
that  his  sponsors  were  responsible 
parties.  Who  were  some  of  the  lead- 
ing residents  of  Watertown  at  that 
date?  In  1636-7  we  find  among  the 
estimable  citizens  one  John  Bridge ; 
his  wife,  Elizabeth ;  his  son,  Matthew 
Bridge  ;  another  William  Bridges ;  one 
John  Smith,  senior,  John  Smith,  jun- 
ior, Francis  Smith,  and  a  Thomas 
Smith  —  all  well-bred  Englishmen, 


J  f 


RECORD  OF  THOMAS  TRACY  AS  A  SHIP  CARPENTER  IN  AMERICA  IN  1636 

Exhibit  13— From  the  Town  Records  at  Salem,  Massachusetts,  and  confirming  the  records 
that  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  lost  his  entire  estate  In  Virginia  —  His  son,  Thomas, 
was  apprenticed  as  a  ship  carpenter  with  members  of  the  Smyth  family  in  New  England 


538 


Htn?  nf  iramti  frnm  2Ctng  Egbert 


prominent  in  the  community.  The 
Smiths  were  wealthy  shipbuilders  and 
large  land  owners.  John  Bridge 
was  the  first  deacon  of  the  first  church 
in  Watertown  and  was  a  leader  in  the 
administration  of  public  affairs. 

The  names  Bridges  and  Smith  have 
been  frequently  mentioned  in  the  nar- 
ration of  the  experiences  of  William 
Tracy  of  Hayles  and  Virginia.  In 
Exhibit  3,  it  is  shown  that  his  grand- 
father, Sir  Henry  Tracy,  married 
Elizabeth  Bruges,  also  written  Brugge, 
Bridge,  Bridges,  Brydge  and  Brydges, 
who  was  the  daughter  of  John  Bruges, 
the  first  Lord  Chandos  of  Sudeley. 
In  Exhibit  9,  one  John  Bridges,  a 
wealthy  descendant  of  this  old  Eng- 
lish family,  offers  aid  to  William 
Tracy  about  to  sail  for  Virginia  in  his 
financial  difficulties  and  speaks  of  him 
as  his  cousin.  Throughout  the  entire 
financial  embarrassment  of  William 
Tracy,  in  promoting  his  American  in- 
terests, we  find  his  "worthy"  and 
"good"  friend  is  John  Smith  or  Smyth 
with  whom  he  conducts  a  confidential 
correspondence.  Exjiibits  5,  6,  8,  9, 
10,  all  show  the  close  relations  of 
the  Tracys  and  Smiths.  In  Exhibit 
7.  it  will  be  noted  that  it  was  John 
Smith  who  recorded  the  death  of  Wil- 
liam Tracy,  his  daughter,  the  record 
of  his  wife,  and  the  record  "Thomas 
Tracy  their  sonne  returned  for  Eng- 
land." 

Then  comes  the  silence  of  the  Eng- 
lish records  in  which  Thomas,  this 
young  gentleman,  is  never  mentioned, 
until  in  1636  there  appears  in  Amer- 
ica one  Thomas  Tracy  in  a  com- 
munity with  the  Bridges  and  Smiths, 
persons  of  influence  and  wealth.  The 
Smiths  are  rich  shipbuilders ;  this 
Thomas  Tracy  is  a  ship  carpenter. 
(See  Exhibit  13.) 

The  genealogical  evidence  seems  to 
me  complete.  Thomas  Tracy  of 
Wntertnwn  ami  Salem,  is  the  missing 
son  of  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  and 
Virginia.  The  proof  is  much  more 
conclusive  than  that  required  in  many 
cases  at  law  where  circumstantial  evi- 

539 


dence  with  less  documentary  proof 
frequently  sends  a  man  to  his  death. 
The  identification  is  so  strong  that 
eminent  genealogists  and  lawyers  to 
whom  I  have  referred  my  exhibits 
pronounce  it  conclusive. 

By  unimpeachable  exhibits,  many  of 
which  are  in  the  handwriting  of  the 
parties  in  question,  it  is  proven  that 
William  Tracy  of  Hayles  and  Vir- 
ginia did  not  die  without  issue;  that 
his  son  was  in  childhood :  that  his 
daughter  was  in  maturity  when 
through  financial  disaster  and  death 
of  father  and  sister  the  boy  was  left 
destitute  and  "returned  for  England." 
That  he  did  not  remain  in  England 
is  shown  by  the  failure  of  the  British 
records  to  mention  him  either  in  par- 
ish or  politics,  in  property  interests 
or  trade,  in  marriage  or  death — not 
a  word  testifying  to  his  existence  in 
England,  and  this,  coupled  with  the 
fact  that  he  was  the  grandson  of  an 
honored  knight,  is  evidence  that  he 
could  not  have  remained  in  England. 

About  fifteen  years  after  the  death 
of  William  Tracy  in  Virginia  there 
appears  the  record  of  a  youth  who  has 
just  learned  the  trade  of  ship  carpen- 
ter in  Watertown  where  the  Smiths 
are  wealthy  shipbuilders,  and  where 
the  1 'ridges  are  an  influential  family. 
Weighing  the  facts  carefully,  consid- 
ering all  the  elements  of  the  narrative, 
can  there  be  any  more  reasonable  con- 
duct on  the  part  of  Thomas  Tracy, 
who  had  been  left  destitute  as  the  son 
of  William  Tracy  who  had  lost  all  in 
the  Virginia  promotion,  than  to  turn- 
to  his  father's  friends  for  assistance?* 
These  Smiths  and  Bridges  in  Massa- 
chusetts, branches  of  the  old  English 
families  of  friends  and  relatives  of  his. 
dead  father,  knowing  of  the  boy's 
plight,  send  for  him  to  come  there, 
and  assist  him  to  become  self-support- 
ing by  teaching  him  the  trade  of  ship 
carpenter  in  their  own  shipbuilding 
yards,  and  vouch  for  him  when  he 
starts  out  to  make  his  own  way  in  the 
world  and  goes  first  to  Salem.  The 
fact  of  his  being  a  ship  carpenter  has 


nf  j^axntt  IHnnarrtjH  m  Ammra 


by  some  been  considered  to  militate 
against  tbe  claim  of  his  being  of  gen- 
tle birth ;  but  with  the  explanation  of 
the  circumstances  attending  his  early 
life  it  strengthens  his  identity  and  ac- 
centuates his  independence  of  charac- 
ter and  shows  an  honorable  ambition 
to  work  out  his  own  destiny  as  the  true 
son  of  a  true  father.  His  second  com- 
ing to  America  under  the  circum- 
stances is  very  much  to  his  credit. 
Instead  of  settling  down  at  his  home 
in  the  position  of  the  "poor  relative" 
he  chose  to  give  up  the  luxurious  sur- 
roundings to  which  he  was  born  and 
brave  the  privations  and  dangers  of  a 
pioneer  in  the  new  world,  of  which  he 
must  have  had  a  very  vivid  recollec- 
tion. 

It  is  significant  that  the  disappear- 
ance of  the  young  son  of  William 
Tracy  of  Hayles  and  Virginia,  is  sim- 
ilar to  the  still  more  mysterious  com- 
ing of  the  young  man  Thomas  Tracy 
to  Massachusetts,  and  these  mysteries 
both  occupy  the  same  period  of  years. 
This  period  must  be  the  connecting 
link  that  makes  the  boy  the  man.  Ex- 
haustive searches  in  Watertown  and 
Salem,  Massachusetts,  and  in  Weth- 
ersfield,  Saybrook  and  Norwich,  Con- 
necticut, prove  that  there  is  abso- 
lutely nothing  in  his  American  public 
record  which  taken  by  itself  gives  any 
clue  to  the  place  of  his  nativity,  or 
•whence  or  when  he  came  to  America. 


Many  searches  have  been  made  in 
England  and  America  without  posi- 
tive results. 

The  movements  of  Thomas  Tracy 
after  he  became  an  inhabitant  of  Sa- 
lem are  clear.  That  he  became  a  man 
of  strong  character  and  a  substantial 
citizen  is  shown  by  his  long  life  of 
activity.  The  record  of  the  division 
of  the  swamp  lands  in  Salem  (see  Ex- 
hibit 14)  show  that  Thomas  Tracy 
was  a  single  man  in  1637,  for  it  re- 
cords him  as  a  family  of  "i."  He 
removed  to  Wethersfield,  Connecti- 
cut, and  came  into  the  possession  of 
land.  He  next  removed  to  Saybrook, 
Connecticut,  and  shared  in  the  first 
division  of  land  there  about  1639,  and 
in  the  second  division  he  was  granted 
land  adjoining  his  house.  The  name 
of  his  first  wife,  the  mother  of  all  of 
his  children,  is  not  known.  He  was 
probably  married  about  the  time  he 
settled  in  Saybrook,  where  all  of  his 
children  were  undoubtedly  born.  The 
list  of  their  births,  if  there  was  one, 
has  not  been  found.  He  removed  to 
Norwich,  Connecticut,  in  1660,  with 
his  seven  children.  As  his  wife  is 
not  mentioned  it  is  probable  that  she 
had  died.  After  his  final  settlement 
in  Norwich,  Connecticut,  he  was  con- 
stantly employed  in  the  public  affairs. 
He  was  one  of  the  first  Deputies  to 
the  General  Court  and  served  twenty- 
seven  sessions ;  he  was  Lieutenant  of 


2     •*• 


RECORD  SHOWING  THOMAS  TRACY  AS  A  LAND  OWNER  IN  AMERICA  IN  1637 

Exhibit  14— From  the  Town  Records  in  Salem,  Massachusetts,    in    which    Thomas 
Tracy  is  granted  two  quarters  of  an  acre  as  an  unmarried  man's  share  In  the  allotment 


liubrnlmt  iCine  nf  irsmtt  frnm  King 


Dragoons  and  Commissary,  etc.,  and 
his  services  qualify  his  descendants 
for  the  Societies  of  the  Colonial  Wars 
and  Colonial  Dames.  While  neither 
he  or  any  of  his  descendants  occupied 
the  position  of  the  chief  corner-stone 
in  the  new  nation,  he  and  they  did 
form  a  substantial  part  of  the  founda- 
tion and  superstructure  of  the  Con- 
necticut facade. 

Thomas  Tracy  married  three  times, 
for  the  record  is  given  of  his  third 
wife.  Mary  (Foote)  (Stoddard) 
Goodrich.  She  was  the  widow  first 
of  John  Stoddard  and  second  of  John 
Goodrich  of  Wethersfield,  Connecti- 
cut. Goodrich,  as  an  inducement  for 
Widow  Stoddard  to  marry  him,  made 
an  ante-nuptial  agreement  with  her 
binding  his  heirs,  if  she  survived  him, 
to  pay  her  four  pounds  per  year  dur- 
ing her  life.  She  outlived  him  five 
years  and  the  heirs  forgot  their  obli- 
gations. There  was  a  lawyer  named 
Pitkin  living  in  Hartford  at  the  time 
and  Thomas  Tracy  was  a  Deputy  to 
the  General  Court  there  from  Nor- 
wich. Connecticut.  A  letter  indicates 
Tracy  had  a  personal,  interview  with 
Pitkin  and  engaged  him  to  collect  the 
claim  and  agreed  to  write  him  a  state- 
ment of  the  claim.  Pitkin  brought  a 
suit  for  the  amount  of  the  claim  with 
interest  and  got  judgment  against  the 
Goodrich  estate  and  levied  on  a  piece 
of  land  in  Wethersfield  which  the 
Court  ordered  the  Sheriff  to  deed  to 
Tracy,  which  he  received  in  satisfac- 
tion of  all  claims,  September  2,  1685. 

Mr  Pitkin  that  which  my  wife  haue  re- 

seaud  of  her  legacy  that  her hushand 

Goodrich  Gave  her  dureng  her  life  the 
first  year  shee  resued  fower  pound  the  sec- 
ond year  shee  rescued  two  pound  Eighteen 
shillings  and  that  is  all  that  hau  ben  re- 
scued. Thomas  Tracy. 

Dyed  Aprill,  1680.  5  years  20-00-0 

6-18 

13-2 

This  is  the  only  sample  of  Thomas 
Tracy's  writing  extant. 

He  died  in  Norwich.  Novem- 
ber 7,  1685.  His  age  at  death  is  not 
given,  and  no  record  has  been  discov- 
ered that  gives  any  clue  to  the  date 

541 


of  his  birth.     His  children  who  shared 
in  the  distribution  of  his  estate,  were : 
John.    (Serg.)    b.    about    1642;    m.    Mary 
Winslow  Jun  17,  1670. 
Thomas,    (Serg.)    b.    about    1645;    m.    Sa- 
rah ? 

Jonathan.     (Lieut.)     b.     about     1648;     m. 
Mary  Griswold  Jul  1 1,  1672. 
Miriam,   b.   about   1649;   m.    Ens.   Thomas 
Waterman  Xov  — ,  1668. 
Solomon,  (Dr.)  b.  about  1650;  m.  1st  Lydia 
Huntington  Xov  23,  1676. 
Solomon  (Dr.)  m.  2nd  Sarah  (Bliss)  Slu- 
man  Apr.  8.  1686. 

Daniel,  b.  about  1652;  m.  ist  Abigail  Ad- 
gate  Sep  19,  1682. 

Daniel,   m.   2nd    Hannah    (Backus)    Bing- 
ham  Xov  4.  1712. 

Samuel,   b.   about    1654;    unm.   d.    in    Xor- 
wich.  Conn  Jan  n,  1693. 

John  Tracy  was  the  richest  of  the 
family  and  a  very  large  landholder  in 
New  London  and  Windham  Counties, 
Connecticut.  He  inherited  his  father's 
carpenter's  tools,  which  indicates  that 
he  was  a  builder.  He  did  not  take  a 
very  active  part  in  the  management 
of  public  affairs.  Thomas  and  Jona- 
than settled  in  Preston,  Connecticut, 
on  land  given  them  by  their  father, 
which  was  granted  him  by  the  General 
Court  for  assisting  Uncas  when  he 
was  besieged  in  his  fort  by  the  Naran- 
sets.  They  both  took  an  active  part 
in  the  town  and  church  affairs,  and 
Jonathan  was  town  recorder  and  clerk 
from  the  organization  of  the  town  till 
his  death.  1711.  Solomon  was  the 
second  doctor  in  the  town  and  a  lieu- 
tenant of  the  first  train  band. and  Dan- 
iel was  the  Beau  Brummel  of  the  fam- 
ily— twenty-three  ruffled  shirts  were 
enumerated  in  his  inventory,  and  a 
sword  and  belt.  As  he  did  not  belong 
to  the  train  band,  he  must  have  used  it 
as  a  dress  adjunct  and  the  insignia  of 
the  gentleman.  The  boy,  Samuel, 
died  young. 

The  American  records  of  the  early 
Tracys  are  voluminous  and  fairly 
complete ;  they  present  no  perplexing 
problems  and  the  lines  are  intact,  but 
eminent  genealogists  have  been  at  a 
loss  to  account  for  the  boyhood  of 
Lieutenant  Thomas  Tracy  of  Massa- 
chusetts and  Connecticut,  the  forbear 
of  a  widespread  American  family. 


nf  S>axntt  UlnnarrlfH  in  America 


The  most  notable  of  the  exhaustive  in- 
vestigations in  England  was  made  by 
Judge  Frederick  Palmer  Tracy  of 
San  Francisco,  California,  the  first 
genealogist  of  the  Tracy  family. 
The  eminent  jurist  was  also  a  clergy- 
man, and  while  preaching  in  Wil- 
liamstown,  Massachusetts,  in  1844, 
his  eyesight  failed  and  he  went 
abroad.  When  in  England  he  vis- 
ited Toddington  and  was  received 
with  all  the  courtesies  due  kin- 
ship by  Lord  Sudeley,  the  Right 
Honourable  Charles  Hanbury  Tracy, 


ARMS  OF  LORD  SUDELEY  IN  1838 

Lord  Sudeley  was  Charles  Hanbury  Tracy  and  in- 
herited the  heraldry  of  the  royal  line  — Sir  Thomas 
Tracy,  Knight,  inherited  the  shield  and  mask,  front 
view  and  crest— William  Tracy,  Esquire,  of  Virginia 
1620,  from  whom  the  Tracys  in  America  descend, 
has  inherited  the  shield,  mask,  profile  and  crest 

Lord  of  Toddington  Manor.  In  his 
searches  there  he  did  find  a  Thomas 
Tracy,  a  younger  son  of  the  same  gen- 
eral family  of  Tracys,  who  wras  unac- 
counted for,  and  who  was  evidently  of 
the  same  generation  as  our  Lieutenant 
Thomas  Tracy  and  a  descendant  of 
the  Toddington  family.  As  there 
was  nothing  to  conflict  with  the  as- 
sumption that  he  was  the  Thomas 
Tracy  who  came  to  America  he 
thought  he  was  very  probably  the 
same  person.  Judge  Tracy  communi- 
cated the  result  of  his  researches  to 
Chancellor  Wai  worth,  who  was  then 
compiling  his  notable  "Genealogy  of 


the  Hyde  Family,"  and  he  was  so  im- 
pressed with  its  importance  that  he 
presented  the  matter  in  full.  From 
Ethelred  down  to  and  including  Sir 
William  Tracy,  knight  (24),  who  was 
one  of  the  first  of  the  gentry  to  adopt 
the  reformed  religion  and  willed  his 
soul  to  God  without  the  intervention 
of  a  priest,  the  line  has  not  been 
broken,  but  from  him  down  to  Lieu- 
tenant Thomas  Tracy  it  is  erroneous 
and  disproven. 

The  reason  Judge  Tracy  could  not 
find  the  right  Thomas  Tracy  was  be- 
cause Thomas's  father,  William 
Tracy,  left  England  without  having 
either  the  births  or  baptisms  of 
his  children  recorded  in  the  local 
public  records.  The  identification 
must  be  by  circumstances,  condi- 
tions, events,  and  irrefutable  evi- 
dences that  connect  the  boy  with  the 
man.  The  absence  of  this  birth  rec- 
ord led  Britton  in  his  account  of  Tod- 
dington to  say  that  the  William  Tracy 
who  married  Mary  Conway  died  s.  p. 
(without  issue),  which  misled  the 
searchers  by  its  falsity  as  a  record. 
This  book,  "Historical  and  Descrip- 
tive Accounts  of  Toddington,  Glouces- 
tershire (England),  the  Seat  of  Lord 
Sudeley,"  by  John  Britton,  F.  S.  A., 
1840,  dedicated  to  "The  Right  Hon- 
ourable the  Baron  Sudeley"  (Charles 
Hanbury  Tracy),  contains  the  sub- 
stantially true  lineage  from  Ethelred 
down  to  Lieutenant  Thomas  Tracy. 
The  statement  that  William  Traci  was 
a  natural  son  of  King  Edward  is  not 
confirmed  by  earlier  and  later  authori- 
ties. There  are  other  minor  discrep- 
ancies. 

The  direct  evidence,  with  its  docu- 
mentary bearings,  its  cumulative  cir- 
cumstances, and  the  mass  of  collateral 
and  corroborative  records, proves  con- 
clusively that  the  missing  period  in  the 
lives  of  Thomas  Tracy,  son  of  Wil- 
liam Tracy  of  Hayles  and  Virginia, 
and  Thomas  Tracy  of  Massachusetts 
and  Connecticut,  links  them  as  one  • 
and  the  same  person,  connecting  the 

54* 


Unbroken  iCine  of  Hearent  from  SCtng  Egbert 


strange  disappearance  of  the  boy  with 
the  stranger  appearance  of  the  man. 
To  weld  these  links  in  the  chain  still 
more  firmly  it  is  well  to  finally  con- 
sider the  narrative  chronologically 
from  its  approximate  dates. 

In  1620,  when  William  Tracy  pro- 
moted the  Virginia  adventure  his  son 
was  a  mere  child.  It  has  been  shown 
that  if  he  had  been  far  advanced  in 
boyhood  his  father  would  have  given 
him  the  male's  precedence  over  his 
sister.  It  is  not  probable  that  he  was 
more  than  ten  years  of  age,  and  it  is 
more  probable  that  he  was  younger. 
To  find  a  working  basis  for  this  chron- 
ological test  an  approximate  may  be 
placed  at  eight  years  of  age. 

It  required  from  five  to  seven  years' 
apprenticeship  to  learn  the  trade  of 
ship  carpentry,  and  it  generally  began 
as  soon  as  the  boy  could  prepare  lum- 
ber and  understand  the  construction  of 
sea-faring  vessels.  If  the  eight-year- 
old  missing  Virginia  boy  was  appren- 
ticed to  the  trade  he  would  have  be- 
gun at  about  sixteen  or  seventeen 
years  of  age,  and  when  he  completed 
his  time  would  have  been  about 
twenty- four  years  old.  In  1636, 
Thomas  Tracy,  the  ship  carpenter  at 
Salem,  was  an  unmarried  youth  and 
must  have  been  about  twenty-four 
years  of  age,  which  is  proven  by  the 
complete  records  of  his  later  years. 
In  1637,  when,  according  to  the  rec- 
ords, he  was  unmarried,  he  would 
have  been  twenty-five  years  of  age. 
In  1639  (twenty-seven  years  of  age), 
he  was  living  in  Saybrook,  Connecti- 
cut, was  married,  and  shared  in  the 
division  of  land.  In  1660  (forty- 
eight  years  of  age),  he  was  in  Nor- 
wich, Connecticut,  and  had  seven 
children.  He  served  twenty-seven 
terms  in  the  General  Assembly  (there 
were  two  sessions  per  year),  and  died 
at  seventy-three  years  of  age  in  1685. 

If  Thomas  Tracy,  the  missing  Vir- 
ginia boy  and  scion  of  a  gentle  family, 
was  eight  years  of  age  when  his  father 
promoted  Virginia  in  1620.  he  would 


have  been  just  seventy-three  years  of 
age  in  1685,  the  recorded  date  and  the 
approximate  age  of  Lieutenant  Thom- 
as Tracy,  the  ship  carpenter  of  Mas- 
sachusetts and  legislator  of  Connecti- 
cut, at  the  time  of  his  death. 

Choose  your  own  approximate 
dates,  based  on  the  facts,  and  make 
your  own  computations  from  any  con- 
clusions you  may  find  in  the  evidence, 
and  the  result  is  equally  convincing. 

I  apply  this  chronological  test  to 
ascertain  whether  or  not  it  will  agree 
with  the  established  facts.  It  proves 
them  so  mathematically  accurate  that 
all  possibility  of  coincidence  is  re- 
moved. The  genealogical  link  is 
welded.  The  chain  from  the  Saxon 
Kings  through  \Yilliam  Tracy,  gov- 
ernor of  Virginia, and  his  son, Thomas 
Tracy  of  Virginia,  Massachusetts. and 
Connecticut,  is  complete,  and  the  de- 
scendants of  Thomas  Tracy  in  Amer- 
ica are  the  progeny  of  the  Saxon 
kings. 

The  lineage  is  supported  by  proof 
more  tangible  than  that  of  many 
accepted  assumptions  of  science.  It 
has  a  greater  preponderance  of  docu- 
irentary  evidence  and  relies  less  on 
faith  and  suppositions  than  much 
which  we  are  required  to  accept  from 
therapeutics,  astronomy,  dynamics, 
and  even  theology.  I  believe  that  in 
the  days  to  come  genealogy  will  be- 
come an  established  study  in  the 
science  of  heredity,  but  it  cannot  de- 
mand more  formidable  proof  than  the 
established  sciences  on  which  life  it- 
self depends. 

With  the  lineage  of  Lieutenant 
Thomas  Tracy,  who  died  at  Norwich, 
Connecticut,  in  1685,  established,  and 
the  mystery  of  his  early  life  cleared,  it 
is  apropos  in  way  of  recapitulation  to 
recall  some  of  the  near  kinsfolk : 

His  Grandparents:  Sir  John  Tracy. 
Knight.  Lord  of  Toddington  and  Haylo-; 
Abbey;  Anna  Throckmorton,  daughter  of 
Sir  Thomas  Throckmorton. 

His  Parents:  William  Tracy.  Esquire,  of 
Haylfs  Abbey.  Councillor  of  State  for 
Virginia  and  Governor  of  Berkeley  Hun- 
dred ;  Anne  Conway,  daughter  of  Sir 


flragettg  nf 


fUnnardja  in  Amertra 


John  Conway  and  sister  of  Lord  Viscount 
Conway. 

His  Uncles:  The  Right  Honourable,  John 
Tracy,  First  Baron  of  Rathcoole;  Sir 
Thomas  Tracy,  Grand  Usher  to  the  Queen ; 
The  Right  Honourable,  Edward  Conway, 
First  Lord  Viscount  of  Conway  Castle, 
"Lord  President  of  His  Majesty's  Most 
Honourable  Privy  Council ;"  Sir  Edward 
Bray;  Sir  William  Hobby. 

His  First  Cousins: 

The  Right  Honourable,  Robert  Tracy, 
Second  Baron  of  Rathcole,  M.  P. ;  The 
Right  Honourable,  Edward  Conway,  Sec- 
ond Baron  of  Conway  Castle,  M.  P. ;  Sir 
Thomas  Conway,  Lieutenant  Colonel  in 
the  Army;  Frances  Conway,  married  Sir 
William  Pelham,  Knight;  Brilliana  Con- 
way,  married  Sir  Robert  Harley,  Knight; 
Heligawarth  Conway,  married  Sir  Wil- 
liam Smith,  Knight. 

He  had  no  Brothers;  his  only  sister; 
Joyce  Tracy,  married  in  Virginia,  Captain 
Nathaniel  Powell,  "a  man  of  culture  who 
kept  an  account  of  the  occurrences  in  the 
Colony  which  were  freely  used  by  Cap- 
tain Smith  in  his  History  of  Virginia." 

The  royal  lines  from  the  Tracys, 
Conways  and  the  Bridges  shoot  out 
into  so  many  directions  that  the  blood 
is  found  in  many  of  the  first  fam- 
ilies of  Great  Britain  and  Amer- 
ica. It  is  a  blood  that  has  produced 
men  in  all  lines  of  the  world's  activity, 


that  has  been  the  maker  of  kings  of 
an  empire  and  conscientious  citizens 
of  a  republic. 

In  using  the  term  "Tracys  in 
America"  I  refer  of  course  to' those 
who  are  descended  from  the  first  im- 
migration. Other  branches  from  im- 
migrations later  than  those  of  William 
Tracy  of  Virginia  in  1620  are  not  nec- 
essarily included  in  my  discussion. 
For  instance,  there  was  one,  Stephen 
Tracy,  who  came  to  Plymouth,  Mas- 
sachusetts, in  the  ship  "Ann"  in  1623, 
who  has  distinguished  descendants 
through  America,  among  them  being 
General  Benjamin  Franklin  Tracy, 
former  Secretary  of  the  Navy  of  the 
United  States.  It  may  be  possible 
that  there  is  a  relationshio,  but  my  in- 
vestigations have  not  yet  allowed  me 
to  definitely  settle  this  matter. 

I  inscribe  these  words  to  all  those 
who  are  "looking  forward  to  poster- 
ity with  a  knowledge  gained  in  look- 
ing backward  to  ancestry,"  with  the 
admonition  of  the  great  Edmund 
Burke  who  once  remarked :  "Those 
who  do  not  treasure  up  the  memory 
of  their  ancestors  do  not  deserve  to  be 
remembered  by  posterity." 


ONLY  SPECIMEN  OF  LIEUTENANT  THOMAS  TRACY'S  HANDWRITING  EXTANT 


nf  libitral  (Eultttre  tn  Ammra 


Urtmntarptura 

of  tljr  tftrat  Ainwiran  SlhUrtet 

uiljo  Jounb  £r  Ugtatui  £h.ougb.t  unfcrr  fioratnUm 

of  3nm-Sounb  fHctapljgairB  an&  Btarntljrallr&  it  fram 

Ufl  IMaurrtt   •*    3FirBt  (Cuntributtnna  to  Bthltral  Sttrratttrc  and 

JItrBt  fcrljool  for  Btoratton  to  ^Jiniatrg  ^  Sitfr  of  fflosiMi  fctnart,  Sorn  IfBfl 

BY 
JOHN  GAYLORD  DAVEXPORT,  D.D. 

DEPUTY  QOVERNOB  or  TUK  OUDER  OP  FOUNDERS  AND  PATRIOTS  AND  MEMBER  OP  MANY  LEARNED  SOCIETIES 


.HEN  I  was  a  very 
small  boy  I  was  driv- 
ing with  my  father 
one  day  over  the  pic- 
turesque hills  of  his- 
toric Southern  New 
England.  As  we  ap- 
proached a  modest  farmhouse,  sit- 
uated upon  an  elevation  from  which 
it  commanded  a  broad  view  of 
the  surrounding  country,  its  front 
opening  toward  the  sun-rising,  there 
came  from  it  a  little  old  lady  of  thin 
face  and  bowed  form  who  greeted  us 
cordially  and  conversed  with  us  in 
what  we  imagine  to  have  been  the 
characteristic  language  and  tone  of  the 
rural  New  England  of  seventy-five  or 
a  hundred  years  ago.  As  we  passed  on 
I  asked:  "Who  is  that  old  lady?" 
"That  is  Aunt  Betty  Stuart,"  was  the 
reply;  "the  sister  of  Moses  Stuart." 
The  answer  was  not  especially  illumi- 
nating, as  I  was  as  ignorant  of 
"Moses  Stuart"  as  of  his  sister, 
"Betty."  It  was  the  first  time  that  I 
had  heard  the  name  which  is  now 
honored  in  the  theological  world  as 
one  of  its  choicest  inheritances;  a 
name  that  deserves  to  be  perpetuated 
among  those  of  all  the  pioneers  who 
have  led  on  to  the  light  and  culture 
of  our  advanced  civilization. 

First  Stuarts  in  America  and 
their  Intellectual  Attitude 

A  question  of  deep  interest,  long 
discussed  but  not  yet  answered,  is 
how  to  account  for  the  appearance  of 

545 


men  of  unusual  brilliancy  and  force 
of  mind  under  conditions  where 
neither  heredity  nor  environment  had 
seemed  to  lend  any  special  aid. 
Moses  Stuart's  ancestors,  for  several 
generations  at  least,  had  been  honest, 
God-fearing  tillers  of  the  soil,  with 
apparently  no  broader  outlook  or 
clearer  insight  into  truth  than  ordi- 
narily pertained  to  those  thus  occu- 
pied. The  family  was  probably  of 
Scottish  descent.  Moses'  great-great- 
grandfather, Robert  Stuart,  appears 
in  Connecticut  about  1660,  where  he 
married  in  1661  Bethia  Rumble  of 
Stratford,  and  a  few  years  afterward 
purchased  one  of  the  "home  lots"  that 
were  laid  out  a  little  north  of  Long 
Island  Sound.  For  a  hundred  and 
forty  years  their  descendants  seem  to 
have  remained  for  the  most  part 
within  the  limits  of  the  town,  where 
some  of  them  are  probably  to  be 
found  to-day.  Their  great-grandson, 
Moses'  father,  Isaac  Stuart,  removed 
to  the  upper  parish  of  the  town,  then 
and  now  known  as  "Wilton."  On 
Christmas  day,  1771,  he  was  married 
to  Olive  Morehouse,  and  in  1773  they 
joined  the  Wilton  Church.  They 
occupied  the  then  low-roofed,  un- 
painted,  shingle-covered  farmhouse 
already  alluded  to,  from  which  he 
went  forth  to  serve  the  colonies  in  the 
War  of  the  Revolution.  He  died  in 
1820,  aged  seventy-one.  Mrs.  Stuart 
survived  him  for  twenty  years,  dying 
in  1840,  aged  ninety  years,  eight 
months  and  four  days.  Her  grand- 


£tttmtrfprtfam  :nf  Iteligtmia 


in,  Am*rint 


children  regarded  her  as  a  remarkable 
woman.  "She  never  seemed  to  grow 
old,  even  after  she  had  passed  eighty. 
Her  senses  were  alert.  There  was  no 
infirmity  of  years  in  her  quick,  keen 
intellect  or  her  manner  of  expres- 
sion." 

Prospects  of  a  Boy  Born 
in  America  in  1780 

To  these  worthy  people  were  born 
four  children,  three  of  them  girls. 
There  was  great  joy  in  the  father's 
heart,  when,  March  26,  1780,  his  son, 
Moses,  was  placed  in  his  arms.  He 
dreamed  for  him  what  seemed  the 
noblest  things.  He  would  grow  up 
to  be  his  helper  on  the  farm.  The 
broad  acres  that  he  had  wearily  culti- 
vated would  become  broader  still  and 
more  fruitful.  He  would  take  his 
place  in  the  church,  and  act  his  part 
with  the  freemen  of  the  town,  and  be 
esteemed  and  honored  as  Christian 
and  citizen  as  his  predecessors  had 
been.  He  had  for  him  no  higher  am- 
bition than  that  he  follow  the  foot- 
steps of  his  fathers,  inheriting  at  the 
last  his  own  worthy  position  and  per- 
haps ennobling  it  by  greater  diligence 
and  success. 

But  the  father  soon  found  that  in 
this  boy  from  whom  he  had  hoped  so 
much  were  elements  which  he  had 
not  anticipated  and  with  which  he 
scarcely  knew  how  to  deal.  This 
modern  Moses  seemed  likely  to  be 
anything  but  a  "proper  child,"  as 
judged  by  his  father's  ideals.  There 
early  developed  in  him  an  amazing 
and  unaccountable  fondness  for 
books.  The  library  of  the  farmhouse, 
carefully  kept  upon  a  shelf  over  the 
ample  fireplace,  comprised  the  stand- 
ard works  usually  to  be  found  under 
such  circumstances  among  the  clos- 
ing decades  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
There  was  King  James'  version  of  the 
Bible,  Baxter's  "Saints'  Rest,"  Dod- 
dridge's  "Rise  and  Progress,"  the 
"Farmer's  Almanac,"  and  a  few 
weekly  newspapers.  Somewhere  in 
the  house,  possibly  hidden  away  as 
not  quite  in  keeping  with  the  religious 


conceptions  of  the  day,  was  a  book  of 
ballads,  the  authorship  of  which  is  not 
recorded.  Probably  it  was  some  col- 
lection of  the  "folk  songs"  of  Scot- 
land or  of  England,  those  charming 
utterances  which,  as  has  been  said, 
"spring  from  the  very  heart  of  the 
people,  and  flit  from  age  to  age,  from 
lip  to  lip  of  shepherds,  peasants, 
nurses,  of  all  the  class  that  continues 
nearest  to  the  state  of  natural  men." 
Very  likely  the  book  had  been  handed 
down  from  generation  to  generation 
of  the  Stuart  family.  Whatever  its 
exact  character,  it  was  found  and 
appropriated  by  the  boy,  Moses,  when 
he  was  but  four  years  old,  and  read 
and  re-read  by  him  until  he  had  every 
ballad  by  heart.  The  other  books  of 
the  family  were  likewise  mastered  at 
a  very  early  date  by  this  precocious 
child,  as  were  all  the  books  of  the 
neighborhood  that  could  be  borrowed. 
In  one  respect  young  Stuart  fell  be- 
hind the  usual  record  of  precocity. 
He  did  not  undertake  "Edwards  on 
the  Will,"  until  he  was  twelve  years 
old,  but  then  he  read  it,  acording  to 
Dr.  Sprague,  "intelligently  and  with 
the  deepest  interest."  We  hear  no 
complaint  from  the  father,  but  it  must 
have  been  a  disappointment  and  a 
grief  to  him  to  find  that  the  son  from 
whose  co-operation  he  had  hoped  so 
much  sadly  lacked  interest  in  the 
farm  and  its  cultivation ;  that  when 
he  sent  him  out  to  plow,  he  would 
find  him  with  the  reins  about  the 
neck,  a  book  in  his  hands  and  his 
mind  upon  the  book,  while  the  plough- 
ing was  left  largely  to  the  discretion 
of  the  horse!  Or  that  when  he  had 
directed  him  to  rid  a  field  of  its  weeds, 
he  would  hours  afterward  discover  a 
few  of  the  more  prominent  offenders 
laid  low,  while  the  boy  was  comfort- 
ably curled  in  some  shaded  spot  ab- 
sorbed in  the  volume  which  he  had 
carried  with  him  to  his  task !  In  his 
father's  dooryard,  on  the  north  side 
of  the  house,  was  a  large  rock  upon 
which  the  youth  is  said  to  have  been 
in  the  habit  of  studying  in  the  early 
summer  mornings.  This  is  now  sev- 


Rrmuttamtrra  nf 


Stuart  —  Snm  ut  1780 


eral  inches  below  the  sod,  and  reveals 
its  location  only  in  a  time  of  drought, 
when  the  grass  above  it  withers  away 
for  lack  of  earth ! 

Home-Life  when  the  United 
States  first  became  a  Nation 

Before,  with  young  Stuart,  we 
leave  the  old  home,  allow  me  to  say  a 
few  words  regarding  it  and  to  quote 
some  of  the  traditions  reported  by 
aged  residents  of  the  town.  The  in- 
terior of  the  house  is  much  the  same 
as  when  he  lived  here,  including  the 
room  in  which  he  was  born.  The 
old  stone  chimney  so  familiar  to  him 
still  stands,  and  several  of  the  fire- 
places remain  as  they  were  when  the 
house  was  built.  A  maple  tree,  south 
of  the  house,  that  was  planted  by  his 
father,  still  grows  green  in  the  early 
spring  and  wraps  itself  in  varied 
splendor  in  the  autumn.  The  old 
well  from  whose  "moss  covered 
bucket"  the  boy  drank  is  still  in  ex- 
istence although  unused.  The  oldest 
inhabitant  of  Wilton  now  living  re- 
members distinctly  the  Stuart  family. 
He  states  that  Moses'  mother  enjoyed 
a  great  local  reputation  as  a  cook. 
Among  her  other  achievements  was 
that  of  making  a  famous  Indian  pud- 
ding every  day.  This  she  set  over 
the  fire  on  the  hearth  the  first  thing  in 
the  morning,  and  "it  boiled  and  boiled 
until  it  was  as  light  as  a  puff !  When 
placed  on  the  dinner  table,"  as  he  re- 
lates, it  "trembled  all  over  from  top  to 
bottom."  Perhaps  this  was  from  the 
well-grounded  fear  of  being  immedi- 
ately devoured. 

He  relates  that  a  man  working  on 
the  farm  once  addressed  Moses 
Stuart  rather  familiarly,  after  he  had 
come  into  prominence.  The  mother 
rebuked  him  by  saying,  "Eben,  honor 
to  whom  honor  is  due!"  These 
glimpses  of  life  in  the  long  ago  are 
interesting  though  homely.  The  man 
of  whom  we  speak  looked  back  to  his 
early  days  in  this  old  home  as  in  many 
ways  charming,  and  as  having  nur- 
tured within  him  some  of  his  most 
healthful  tastes.  His  mother  lived 

$47 


until  he  was  sixty  years  old  and  was 
always  the  recipient  of  his  warm  and 
reverent  affection. 

Educating  an  American  Youth 
in  Early  Days  of  Republic 

The  afterward  famous  Wilton 
Academy,  established  by  Hawley 
Olmstead  of  New  Haven,  had  not  as 
yet  been  opened,  and  the  boy  having 
exhausted  the  advantages  of  the  dis- 
trict school  was  in  his  fifteenth  year 
sent  to  Norwalk,  where  he  enjoyed 
the  instructions  of  Roger  Minot  Sher- 
man, so  noted  in  subsequent  years  as 
a  jurist.  The  first  intention  was  that 
he  should  simply  perfect  himself  in 
English  studies.  But  at  once  his 
teacher  saw  in  him  indications  of  un- 
usual ability  and  advised  him  to  pre- 
pare for  college.  "He  began  his 
Latin  grammar,"  writes  Professor 
Park,  "with  a  characteristic  impetus. 
In  one  evening  he  learned  the  four 
conjugations  of  verbs.  In  another 
evening  he  mastered  the  sixty  rules  of 
syntax.  In  three  days  the  principles 
of  the  whole  grammar  were  in  his 
mind,  and  he  found  himself  a  member 
of  a  class  which  had  devoted  several 
months  to  the  language.  While  pur- 
suing the  Latin  and  Greek  classics,  he 
attended  also  to  the  French  language 
and  literature.  Several  of  his  older 
schoolmates  had  devoted  many  weeks 
to  the  study  of  Telemachus.  They 
ridiculed  him  for  his  attempt  to  re- 
cite with  them  at  the  very  beginning 
of  his  study.  He  remained  with 
them  a  day  and  a  half,  and  was  then 
transferred  to  a  higher  class !" 

In  May,  1797,  he  entered  the  class 
in  Yale  that  was  just  completing  it* 
Sophomore  year,  he  being  seventeen 
years  old.  At  this  time  he  was  espe- 
cially fond  of  mathematics,  but  was 
neglectful  of  no  part  of  his  course. 
He  showed  then,  as  afterwards,  an 
unusual  eagerness  for  learning  in  its 
every  department.  He  graduated  in 
1799,  and  a  classmate  writes:  "At 
our  commencement  he  had  the  saluta- 
tory oration,  which  was  considered  at 
that  time  the  first  appointment,  and  I 


lEmanrtpattnn  0f  SMtgumis 


in  Am^rira 


do  not  suppose  that  a  single  individ- 
ual of  the  class  thought  this  distinc- 
tion unmerited."  During  the  year 
after  his  graduation  he  taught  the 
academy  on  Greenfield  Hill  that  was 
founded  by  Dr.  Dwight  when  there 
pastor.  Later  he  served  as  principal 
of  the  high  school  in  Danbury  where 
he  began  the  study  of  law.  Soon 
giving  up  teaching  he  devoted  his  en- 
tire time  to  preparation  for  his  chosen 
profession,  the  law,  studying  in  the 
office  of  Judge  Chapman  of  New- 
town.  In  1802,  at  Danbury,  he  was 
admitted  to  the  bar.  It  was  felt  by 
those  who  knew  him  that  he  was  emi- 
nently adapted  to  win  success  and  dis- 
tinction in  the  legal  profession.  His 
mind  was  keen  and  logical,  his  mem- 
ory of  precedents  unfailing,  while  his 
constructive  imagination  enabled  him 
to  set  an  idea  or  an  event  before 
others  in  such  a  vivid  light  that  they 
could  but  see  its  character  and  its 
bearing!  His  manner  of  speaking 
is  said  to  have  been  such  as  to  "give 
even  common  things  the  air  of  novel- 
ties." To  the  practice  of  law  he 
looked  forward  with  the  utmost 
eagerness  and  enthusiasm. 

However,  one  week  before  his  ad- 
mission to  the  bar,  he  was  elected  a 
tutor  in  Yale  College.  "My  love  of 
study,"  he  wrote,  "induced  me  to 
accept  the  office."  He  held  it  for  two 
years,  making  his  stay  at  Yale  mem- 
orable for  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
he  inspired  his  pupils.  "His  great 
power,"  said  another  member  of  the 
faculty,  "was  in  making  a  class  feel 
that  something  was  to  be  done.  Even 
Dr.  Dwight,  whose  influence  in  this 
way  was  wonderful,  did  not  in  this 
particular  surpass  Mr.  Stuart."  Mean- 
while his  devotion  to  the  legal  profes- 
sion did  not  diminish.  He  was  con- 
tinually looking  for  light  upon  its  ob- 
jects and  methods.  His  favorite 
books  were  biographies  of  eminent 
jurists,  and  histories  of  great  legal 
contests.  But  it  was  not  among  mat- 
ters of  this  sort  that  he  was  to  find  his 
life  work. 


Choosing  a  Profession  more 
than  One  Hundred  Years  Ago 

If  the  origin  of  great  minds  in  ob- 
scure places  surprises  us,  the  seem- 
ing insignificance  of  that  upon  which 
as  a  pivot  such  a  soul  may  turn  all  its 
forces  into  new  directions,  is  equally 
surprising.  It  was  a  time  of  peculiar 
interest  at  Yale.  The  preceding  col- 
lege year,  that  of  1801-2,  had  wit- 
nessed there  a  remarkable  religious 
movement,  such  as  had  largely 
changed  the  spirit  of  the  institution. 
At  least  one-third  of  the  two  hundred 
and  thirty  students  had  come  to  a 
new  recognition  of  moral  responsi- 
bility. And  although  the  force  of  the 
movement  had  in  a  measure  passed 
by,  the  atmosphere  was  still  electric 
with  spiritual  vitality.  This  Moses 
Stuart  may  have  felt,  but  as  yet  he 
gave  no  sign. 

One  day,  very  likely  under  the  in- 
fluence of  the  strict  instruction  of  his 
home  regarding  the  Sabbath,  he 
called  upon  President  Dwight  and 
asked  to  borrow  some  book  that 
would  be  suitable  for  him  to  read 
upon  the  holy  day.  The  president 
gave  him  McKnight  on  the  Epistles. 
At  first  he  read  it  merely  for  its  lit- 
erary excellence,  but  as  he  went  on  he 
became,  absorbed  in  its  religious  in- 
structions. It  threw  a  light  upon  his 
motives  and  revealed  them  in  such  an 
aspect  as  was  to  him  altogether  new. 
From  it  a  radiance  emanated  which 
seemed  to  bring  into  clearest  relief 
the  character  of  Him  who  is  "God 
over  all,  blessed  forever."  He  felt  a 
new  influence  stealing  into  his  soul, 
which  his  first  impulse  was  to  resist. 
That  struggle  for  the  supremacy  of  a 
human  spirit,  which  is  as  old  as  the 
human  consciousness,  had  been  awak- 
ened within  him.  It  continued  for 
many  days.  But  at  length  it  ended 
in  the  complete  surrender  of  himself, 
and  enthusiasms,  to  Him  whose  right 
to  rule  he  thus  joyfully  acknowl- 
edged. Of  such  a  change  the  world 
takes  little  note,  but  doubtless  it  is 
that  for  whose  sake  all  changes  of 


£rmititu»tu»B  of 


g>tuart—  lorn  in  178Q 


earth  and  sky,  of  time  and  circum- 
stance occur. 

Young  Stuart  at  once  looked  out 
upon  the  world  with  anointed  eyes 
and  saw  its  affairs  in  new  relations  to 
privilege  and  duty.  He  loved  the 
law,  and  it  seemed  to  him  scarcely 
less  attractive  now  than  before.  In 
fact  he  spoke  of  it  all  his  life  as  "a 
noble  science."  But  in  his  horizon 
loomed  that  which  seemed  to  him  still 
nobler,  in  fact,  so  beautiful  and  glori- 
ous, that  he  felt  that  to  it  he  must  give 
his  life.  Theology  rather  than  law 
should  receive  the  unqualified  devo- 
tion of  his  powers.  With  character- 
istic eagerness  he  set  himself  at  prep- 
aration for  the  ministry,  under  the 
direction  of  President  Dwight. 
"After  reading,"  he  says,  "Dr.  Hop- 
kins' System  of  Divinity,  a  number  of 
President  Edwards'  Treatises,  several 
of  Andrew  Fuller's,  a  part  of 
Ridgely's  "Body  of  Divinity,"  and 
some  of  Mosheim's  Ecclesiastical 
History,  and  a  part  of  Prideaux's 
Connection,  I  was  examined  and 
licensed  to  preach  by  the  neighboring 
Association  of  Ministers."  He  re- 
ceived his  license  from  New  Haven 
East  Association  in  1804.  He  had 
united  with  the  college  church  in 
1803.  When  I  licensed,  he  had  writ- 
ten but  one  sermon,  a  metaphysical 
dissertation  to  which  a  verse  of  script- 
ure had  been  prefixed.  With  much 
care  he  wrote  another,  from  the  text. 
"My  father,  my  father,  the  chariot  of 
Israel  with  the  horsemen  thereof," 
and  went  forth  into  the  world  as  a 
preacher  of  the  gospel.  His  special 
equipment  seems  to  us  exceedingly 
small  and  inadequate,  but  back  of  the 
limited  preparation  was  a  great,  glow- 
ing soul,  eager  to  win  dominion  for 
its  Lord.  He  traveled  in  Vermont, 
and  having  preached  several  times  in 
the  Church  at  Middlebury  was  invited 
to  become  its  pastor.  This  invita- 
tion he  decl'ned.  For  a  little  he  sup- 
plied to  great  acceptance  the  church 
of  Dr.  Rogers  in  New  York  city. 


Intellectual  Poise  of  the 
Scholar  of  the  Last  Century 

In  1805,  Rev.  Dr.  James  Dana  of 
the  First  Church  in  New  Haven  was 
temporarily  disabled  by  the  fracture 
of  a  limb,  and  Mr.  Stuart  was  invited 
to  fill  the  vacancy  for  a  few  weeks. 
Dr.  Dana  was  a  minister  of  the  old 
school,  refined,  polished,  classical  in 
style,  conservative,  feeling  it  his  duty, 
and  his  whole  duty,  to  keep  things 
as  they  were,  content  if  the  world 
grew  no  worse;  a  man  who  appreci- 
ated to  the  fullest  extent  the  dignity 
of  the  ministry,  and  who  bore  his 
great  office  with  exceptional  stateli- 
ness  and  grace.  He  was  a  man  of 
much  ability,  had  graduated  at  Har- 
vard at  the  age  of  eighteen  and  re- 
ceived a  doctorate  from  the  Univer- 
sity of  Edinburgh ;  was  the  man  who 
forty-seven  years  before  had  been 
settled  at  Wallingford  by  the  "old 
lights"  of  that  day,  and  as  a  conse- 
quence the  church,  pastor,  and  all  had 
been  excommunicated  by  the  ''new 
lights"  of  the  consociation.  He  had 
opposed  revivals  of  religion,  and  with 
all  his  heart  had  protested  against 
that  so-called  "New  Divinity,"  the 
system  of  theological  thought  which 
now  quietly  reposes  upon  the  top 
shelves  of  our  libraries,  like  fossils  in 
their  cases,  of  interest  to  the  student 
of  progressive  thought  and  a  wonder 
to  the  curious.  He  repudiated  the 
alleged  "improvements"  upon  Ed- 
wards' theology,  made  by  his  succes- 
sors. While  in  Wallingford  he  was 
so  closely  watched,  lest  his  ortho- 
doxy might  be  questioned,  that  he  had 
acquired  the  habit  of  speaking  with 
something  of  vagueness  upon  doc- 
trinal points  and  apparently  upon 
every  point.  He  did  not  believe  in 
the  natural  ability  of  men  to  repent 
under  the  preaching  of  the  Gospel, 
and  his  sermons  were  not  calculated 
to  bring  them  to  repentance.  During 
his  ministry  of  sixteen  and  a  half 
years,  five  or  six  was  the  average 
annual  addition  to  his  church. 

It  is  scarcely  possible  to  think  of  a 


lunanripation  nf  SMtgunta 


in  Am^rira 


greater  contrast  to  him  than  was  pre- 
sented by  Mr.  Stuart.  He  despised 
the  old-time  ideas  of  ministerial  dress 
and  solemnity  of  speech  and  de- 
meanor. He  sympathized  with  the 
progressive  ideas  of  the  new  school 
of  theological  thought.  There  was  in 
him  the  impulsiveness  of  the  re- 
former. Regardless  of  externals 
and  of  unessentials,  he  desired  to  do 
what  he  could  to  make  the  world  bet- 
ter. Inspired  by  a  forceful  love  for 
Christ  and  humanity,  he  poured  out 
his  soul  in  a  simple  and  earnest  elo- 
quence which  strangely  touched  and 
moved.  He  did  not  speculate  and 
question;  he  knew!  All  vagueness 
had  flown  from  the  pulpit  of  the 
First  Church,  and  the  most  positive 
statement  had  taken  its  place.  Re- 
ligion, as  he  set  it  forth,  was  seen  to 
be  a  living  thing,  and  not  the  mere 
acceptance  of  a  s}rstem  of  meta- 
physico-theological  dogmas.  His  ser- 
mons grasped  men's  minds  and  filled 
them  with  new  aspirations  and  a  new 
realization  of  the  importance  of  soul 
harmony  with  the  spiritual  universe. 

Dawn  of  the  New  Thought  and 
its  Conflict  with  Conservatism 

Many  of  the  people  of  the  First 
Church  at  once  desired  to  secure  him 
as  an  associate  pastor;  especially  the 
younger  portion  of  the  congregation. 
But  to  this  Dr.  Dana  very  naturally 
objected.  How  could  he  consent  to 
have  at  his  side  a  man  who  ignored 
the  things  that  with  him  had  received 
the  devotion  of  a  life-time;  whose 
views  regarding  the  objects  and 
methods  of  the  ministry  were  entirely 
at  variance  with  his  own?  In  defer- 
ence to  the  pastor's  feeling  Mr.  Stuart 
refused  the  preferred  position.  But 
the  matter  turned  out  as  those  things 
are  wont  to  do.  Youth  and  vigor 
triumphed  over  age  and  conservatism. 
Dr.  Dana's  resignation  was  virtually 
sent  in  by  the  church ;  Mr.  Stuart  was 
called  to  the  pastorate,  and  March  5, 
1806,  just  as  he  was  completing  his 
twenty-sixth  year,  he  was  ordained 
pastor  of  the  First  Church  in  New 


Haven.  Dr.  Dana,  deeply  wounded 
at  heart,  never  entered  the  house  of 
worship  where  for  seventeen  years  he 
had  officiated,  during  the  pastorate  of 
his  successor.  But  he  was  present  at 
the  installation  of  Dr.  Taylor  who 
followed  him  and  by  special  invitation 
of  the  society  worshipped  with  the 
church  during  the  remainder  of  his 
life. 

Mr.  Stuart's  accession  marked  a 
new  era  in  the  history  of  the  church. 
The  petrified  state  of  affairs  that  had 
existed  for  t  seventy  years  was  effec- 
tually broken  up.  It  was  the  dawn  of 
springtime  after  a  long  and  dreary 
winter.  New  life  and  beauty  burst 
into  view,  and  the  air  was  filled  with 
joy  and  song.  Meetings  for  free 
conference  and  prayer  that  had  been 
almost  unknown  became  frequent. 
Even  services  by  candle-light,  which 
had  been  considered  almost  a  scandal, 
were  largely  attended.  Many  who 
had  thought  that  a  decent  morality 
with  a  regular  attendance  at  church 
was  all  that  could  be  expected  of 
them,  awoke  to  a  new  recognition  of 
the  reality  and  nearness  of  the  spir- 
itual world,  and  of  the  obligations 
which  it  laid  upon  them.  Mr.  Stuart's 
manner  of  preaching  was  solemn  and 
impassioned.  His  clear,  sympathetic 
voice  arrested  and  held  the  attention 
of  all,  while  his  forceful  language,  his 
vivid  illustrations,  his  sustained  earn- 
estness impressed  every  listener.  His 
enthusiasm  was  communicated  to  his 
audience.  He  was  what  would  be 
called  in  our  day  "a  revival  preacher." 
The  common  people  and  the  learned 
alike  hung  with  delight  upon  his 
words. 

Dr.  Porter,  of  Andover,  Massachu- 
setts, after  hearing  him,  said:  "This 
is  preaching  the  glorious  gospel  of 
the  blessed  God."  It  is  related  that 
upon  sacramental  occasions  his  emo- 
tion often  choked  his  utterance  and 
his  heart  expressed  itself  in  silent 
tears.  During  his  pastorate  of  three 
years  and  ten  months,  two  hundred 
persons  were  received  into  the  com- 
munion of  the  church,  only  twenty- 


nf 


Stuart  —  SJnra  in  17  BO 


eight  of  them  by  letter  from  other 
churches.  There  was  evidently  in 
him  that  force  of  intellect  and  depth 
of  emotion  whose  combination  is 
essential  to  the  most  effective  preacher. 
As  a  pastor  he  seems  to  have  been  a 
model,  devoting  every  afternoon  of 
the  week  to  his  people.  Professor 
Park  relates  that  speaking  of  a  negro 
once  purchased  as  a  slave  by  Presi- 
dent Stiles,  Mr.  Stuart  remarked : 
"That  negro  was  the  sexton  of  my 
church,  and  the  most  happy  man,  on 
account  of  his  piety,  whom  I  ever 
knew.  I  used  to  call  on  him  oftener 
than  on  any  man  in  my  congregation, 
and  it  did  me  more  good  to  hear  him 
converse  on  his  religious  experience 
than  any  other  man."  The  words 
are  very  suggestive  as  to  the  pastor's 
sympathy  with  humanity  and  willing- 
ness to  be  taught  by  the  humblest. 

If  he  had  remained  in  the  pastorate, 
as  some  of  his  admirers  thought  it  his 
duty  to  do,  his  course  would  evidently 
have  been  full  of  joy  to  others  and  of 
blessing  to  the  church  of  God.  But 
what  may  perhaps  be  a  broader  work 
awaited  him,  and  for  it  these  New 
Haven  experiences  were  a  part  of  his 
training. 

Beginning  of  Attack  on 
Dogmas  of  Several  Centuries 

Until  something  less  than  a  hun- 
dred years  ago  there  was  no  oppor- 
tunity in  this  country  for  specific  and 
thorough  preparation  for  the  gospel 
ministry.  Candidates  for  the  sacred 
office,  after  taking  a  collegiate  course, 
studied  for  a  time  with  some  more  or 
less  noted  divine,  reading  under  his 
direction,  imbibing  his  theological 
opinions,  constructing  sermons  for 
his  criticism,  undertaking  something 
of  pastoral  work  in  a  kind  of  appren- 
tice way,  under  his  supervision,  and 
then,  after  receiving  the  "approba- 
tion" of  the  associated  ministers  go- 
ing forth  to  the  duties  of  their  chosen 
profession.  It  was  thus  that  Moses 
Stuart  studied  with  Dr.  Timothy 
Dwight;  that  many  another  studied 


with  Dr.  Bellamy  up  among  the  hills 
of  Litchfield  County;  that  many  a 
humble  parsonage  became  a  diminu- 
tive "school  of  the  prophets."  The 
method  had  its  advantages,  and  also 
its  evident  defects.  About  the  middle 
of  the  first  decade  of  the  nineteenth 
century  it  was  felt  by  many  broad- 
minded  men  that  the  demand  of  the 
times  was  for  something  more  sys- 
tematic in  the  training  of  ministers. 
In  the  great  development  of  theo- 
logical speculation  in  the  preceding 
century  the  tendency  had  been  to  drift 
away  from  the  Bible  as  the  only  ade- 
quate source  of  religious  truth.  There 
was  too  great  a  fondness  for  accept- 
ing some  dogmatic  system,  and  then 
turning  to  the  Bible  to  secure  proof- 
texts  for  its  maintenance  and  to  force 
into  the  worthy  service  such  as 
seemed  reluctant  to  perform  this 
duty.  If  a  scripture  passage  ventured 
to  stand  squarely  in  the  way  by  which 
a  theologian  would  go,  and  obstruct 
his  progress,  he  assailed  it  with  the 
valor  of  a  knight  of  old  and  if  he  suc- 
ceeded in  unhorsing  it  and  leaving  it 
helpless  by  the  wayside,  he  marched 
on  from  the  scene  of  conflict  an 
acknowledged  and  applauded  victor. 
But  a  new  spirit  was  coming  into  the 
world  of  thought.  The  inductive 
philosophy  was  making  its  way.  In 
the  realm  of  natural  science  men  were 
beginning  to  observe  before  theoriz- 
ing. The  phenomena  of  mind  were 
being  studied  with  a  view  to  ascertain 
the  principles  that  they  embodied. 
Some  dimly  felt  that  the  old  methods 
in  theology  were  outgrown  and  must 
be  superseded.  A  greater  effort  must 
be  made  to  know  just  the  teaching  of 
the  Bible  itself.  'Thus  it  might  be 
possible  to  stem  more  effectively  the 
tide  which,  in  eastern  Massachusetts, 
at  least,  was  already  setting  strongly 
toward  Unitarianism.  The  need  of 
better  rhetoric  and  more  impressive 
elocution  in  the  pulpit  may  have  been 
recognized.  The  ministry  must  in  all 
ways  be  better  equipped  if  the  Xew 
England  churches  were  to  maintain 
their  ancient  prestige. 


lEmattripatum  0f  SUlujuma 


in  Am^rira 


First  School  in  America  for 
Education  for  the  Ministry 

As  a  result  of  much  thought  and 
prayer  and  effort  Andover  Theologi- 
cal Seminary  was  established.  It 
opened  September  28..  1808,  with  four 
professors  and  thirty-five  students, 
Dr.  Timothy  Dwight  of  Yale  preach- 
ing the  initial  sermon.  After  one 
year  the  Reverend  Eliphalet  Pearson, 
LL.D.,  having  resigned  the  chair  of 
Biblical  Literature,  Moses  Stuart  was 
invited  to  fill  it.  The  church  in  New 
Haven  objected.  "He  cannot  be 
spared,"  they  exclaimed  with  one 
voice.  "We  do  not  want  a  man  that 
can  be  spared,"  answered  Dr.  Spring 
of  Newburyport.  Mr.  Stuart  had 
read  nothing  of  Greek  but  the  New 
Testament  and  a  few  books  of  Ho- 
mer's "Iliad."  His  knowledge  of 
Hebrew  was  confined  to  that  of  a  half 
dozen  chapters  of  Genesis  which  he 
had  painfully  studied  out  without  use 
of  the  vowel  points.  His  fitness  for 
the  place  was  by  no  means  technical. 
It  consisted  in  his  enthusiastic  love 
for  the  Scriptures,  his  habit  of  whole- 
souled  devotion  to  whatever  task  he 
set  himself,  and  his  ability  so  to  teach 
as  to  inspire  others  with  his  glowing 
and  tireless  zeal.  Conscious  of  his 
qualifications  and  of  his  deficiencies, 
he  felt  impelled  to  accept  the  position, 
and  was  inaugurated  professor  Feb- 
ruary 28,  1810.  Although  he  was 
not  yet  quite  thirty  years  of  age,  he 
had  already  chosen  first  the  law,  then 
the  ministry.  Both  these  had  had 
their  share  in  preparing  him  for  that 
great  work  of  his  life  upon  which  he 
now  entered.  In  1806  he  had  mar- 
ried Abigail,  daughter  of  James  and 
Hannah  (Stoddard)  Clark  of  Dan- 
bury. 

Mrs.  Stuart  often,  it  is  said, 
spoke  of  the  contrast  between  New 
Haven,  with  its  beautiful  streets,  its 
devoted  church  and  circle  of  friends, 
and  its  literary  opportunities,  and 
Andover  Hill  as  they  went  to  it  in  the 
winter  of  1810.  It  was  bleak  and 
desolate  enough.  A  few  wooden 


houses  had  been  built,  but  piles  of 
debris  and  of  building  materials  lay 
along  the  streets,  and  its  theological 
professors  and  students  were  for  the 
most  part  strangers  and  as  yet  uncon- 
genial. She  felt  keenly  the  change. 
But  her  husband  was  too  busy  to  be 
homesick.  With  characteristic  en- 
ergy -he  took  in  hand  the  work  of  his 
professorship.  He  found  that  for  the 
study  of  Hebrew  there  were  no  facili- 
ties available.  Himself  mastering 
the  subject  as  best  he  might,  he  wrote 
out  lessons  in  the  ancient  tongue  for 
his  pupils,  and  lent  them  the  manu- 
scripts. In  these  the  Hebrew  charac- 
ters were  unpointed.  Having  pur- 
sued this  method  for  a  time,  he  deter- 
mined that  he  must,  should  and  would 
secure  a  printing  press.  This  he  did 
by  personal  solicitation.  But  when 
he  had  obtained  it,  there  was  no  one 
who  could  so  manage  the  Hebrew  let- 
ters as  to  set  the  type,  and  although 
he  taught  the  printers  he  was  obliged 
to  do  a  large  amount  of  the  work 
with  his  own  hands. 

First  Hebrew  Text  Book 
Printed  in  America  in  1813 

In  this  manner  he  was  able  in 
1813,  three  years  after  going  to 
Andover,  to  publish  a  grammar  of 
the  Hebrew  language,  without  vowel 
points,  which  was  the  first  volume 
issued  from  that  Andover  press 
which  has  since  been  so  fruitful  and 
has  become  so  famous.  Of  course 
it  was  the  first  book  of  the  sort  pub- 
lished in  America.  Not  satisfied  with 
it,  he  two  years  later  published  a  sec- 
ond edition.  Then  he  anew  investi- 
gated its  contents,  and  as  he  says, 
wrote  "some  of  it  three,  four,  and  a 
small  part  seven  and  eight  times 
over,"  and  published  the  third  edition. 
This  attracted  the  attention  of  schol- 
ars across  the  sea.  Professor  Lee,  of 
Cambridge  University,  said:  "The 
industry  of  its  author  is  a  new  matter 
for  my  admiration  of  him."  In  1829 
he  had  at  his  command  fonts  of  type 
for  eleven  Oriental  languages  and 
dialects. 

ss* 


j&?mtttt0mttt0  of 


Stuart  —  Sent  in  17  BQ 


When  commencing  his  work  in  An- 
dover  he  often  consulted  Schleusner's 
Greek-Latin  Lexicon,  and  in  it  fre- 
quently  encountered    German    words 
which   puzzled   him.     There   was   no 
one  at  Andover  who  could  explain 
them.     At   that  time   scarcely   more 
Americans  studied  German  than  now 
study  Russian  or  Chinese.     But  Mr. 
Stuart  felt  himself  challenged  by  the 
unfamiliar  tongue  to  make  himself  its 
master.     And  so  at  no  small  expense 
he  purchased  an  outfit  for  the  study 
of  German  and  giving  himself  to  it 
with  his  accustomed  enthusiasm,  he 
made  such  progress  that  in  a  single 
fortnight  he  read  the  entire  Gospel  of 
John   in   that   language.      Some   one 
presented  him  with  a  copy  of  Seiler's 
"Biblische  Hermeneutic/'and  through 
this  he  was  introduced  to  the  whole 
range  of  German  theological   litera- 
ture.    He  made  a  thorough  study  of 
the    profound    investigations    of    the 
German  universities,  and  made  use  of 
them  so  far  as  they  had  a  bearing 
upon  his  department.     But  more  than 
this,  he  caught  the  free  spirit  of  the 
German     investigators,     and     while 
always    reverent    toward    the    Scrip- 
tures, he  encouraged  himself  and  his 
pupils  in  the  most  thorough  and  com- 
prehensive examination  of  their  teach- 
ings.    Exegesis  thus  came  to  have  a 
new  meaning  and  a  new  importance. 
Certain   texts   which   from   time   im- 
memorial had  been  quoted  in  support 
of  some  dogma,  were  now  shown  to 
have  no  reference  to  the  theme.     The 
modern  tendency  to  treat  the  Bible  as 
literature  was  already  in  its  inception. 
The  movement  had  begun  which  was 
so  materially  to  change  the  face  of 
the  theological  world.    And  although 
Moses  Stuart  did  not  carry  the  matter 
to  its  broadest  conclusions,  there  can 
be  no  question  that  he  set  it  well  on 
its  way.     "Before  I  obtained  Seiler," 
he  writes,  "I  did  not  know  enough  to 
believe  that   I  yet  knew  nothing   in 
sacred  criticism."     He  often  said  in 
later  years  that  he  did  not  know  how 
to  begin  the  study  of  the  Bible  until 
he  was  forty  years  old. 

553 


Influence  of  German  Philosophy 
on  Religious  Thought  in  America 

But  now  there  came  to  him  a 
strange  experience.  Germany  had 
been  considered  the  favorite  abiding- 
place  of  infidelity.  While  our  minis- 
ters for  the  most  part  were  ignorant 
of  the  exact  results  there  arrived  at, 
imagination  pictured  them  as  some- 
thing entirely  destructive  of  their  sa- 
cred beliefs.  And  so  when  it  was 
learned  that  Professor  Stuart  had  be- 
come familiar  with  the  works  of  Ger- 
man theologians  and  that  his  teach- 
ings in  the  seminary  were  imbued 
with  the  German  spirit  and  moulded 
by  German  thought,  considerable 
alarm  was  felt  among  the  churches. 
It  was  believed  that  no  good  could 
possibly  come  from  such  contact  with 
dreamy  and  vague  theological  think- 
ing, evolved  amid  clouds  of  tobacco 
smoke  under  the  stimulating  influence 
of  Germany's  favorite  beverage.  A 
storm  of  censure  and  reproach  swept 
over  the  conscientious  teacher,  and 
he  was  keenly  alive  to  its  force. 
"Unsupported,"  he  says,  "without 
sympathy,  suspected,  the  whole  coun- 
try either  inclined  to  take  part  against 
me  or  else  to  look  with  pity  on  the 
supposed  ill-judged  direction  of  my 
studies,  many  a  sleepless  night  have  I 
passed,  and  many  a  dark  and  dis- 
tressing day,  when  some  new  effusion 
of  suspicion  or  reproof  had  been 
poured  upon  me."  But  he  wrote :  "It 
is  of  little  consequence  what  becomes 
of  me  if  the  teachings  of  the  glorious 
gospel  of  the  blessed  God  may  come 
in  its  simplicity,  power  and  authority 
before  the  public  in  a  manner  that  will 
attract  attention." 

While  the  attacks  were  most  severe 
an  event  occurred  which  entirely 
changed  the  situation.  In  May,  1819, 
Dr.  Channing,  in  a  sermon  at  the  ordi- 
nation of  Mr.  Sparks,  afterwards 
president  of  Harvard,  delivered  in  a 
Unitarian  church  in  Baltimore,  in  his 
fascinating  and  powerful  style  set 
forth  the  claims  of  Unitarians  in  a 
manner  to  dishearten  the  timid,  and 


?Emanripatt0n  nf 


in 


virtually  challenged  orthodoxy  to  de- 
fend itself.  The  sermon  was  imme- 
diately published  and  was  widely  read 
and  greatly  admired.  And  the  ques- 
tion was:  Who  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord  of  hosts  could  assail  this  intel- 
lectual giant  and  destroy  his  power? 
Moses  Stuart  stepped  forth  and  by 
the  aid  of  weapons  imported  from  the 
land  of  the  Teutons  succeeded  in 
crippling  his  strength.  His  published 
''Letters  to  Channing"  greatly  modi- 
fied the  sentiment  in  favor  of  Unita- 
rianism  that  had  been  gaining  ground. 

Downfall  of  Prejudice  and 
Bigotry  after  Hard  Struggle 

It  is  said  that  Dr.  Lyman  Beecher 
of  Litchfield  had  prepared  a  sermon 
against  the  dangerous  tendency  of 
familiarity  with  German  commenta- 
tors and  philologists,  and  was  on  his 
way  to  Anclover  with  the  intention  of 
preaching  it  in  the  seminary  chapel, 
when  the  "Letters"  that  had  just  been 
published,  fell  in  his  way.  The  con- 
sequence of  reading  them  was  that 
the  well-meant  sermon  was  consigned 
to  the  flames.  And  Dr.  Beecher 
shouted,  while  he  wept,  "Thanks  to 
God  for  the  keen  and  powerful 
weapon  Moses  Stuart  has  been  wield- 
ing." Those  who  had  most  severely 
criticised  him  acknowledged  his  learn- 
ing. Those  who  had  thought  him 
mistaken  in  his  devotion  to  German 
literature  admitted  their  error.  Pro- 
fessor Porter,  who  had  not  been  alto- 
gether pleased  with  his  course,  said 
to  him:  "No,  you  could  not  have 
written  that  volume  without  your 
German  aid.  You  are  in  the  right  in 
this  matter,  and  your  friends  are  in 
the  wrong:  take  your  own  way  for 
the  future."  Thus  did  Stuart  win, 
though  at  great  cost  to  himself,  the 
liberty  which  his  successors  have  so 
much  appreciated  and  enjoyed.  By 
his  persistence  in  spite  of  the  assaults 
of  enemies  and  the  frowns  of  friends 
he  broke  down  the  barriers  of  preju- 
dice and  gave  to  the  American  min- 
istry all  that  was  best  in  the  results  of 
German  thought  and  research. 


Through  his  influence  Andover 
Seminary  secured  for  its  library  a 
complete  set  of  the  works  which  have 
brought  new  and  broader  methods  of 
study  to  American  theologians.  And 
yet  it  should  be  said  that  after  the 
struggle  he  had  made  for  light  from 
across  the  sea,  he  was  disappointed  at 
finding  in  the  writings  of  noted  Ger- 
man authors  so  much  with  which  he 
was  out  of  sympathy,  and  which  he 
regarded  as  destructive  of  the  faith. 
To  a  friend  he  wrote:  "Who  is  to 
stay  the  German  flood  that  is  coming 
in  upon  us,  not  through  neology 
alone,  but  through  such  men  as  Tho- 
li-ck,  Neander  and  the  like  cast? 
Both  of  these  have  pronounced 
against  the  authoritative  inspiration. 
Tholuck  has  written  three  articles 
against  it,  and  Neander  has  aban- 
doned it  in  his  'Life  of  Jesus.'  What 
way  is  there  to  defend  the  Bible  and 
make  it  understood  again?"  He 
sought  to  do  it  through  the  elaborate 
commentaries  that  he  penned,  upon 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  the  Epis- 
tle to  the  Romans,  the  Apocalypse, 
the  book  of  Daniel,  the  book  of  Eccle- 
siastes  and  the  book  of  Proverbs,  as 
well  as  by  his  daily  teachings  in  the 
class-room. 

After  completing  one  of  his  vol- 
umes he  wrote:  "My  little  book 
on  the  interpretation  of  the  prophe- 
cies is  finished.  I  shall  doubtless  see 
a  shower  of  arrows  before  long  aimed 
at  me  by  the  prophetic  romancers. 
No  matter.  My  shield  is  thicker 
than  that  of  Ajax  for  this  combat. 
It  is  an  eternal  truth  that  a  revelation 
from  God  must  be  intelligible,  and 
must  be  vindicated  from  the  abuses  of 
those  who  make  it  the  sport  of  fancy 
and  wild  imaginations.  I  have  a 
piece  now  printinsr  in  the  'Bible- 
otheca'  on  some  difficult  passages  in 
the  Psalms.  I  have  undertaken  to 
bring  before  our  public  the  half  neo- 
logical  views  of  Hengstenburg,  Ne- 
ander and  even  Tholuck  on  Messianic 
prophecies  and  inspiration,  and  this 
has  led  me  to  say  we  must  have  our 
own  commentators  and  theologians. 

554 


of  iloaw  &iuari — Sara  in  17 SO 


We  must  not,  cannot  depend  on  Ger- 
man manufactories.  I  say  nothing 
of  John  Bull,  for  there  is  nothing  to 
make  a  say  out  of  it." 

America's  First  Contributions 
to  Biblical  Literature 

The  publication  of  his  books 
brought  him  into  correspondence 
with  Bible  students  in  Germany, 
in  Scotland,  in  England,  and  else- 
where, so  that  although  he  re- 
mained at  home  he  lived  the  larger 
life  which  comes  through  contact 
with  great  souls  in  all  the  world. 
There  is  not  time  to  follow  this  busy 
scholar  through  his  years  of  toil.  But 
his  energy  and  devotion  to  his  work 
knew  no  holiday.  Between  the  years 
1810  and  1852,  besides  many  articles 
in  the  Bib.  Rep.  and  Bib.  Sac.,  he 
published  some  thirty  volumes,  mostly 
of  his  own  composition,  a  few  of  them 
translations  from  the  Latin  or  Ger- 
man. These  included  the  six  com- 
mentaries already  alluded  to,  Greek 
and  Hebrew  grammars,  "Elements  of 
Interpretation,"  "Rules  for  Greek 
Accent  and  Quantity,"  essays  on 
"Future  Punishment,"  "Mode  of 
Baptism,"  "Immortality,"  "The  Sa- 
bellian  and  Athanasian  Methods  of 
Representing  the  Doctrine  of  a  Trin- 
ity in  the  Godhead,"  "Modern  Doc- 
trines of  Geology,"  "The  Old  Testa- 
ment Canon,"  "Conscience  and  the 
Constitution,"  and  so  forth. 

The  new  light  that  has  broken  from 
the  Word  of  God  during  the  last  half 
century  has  of  course  largely  de- 
stroyed the  value  of  some  of  these 
discussions.  Some  of  Mr.  Stuart's 
positions  regarding  inspiration  and 
his  estimate  of  the  object  and  scope 
of  some  of  the  books  of  the  Bible  are 
not  those  of  the  theological  profes- 
sors of  to-day.  But  to  read  one  of 
his  volumes  is  to  be  impressed  with 
the  extent  of  his  research,  and  with 
the  amount  of  erudition  shown.  One 
feels  regarding  Professor  Stuart 
somewhat  as  he  feels  respecting  Dr. 
Bushnell,  a  kind  of  pity  that  while  in 
his  eagerness  for  knowledge  he  came 


so  very  near  the  modern  conception 
of  things,  he  yet  just  missed  it.  He 
must  have  possessed  "the  pen  of  a 
ready  writer,"  or  he  could  not  have 
accomplished  so  much.  Nothing  that 
I  have  seen  of  his  impresses  one  as 
written  carelessly  or  without  much 
thought  and  study.  When  sixty- 
seven  years  old  he  read  all  the  trage- 
dies of  Aeschylus  that  he  might  find 
possible  idioms  and  allusions  throw- 
ing light  upon  the  Bible.  As  a 
teacher  he  was  pre-eminent.  He 
touched  and  kindled  the  souls  of  his 
pupils  with  a  sort  of  inspiration,  stir- 
ring within  them  something  of  the 
enthusiasm  which  moved  his  own 
soul.  Fifteen  hundred  came  under 
his  influence,  and  it  is  said  that  in  a 
remarkable  degree  he  stamped  his 
own  image  upon  them.  His  pupils 
found  their  place  not  only  in  the  pul- 
pit, but  in  many  a  literary  institution 
at  home  and  abroad.  And  thus  his 
influence  became  world-wide. 

Establishment  of  tbe  Modern 
Conception  of  Moral  Conduct 

Professor  Park,  who  knew  him  in- 
timately, says:  "The  great  work  of 
Mr.  Stuart  may  be  summed  up  in  a 
few  words.  He  found  theology  un- 
der the  dominion  of  an  iron-handed 
metaphysics.  For  ages  had  the  old 
scholastic  philosophy  pressed  down 
the  free  meaning  of  inspiration.  His 
first  and  last  aim  was  to  disenthrall 
the  word  of  life  from  its  slavery  to 
an  artificial  logic.  He  made  no  words 
more  familiar  to  his  pupils  than  The 
Bible  is  the  only  and  sufficient  rule  of 
faith  and  practice.'  In  his  creed  the 
Bible  was  first,  midst,  last,  highest, 
deepest,  broadest.  He  spoke  some- 
times in  terms  too  disparaging  of  the- 
ological systems.  But  it  was  for  the 
sake  of  exalting  above  them  the  doc- 
trines of  John  and  Paul.  He  read 
the  scholastic  divines,  but  he  studied 
the  prophets  and  apostles.  He  intro- 
duced among  us  a  new  era  of  Bibli- 
cal interpretation.  The  Puritan  fath- 
ers of  New  England  were  familiar 
with  the  Greek  and  Hebrew  tongues; 


555 


£mattritratt0tt  nf  itetigtmtfi 


in  Am^rira 


but  they  never  devoted  themselves  to 
the  original  Scriptures  with  that 
freshness  of  interest  which  he  ex- 
hibited, that  vividness  of  biographi- 
cal and  geographical  detail,  that  sym- 
pathy with  the  personal  and  domestic 
life  of  inspired  men,  that  ideal  pres- 
ence of  the  scenes  once  honored  by 
our  Redeemer,  that  freedom  from  the 
trammels  of  a  prescriptive  philosophy 
or  immemorial  custom.  Because  he 
had  done  so  much  and  suffered  so 
much  in  persuading  men  to  interpret 
the  Bible,  not  according  to  the  letter, 
but  the  spirit,  not  in  subjection  to  hu- 
man standards,  but  in  compliance 
with  its  own  analogies,  not  by  conjec- 
tures of  what  it  ought  to  mean,  but  by 
grammatical  and  historical  proofs  of 
what  it  does  mean,  he  has  received 
and  deserved  the  name  of  our  patri- 
arch in  sacred  philology." 

"His  mission,"  says  Professor 
Park,  "was  to  be  a  pioneer,  to  break 
up  a  hard  soil,  to  do  a  rough  work,  to 
introduce  other  laborers  into  the  vine- 
yard which  he  had  made  ready.  It  is 
no  common  virtue  which  is  honored 
in  every  farmer's  cottage  of  the 
town  where  he  has  lived  for  two 
and  forty  years,  and  which  is  ven- 
erated by  missionaries  of  the  cross 
on  Lebanon  and  at  Damascus.  I 
have  heard  him  praised  by  Tholuck 
and  Neander  and  Henderson  and 
Chalmers,  and  by  an  Irish  laborer, 
and  a  servant  boy  and  by  the  fam- 
ilies before  whose  windows  he  has 
taken  his  daily  walks  for  almost  half 
a  century.  His  influence  as  a  divine 
is  to  be  widened  and  prolonged  by 
the  fact  that  on  the  hills  and  in  the 
valleys  around  his  dwelling,  there  is 
neither  man,  woman,  nor  child  who 
has  known  him,  who  does  not  feel 
that  he  was  an  honest  Christian  man, 
an  Israelite  indeed  in  whom  was  no 
guile." 

It  is  interesting  to  know  the  per- 
sonal habits  of  a  great  man,  and  Mr. 
Stuart's  daughter,  Mrs.  Sarah  Stuart 


Robbins,  now  living,  revered  and  be- 
loved at  Newton  Highlands,  has  con- 
tributed some  facts  in  this  connec- 
tion which  we  are  grateful  to  learn. 

Of  his  personal  appearance  Dr. 
Wendell  Holmes  wrote:  "Of  the 
noted  men  in  Andover,  the  one  I  re- 
member best  was  Professor  Moses 
Stuart.  His  house  was  nearly  oppo- 
site the  one  in  which  I  resided,  and  I 
often  met  him  and  listened  to  him  in 
the  chapel  of  the  seminary.  I  have 
seen  few  more  striking  figures  in  my 
life  than  his,  as  I  remember  it;  tall, 
lean,  with  strong,  bold  features,  a 
keen,  scholarly,  accipitrine  nose ;  thin, 
expressive  lips;  great  solemnity  and 
expressiveness  of  voice  and  manner, 
he  was  my  early  model  of  a  classic 
orator.  His  air  was  Roman,  his  neck 
Icng  and  bare  like  Cicero's,  and  his 
toga,  that  is,  his  broadcloth  cloak,  was 
carried  on  his  arm,  whatever  might 
have  been  the  weather,  with  such  a 
statue-like  grace  that  he  might  have 
been  turned  into  marble  where  he 
stood,  and  looked  noble  beside  any 
statue  in  the  Vatican." 

It  was  a  fractured  bone  that 
brought  Mr.  Stuart  to  the  pastorate 
of  the  First  Church  in  New  Haven. 
It  was  another  fractured  bone,  this 
time  his  own,  that  took  him  out  of  the 
earthly  life.  Slipping  upon  the  ice  he 
broke  his  arm  and  the  strain  upon  his 
slender  vitality  was  so  great  that  he 
survived  the  accident  but  a  few 
weeks.  When  he  heard  the  hope  ex- 
pressed that  his  last  sickness  was  unto 
life  and  not  unto  death,  he  replied: 
"Unto  the  glory  of  God,  but  unto 
death.  I  am  prepared  to  die.  O 
God,  my  spirit  is  in  Thy  hand.  Have 
mercy,  but  Thy  will  be  done." 

On  Sunday  evening,  January  4, 
1852,  while  a  severe  storm  was  rag- 
ing about  his  dwelling,  he  fell  asleep. 
He  was  seventy-one  years,  nine 
months  and  nine  days  old.  He  had 
been  a  preacher  forty-seven  years,  a 
teacher  forty-one  years,  a  theological' 
professor  thirty-eight  years. 

S5&- 


nf 


Stuart  —  Itorn  in  ITBfl 


BY  HIS  DAUGHTER 

MRS.  SARAH  STUART  BOBBINS 

NEWTON    HIGHLANDS.    MASSACHUSETTS 


,Y  father  brought  into 
his  daily  life  many  of 
the  habits  acquired 
when  he  was  a  farm- 
er's boy.  He  felt 
that  every  moment 
passed  in  sleep,  after 
the  most  rigorous  demands  of  na- 
ture were  satisfied,  was  lost  time. 
In  summer  at  four,  and  in  winter 
at  five,  he  was  astir,  and  the  occu- 
pations of  the  day  began.  In  sum- 
mer his  garden  was  his  delight. 
To  this  he  went  when  Andover  Hill 
was  still  wrapped  in  sleep.  To  bring 
in  the  earliest  flowers  for  the  break- 
fast table,  to  surprise  his  family  with 
some  fine  home-grown  fruit  gave  him 
keen  pleasure.  Breakfast  was  often 
a  silent  meal.  Then  followed  family 
prayers,  and  from  family  prayers  he 
went  directly  to  his  study.  When 
the  door  of  this  study  was  shut,  the 
room  was  set  apart  from  the  sur- 
rounding world.  Immediately  every 
member  of  the  family  began  to  move 
about  on  tiptoe,  and  whatever  words 
were  spoken  were  uttered  in  subdued 
tones. 

Out  from  this  closed  room  came 
first  the  voice  of  prayer.  Rising 
and  swelling,  often  broken  by  emo- 
tion, there  was  a  pleading,  wailing 
cadence  in  his  voice,  touching  to 
listen  to,  tender  to  remember.  Then 
followed  intoning  passages  from  the 
Hebrew  Psalms,  and  here  the  heart, 
mellowed  and  comforted  by  near  in- 
tercourse with  the  Hebrews'  God, 
found  full  utterance.  Into  every 
room  of  that  still  house,  the  jubilant 
words  came  ringing  with  their  sol- 
emn joy.  From  the  time  this  chant- 
ing ceased  until  eleven  it  must  be  a 
matter  of  the  utmost  importance  that 
allowed  a  knock  upon  the  study  door. 
Visitors,  no  matter  from  what  dis- 
tance, or  of  what  social  or  literary 
standing,  were  all  denied  admittance. 

557 


Two  friends  of  long  standing  desired 
him  to  marry  them,  and  he  agreed  to 
do  so  provided  the  hour  were  after 
half-past  eleven.  They  desired  to  be 
married  at  ten.  "But  that  is  in  my 
study  hour!"  and  neither  love  nor 
money  could  induce  him  to  comply 
with  their  request,  and  another  min- 
ister was  secured. 

He  often  repeated  the  sentiment  of 
Heinsius:  "I  no  sooner  come  into  my 
library  than  I  bolt  the  door  after  me, 
excluding  ambition,  avarice,  and  all 
such  vices,  and  in  the  very  lap  of 
eternity,  amidst  so  many  divine  souls, 
I  take  my  seat  with  so  lofty  a  spirit 
and  such  sweet  content,  that  I  pity  all 
the  great  and  rich  who  know  not  this 
happiness." 

Even  the  ordinary  housekeeping 
sounds  must  be  made  under  pro- 
test. An  unlucky  fall,  the  slam- 
ming of  a  blind,  loud  voices,  all  were 
received  with  a  warning  thump  from 
the  study,  or  a  pull  at  its  bell.  "I 
must  not  be  disturbed." 

Precisely  as  the  clock  struck  eleven, 
there  came  an  energetic  pushing  back 
of  the  chair  and  footstool,  and  the 
whole  family  drew  a  long  breath  of 
relief.  Coming  out  of  his  room  with 
a  pale,  weary  face,  the  professor  went 
at  once  to  his  customary  exercise, 
never  failing  to  be  on  the  instant 
ready  for  his  half-past  twelve  dinner 
with  his  family  gathered  about  him. 
After  dinner  came  the  social  hour  of 
the  day.  If  we  had  any  request  to 
make,  any  plans  to  proffer  now  was 
the  time.  Indeed  it  was  the  only 
time  when  home  and  its  needs  seemed 
to  have  any  place  in  the  professor's 
thoughts.  Then  a  newspaper,  a  re- 
view or  some  book  not  connected 
with  his  work,  was  in  his  hand.  Gen- 
erally the  reading  continued  until  his 
lecture,  which  was  delivered  in  the 
afternoon  arid  occupied  about  an 
hour. 


lEmattripatum  nf  JMtgtmta  Gtynuglji  in  Am^rira 


This  duty  over,  came  the  exercise 
again,  the  early  tea,  family  prayers, 
and  the  evening  was  entered  upon  at 
the  first  approach  of  twilight.  Study 
was  never  severe  during  these  hours. 
Now  he  was  willing  to  be  interrupted, 
and  often  hailed  the  visit  of  an 
acquaintance  as  a  godsend.  Nothing 
gave  him  greater  pleasure  than  to  dis- 
cuss with  one  of  congenial  taste  the 
work  upon  which  he  was  then  en- 
gaged. 

This  until  nine  o'clock,  but  the  mo- 
ment the  clock  struch  that  hour,  night 
with  the  time  for  needed  rest  had 
come.  No  guest  who  understood  the 
regime  of  the  student's  life  lingered 
after  that  hour,  until  the  professor 


became  old  and  feeble.  Then  it  was 
a  great  delight  to  him  to  have  one  of 
the  students  of  the  seminary  come  in 
and  read  to  him,  and  the  hour  was 
often  forgotten  in  the  interest  of  the 
book.  Light  literature  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life  he  indulged  in  freely. 
With  all  his  devotion  to  his  specific 
themes  he  was  keenly  alive  to  every 
scientific  discovery,  and  every  ad- 
vance in  the  political  and  literary 
affairs  of  the  world.  When  the  first 
train  of  cars  passed  through  the 
meadows  back  of  his  house,  he  started 
from  his  seat  at  the  dinner  table,  and 
clasping  his  hands  together  as  if  in 
prayer,  said  fervently:  "Thank  God! 
Thank  God!" 


In  the  cemetery  at  Andover,  Mas- 
sachusetts, where  so  much  of  sacred 
dust  reposes,  his  body  was  laid  to  rest. 
Near  him  lies  all  that  was  mortal  of 
Professor  Phelps,  who  has  indeed 
found  'The  Still  Hour;"  of  Mrs. 
Phelps,  his  own  daughter,  who  now 
knows  life's  "Sunny  Side;"  of  Har- 
riet Beecher  Stowe;  Dr.  Leonard 
Woods,  the  long-time  champion  of 
orthodoxy;  Professor  Egbert  C. 
Smyth,  whose  newly-made  grave  is 
grieved  over  by  hundreds;  and  many 
another  whose  name  is  widely  known. 
Upon  a  square  prism  of  white  marble, 
surmounted  by  a  Greek  vase,  "erected 
in  grateful  remembrance  by  the 
alumni  of  the  Theological  Seminary," 
is  this  epitaph: 

"A  meek  and  earnest  disciple;  a 
fervid  and  eloquent  preacher;  a  gen- 
erous and  cordial  friend;  a  lover  of 
all  good  learning ;  versatile  in  genius ; 
adventurous  in  research;  quick  in 
acquisition;  an  enthusiastic  and 
attractive  teacher;  devoting  himself 
with  patient  and  successful  toil  to  the 
revival  and  cultivation  of  sacred  lit- 
erature; he  is  justly  entitled  to  be 
called  among  the  scholars  of  his  na- 


tive country,  The  Father  of  Biblical 
Science.  The  Word  which  he  loved 
in  life  was  his  light  in  death.  He 
now  sees  face  to  face." 

Professor  Stuart  was  the  father  of 
seven  children,  three  sons  and  four 
daughters.  The  three  sons  gradu- 
ated at  Yale.  One  of  them,  Isaac 
William,  became  a  professor  in  Co- 
lumbia, South  Carolina,  but  spent  the 
latter  years  of  his  life  in  Hartford. 
He  married  a  daughter  of  Stephen 
Bulkley  of  Hartford,  and  through  her 
inherited  the  "Charter  Oak"  estate. 
The  daughters  were  all  well  educated, 
two  of  them  in  New  Haven,  a  third  in 
Jacob  Abbott's  school  in  Boston,  and 
the  fourth  in  New  Jersey. 

Two  of  these  daughters  married 
Professor  Austin  Phelps,  one  of 
whom,  Elizabeth,  attained  great  pop- 
ularity by  her  sketches  of  New  Eng- 
land life.  One  of  her  books  reached 
a  sale  of  one  hundred  thousand 
copies  in  a  single  year.  Her  daugh- 
ter, Mrs.  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps 
Ward,  has  evidently  inherited  from 
her  illustrious  predecessors  the  men-: 
tal  keenness  and  brilliancy  which 
gave  them  prominence  and  power. 


Jkramtal  ICrtfrra  of  {ftmtwr  Ammnms 


a  into  £tmr-ataiurb  anil  altnnat  ^ubrriphrrablr  (Corrrapimiifurr 
UruraUmj  Ihr  Strong  C£  lutrar  trr  .  (£  mu.drutuiufl  Eiura.  Bumratir  (CttBUiraB.  Suai- 
nraa  3Jntrn.rttg  and  ttattragrons  if  arbtbnnb  of  Jurat  (Ctttzrna  of  Ihr  Republic 


This  is  an  account  of  a  tragedy  in  Early  America  written  by  Anthony  Thacher  of 
Massachusetts  in  1635  to  his  brother,  Reverend  Peter  Tbacher  of  St.  Edmonds,  Salis- 
bury, England.  Both  were  sons  of  the  elder  Reverend  Peter  Thacher  of  Queen's 
Camel,  Somersetshire,  England,  and  contemplated  coming  to  the  New  America,  but  the 
death  of  the  wife  of  Reverend  Peter  Thacher,  Junior,  caused  his  change  of  plans  so  he 
sent  his  fifteen  year-old  boy,  Thomas  Thacher,  in  his  stead.  The  uncle  and  iiephew 
landed  at  Ipswich,  Massachusetts,  and  in  1644,  Thomas  Thacher  was  ordained  into  the 
ministry  at  Wey mouth  where  he  was  pastor  for  more  than  twenty  years  and  later  in- 
stalled as  the  first  pastor  of  the  historic  Old  South  Church  at  Boston,  Massachusetts 


CONTHIBTTTBD  BY 

Miss  C.  C.  THACHER  OF  ATTLEBORO.  MASSACHUSETTS 

ACCURATE  TRANSCRIPT  FROM  ORIGINAL,  LETTER 


3—     •     must  turn  my  drowned  pen 
and  shaking  hand  to  in- 
dite the  story  of  such  sad 
news  as  never  before  this 
happened    to    New    Eng- 
land.   There  was  a  league 
of     perpetual     friendship 
between  my  cousin  Avery  and  myself, 
never  to   forsake  each   other  to  the 
death,  but  to  be  partakers   of  each 
other's  misery  or  welfare,  as  also  of 
habitation   in  the  same  place.     Now 
upon  our  arrival   at   New   England, 
there  was  an  offer  made  unto  us.    My 
cousin  Avery  was  invited  to  Marble- 
head  to  be  their  pastor  in  due  time; 
there  being  no  church  planted  there 
as  yet,  but  a  town  appointed  to  set  up 
the  trade  of  fishing.     Because  many 
there    (the    most    being    fishermen) 
were  something  loose  and  remiss  in 
their  behavior,  my  cousin  Avery  was 
unwilling  to  go  thither,  and  so  refus- 
ing, we  went  to  Newbury,  intending 
there  to  sit  down.     But  being  solici- 
ted so  often,  both  by  the  men  of  the 
place  and  the  magistrates,  and  by  Mr. 
Cotton,   and   most   of   the   ministers, 
who  alleged  what  a  benefit  we  might 
be  to  the  people  there,  and  also  to  the 

5W 


country  and  commonwealth,  at  length 
we  embraced  it,  and  thither  consent- 
ed to  go.  We  embarked  at  Ipswich, 
August  n,  1635,  with  our  families 
and  substance,  bound  for  Marble- 
head,  we  being  in  all  twenty-three 
souls,  viz :  eleven  in  my  cousin's  fam- 
ily, seven  in  mine,  and  one  Mr.  Wil- 
liam Ellior  sometime  of  New  Barum, 
and  four  mariners. 

The  next  morning,  having  com- 
mended ourselves  to  God  with  cheer- 
ful hearts,  we  hoisted  sail;  but  the 
Lord  suddenly  turned  our  cheerful- 
ness into  mourning  and  lamentations, 
for,  on  the  fourteenth  of  August, 
1635,  about  ten  at  night,  having  a 
fresh  gale  of  wind,  our  sails  being 
old  and  done,  were  split,  the  mariners, 
because  that  it  was  night,  would  not 
put  to  her  new  sails,  but  resolved  to 
cast  anchor  till  the  morning.  But 
before  daylight  it  pleased  the  Lord  to 
send  so  mighty  a  storm  as  the  like 
was  never  known  in  New  England 
since  the  English  came,  nor  in  the 
memory  of  any  of  the  Indians.  It 
was  so  furious  that  our  anchor  came 
home,  whereupon  the  mariners  let  out 
more  cable,  which  slipped  away. 


An  Arnwnt  0f  a  Srage&g  in  Am^rira  in  1H35 


Then  our  sailors  knew  not  what  to 
do;  but  we  were  driven  before  the 
wind  and  waves. 

My  cousin  and  I  perceived  our  dan- 
ger, and  solemnly  recommended  our- 
selves to  God,  the  Lord  both  of  earth 
and  seas,  expecting  with  every  wave 
to  be  swallowed  up  and  drenched  in 
the  deep;  and  as  my  cousin,  his  wife, 
and  my  tender  babes  sat  comforting 
and  cheering  one  the  other  in  the 
Lord  against  ghastly  death,  which 
every  moment  stared  us  in  the  face, 
and  sat  triumphing  upon  each  one's 
forehead,  we  were,  by  the  violence  of 
the  waves  and  the  fury  of  the  winds 
(by  the  Lord's  permission),  lifted  up 
upon  a  rock,  between  two  high  rocks, 
yet  all  was  one  rock,  but  it  raged 
with  the  stroke  which  came  into  the 
pinnace,  so  as  we  were  presently  up 
to  our  middles  in  water  as  we  sat. 
The  waves  came  furiously  and  vio- 
lently over  us  and  against  us,  but  by 
reason  of  the  rock's  position  could 
not  lift  us  off,  but  beat  her  all  to 
pieces. 

Now  look  with  me  on  our  distress 
and  consider  of  my  misery,  who  be- 
held the  ship  broken  and  the  water  in 
her,  and  violently  overwhelming  us; 
my  goods  and  provisions  swimming 
in  the  seas,  my  friends  almost 
drowned,  and  mine  own  poor  children 
so  untimely  (if  I  may  so  term  it  with- 
out offence),  before  mine  eyes 
drowned  and  ready  to  be  swallowed 
up  and  dashed  to  pieces  against  the 
rocks  by  the  merciless  waves,  and 
myself  ready  to  accompany  them. 
But  I  must  go  on  to  an  end  of  this 
woeful  relation.  In  the  same  room 
whereat  he  sat,  the  master  of  the  pin- 
nace not  knowing  what  to  do,  our 
foremast  was  cut  down,  our  main- 
mast broken  in  three  pieces,  the  fore 
part  of  the  pinnace  beat  away,  our 
goods  swimming  about  the  seas,  my 
children  bewailing  me  as  not  pitying 
themselves  and  myself  bemoaning 
them,  poor  souls,  whom  I  had  occa- 
sioned to  such  an  end  in  their  tender 
years,  when  as  they  could  scarce  be 
sensible  of  death.  And  so  likewise 


my  cousin,  his  wife  and  his  children, 
and  both  of  us  bewailing  each  other, 
in  our  Lord  and  only  Savior,  Jesus 
Christ,  in  whom  only  we  had  com- 
fort and  cheerfulness,  insomuch  that 
from  the  greatest  to  the  least  of  us, 
there  was  not  one  screech  or  outcry 
made,  but  all  as  silent  sheep,  were 
contentedly  resolved  to  die  together 
lovingly,  as  since  our  acquaintance 
we  had  lived  together  friendly. 

Now  as  I  was  sitting  in  the  cabin 
room  door,  with  my  body  in  the  room, 
when  lo,  one  of  the  sailors  by  a  wave, 
being  washed  out  of  the  pinnace  was 
gotten  in  again,  and  coming  into  the 
cabin  room  over  my  back  cried  out, 
"We  are  all  cast  away,  the  Lord  have 
mercy  upon  us.  I  have  been  washed 
overboard  into  the  sea  and  gotten  in 
again." 

His  speech  made  me  look  forth  and 
looking  towards  the  sea,  and  seeing 
how  we  were,  I  turned  myself  to  my 
cousin  and  the  rest,  and  spake  these 
words — "Oh,  cousin,  it  hath  pleased 
God  to  cast  us  here  between  two 
rocks,  the  shore  not  far  off  from  us, 
for  I  saw  the  tops  of  trees  when  I 
looked  forth."  Whereupon  the  mas- 
ter of  the  pinnace,  looking  up  to  the 
scuttle-hole  of  the  quarter  deck,  went 
out  at  it,  but  I  never  saw  him  after- 
ward. Then  he  that  had  been  in  the 
sea  went  out  again  by  me  and  leaped 
overboard  towards  the  rocks,  whom 
afterwards  also  I  could  not  see. 
Now  none  were  left  in  the  barque  that 
I  knew  or  saw,  but  my  cousin,  his 
wife  and  children,  myself  and  mine 
and  his  maid  servant.  But  my  cousin 
thought  I  would  have  fled  from  him, 
and  said  unto  me,  "Oh  cousin,  leave 
me  not,  let  us  die  together,"  and 
reached  forth  his  hand  unto  me. 

Then  I,  letting  go  my  son  Peter's 
hand,  took  him  by  the  hand  and  said : 
"Cousin,  I  purpose  it  not;  whither 
shall  I  go?  I  am  willing  and  ready 
here  to  die  with  you  and  my  poor 
children.  God  be  merciful  to  us  and 
receive  us  to  himself,"  adding  these 
words :  "The  Lord  is  able  and  willing- 
to  help  and  deliver  us." 

560 


nf 


Ammrana 


He  replied,  saying,  "True  cousin, 
but  what  His  pleasure  is,  we  know 
not ;  I  fear  we  have  been  too  unthank- 
ful for  former  deliverances,  but  he 
hath  promised  to  deliver  us  from  sin 
and  condemnation,  and  bring  us  safe 
to  Heaven,  through  the  all-sufficient 
satisfaction  of  Jesus  Christ;  this 
therefore  we  may  challenge  of  him." 

To  which  I,  replying,  said,  "That  is 
all  the  deliverance  I  now  desire  and 
expect,"  which  words  I  no  sooner 
said,  but  by  a  mighty  wave  I  was 
with  a  piece  of  the  barque,  washed 
out  upon  part  of  the  rock  where  the 
wave  left  me,  almost  drowned;  but 
recovering  my  feet,  I  saw  above  me 
on  the  rock,  my  daughter  Mary,  to 
whom  I  had  no  sooner  gotten,  but 
my  cousin  Avery  and  his  eldest  son 
came  to  us,  being  all  four  washed  out 
by  one  and  the  same  wave. 

We  went  all  to  a  small  hole  on  the 
top  of  the  rock,  whence  we  called,  to 
those  in  the  pinnace  to  come  unto  us, 
supposing  we  had  been  in  more  safety 
then  than  they  were  in.  My  wife 
seeing  us  there  crept  up  into  the  scut- 
tle of  the  quarter  deck  to  come  unto 
us ;  but  presently  came  another  wave, 
and  dashing  with  the  greater  part  of 
the  quarter-deck  unto  the  shore, 
where  she  was  cast  safely,  but  her 
legs  were  something  bruised,  and 
much  timber  of  the  vessell  being 
there  also  cast,  she  was  sometime  be- 
fore she  could  get  away,  being 
washed  by  the  waves.  All  the  rest 
that  were  in  the  barque  were  drowned 
by  the  merciless  seas. 

We  four  by  that  wave  were  clean 
swept  away  from  off  the  rock  also 
into  the  sea,  the  Lord  in  one  instant 
of  time  disposing  of  fifteen  sould  of 
us  according  to  his  good  pleasure  and 
will.  His  pleasure  and  wonderful 
great  mercy  to  me  was  thus:  stand- 
ing on  the  rock  as  before  you  heard, 
with  my  eldest  daughter,  my  cousin 
and  his  eldest  son,  looking  upon  and 
talking  to  them  in  the  barque,  when — 
as  we  were  by  that  merciless  wave 
washed  off  the  rock,  as  before  you 
heard,  God  in  his  mercy  caused  me  to 
fall  by  the  stroke  of  the  wave,  flat 

561 


on  my  face,  for  my  face  was  towards 
the  sea,  insomuch  that  I  was  sliding 
off  the  rock  into  the  sea,  the  Lord 
directed  my  toes  into  a  joint  of  the 
rock's  sides,  as  also  the  tops  of  some 
of  my  fingers,  with  my  right  hand, 
by  means  whereof,  the  wave  leaving 
me  I  remained  so,  having  in  the  rock 
only  my  head  above  the  water,  when 
on  the  left  hand  I  expied  a  board  or 
plank  of  the  pinnace.  And  as  I  was 
reaching  out  my  left  hand  to  lay  hold 
on  it,  by  another  coming  over  the 
top  of  the  rock,  I  was  washed  away 
from  the  rock,  and  by  the  violence  of 
the  waves  was  driven  hither  and 
thither  in  the  seas  a  great  while,  and 
had  many  dashes  against  the  rocks. 
At  length,  past  hopes  of  life,  and 
wearied  in  body  and  spirit,  I  even 
gave  over  to  nature,  and  being  ready 
to  receive  in  the  waters  of  death,  I 
lifted  up  both  my  heart  and  hand  to 
the  God  of  Heaven  (for  note),  I  had 
my  senses  remaining  perfect  with  me 
all  the  time  that  I  was  under  and  in 
the  water,  who  at  that  instant  lifted 
my  head  above  the  top  of  the  water 
that  so  I  might  breathe  without  any 
hindrance  by  the  waters. 

I  stood  bolt  upright  as  I  had  stood 
upon  my  feet,  but  I  felt  no  bottom, 
nor  had  any  footing  for  to  stand 
upon,  but  the  waters.  While  I  was 
thus  above  the  water,  I  saw  by  me  a 
piece  of  the  mast,  as  I  suppose,  about 
three  feet  long,  which  I  labored  to 
catch  into  my  arms.  But  suddenly  I 
was  overwhelmed  with  water  and 
driven  to  and  fro  again,  and  at  last  I 
felt  the  ground  under  my  right  foot, 
when  immediately,  whilst  I  was  thus 
groveling  on  my  face,  I  presently,  re- 
covering my  feet  was  in  the  water  up 
to  my  breast,  and  through  God's 
great  mercy,  had  mv  face  unto  the 
shore,  and  not  to  the  sea.  I  made 
haste  to  get  out  but  was  thrown  down 
on  my  hands  with  the  waves,  and  so 
with  safety  crept  to  the  dry  shore, 
where,  blessing  God.  I  turned  about 
to  look  for  my  children  and  friends, 
but  saw  neither  nor  any  part  of  the 
pinnace  where  I  left  them  as  I  sup- 
posed. But  I  saw  my  wife  about  a 


An  Arrnnnt  of  a 


in  Amerira  in  1635 


butt  length  from  me  getting  herself 
forth  from  amongst  the  timber  of  the 
broken  barq'ue.  But  before  I  could 
get  to  her  she  was  gotten  to  the  shore. 
I  was  in  the  water  after  I  was  washed 
from  the  rock  before  I  came  to  the 
shore,  a  quarter  of  an  hour  at  least. 

When  we  were  come  each  to  the 
other  we  went  and  sat  down  on  the 
bank.  But  fear  of  the  seas'  rolling 
and  our  coldness,  would  not  suffer  us 
there  to  remain.  But  we  went  up 
into  the  land  and  sat  us  down  under 
a  cedar  tree,  which  the  wind  had 
thrown  down,  where  we  sat  about  an 
hour  almost  dead  with  cold.  But 
now  the  storm  was  broken  up,  and 
the  wind  vjas  calm,  but  the  sea  re- 
mained rough  and  fearful  to  us.  My 
legs  were  much  bruised,  and  so  my 
head  was ;  other  hurt  I  had  none, 
neither  had  I  taken  in  much  quantity 
of  water,  but  my  heart  would  not  let 
me  sit  still  any  longer,  but  I  would  go 
to  see  if  any  more  were  gotten  to  the 
land  in  safety,  especially  hoping  to 
have  met  some  of  my  own  poor  chil- 
dren; but  I  could  find  none,  neither 
dead  nor  yet  living. 

You  condole  with  me  my  miseries 
who  now  begin  to  consider  of  my 
losses.  Now  came  to  my  remem- 
brance the  time  and  manner  how  and 
when  I  last  saw  and  left  my  children 
and  friends.  One  was  severed  from 
me  sitting  on  the  rock  at  my  feet,  the 
other  three  in  the  pinnace.  My  little 
babe  (ah,  poor  Peter)  sitting  in  his 
sister  Edith's  arms,  who  to  the  ut- 
most of  her  power  sheltered  him  from 
the  waters.  My  poor  William,  stand- 
ing close  unto  them,  all  three  of  them 
looking  ruefully  on  me,  on  the  rock, 
their  very  countenances  calling  unto 
me  to  help  them,  whom  I  could  not  go 
unto,  neither  could  they  come  at  me, 
neither  would  the  merciless  waves 
afford  me  space  of  time  to  use  any 
means  at  all,  either  to  help  them  or 
myself.  Oh,  I  yet  see  their  cheeks, 
poor  silent  lambs,  plead  pity  and  help 
at  my  hands.  Then  on  the  other 
side  to  consider  the  loss  of  my  dear 
friends,  with  the  spoiling  and  loss  of 
all  our  goods  and  provisions;  myself 


cast  upon  an  unknown  land  in  a  wil- 
derness, I  knew  not  where  nor  how 
to  get  thence.  Then  it  came  to  my 
mind  how  I  had  occasioned  the  death 
of  my  children,  who  caused  them  to 
leave  their  native  land,  who  might 
have  left  them  there,  yea  and  might 
have  sent  some  back  again  and  cost 
me  nothing;  these  and  such  like 
thoughts  do  press  down  my  heavy 
heart  very  much. 

But  I  must  let  this  pass,  and  will 
proceed  on  in  the  relation  of  God's 
goodness  unto  me  in  that  desolate 
island  on  which  I  was  cast.  I  and 
my  wife  were  almost  naked  both  of 
us,  and  wet  and  cold  even  unto  death. 
I  found  a  knapsack  cast  on  the  shore 
in  which  I  had  a  steel  and  flint  and 
powder  horn.  Going  further  I  found 
a  drowned  goat;  then  I  found  a  hat 
and  my  son  William's  coat,  both  of 
which  I  put  on. 

My  wife  found  one  of  her  petti- 
coats, which  she  put  on.  I  found 
also  two  cheeses  and  some  butter 
driven  ashore.  Thus  the  Lord  sent 
us  some  clothes  to  put  on  and  food  to 
sustain  our  new  lives,  which  we  had 
lately  given  unto  us,  and  means  also 
to  make  a  fire,  for  in  an  hour  I  had 
some  gunpowder  which  to  mine  own 
(and  since  to  other  men's)  admira- 
tion was  dry.  So  taking  a  piece  of 
my  wife's  neckcloth,  which  I  dried  in 
the  sun,  I  struck  a  fire,  and  so  dried 
and  warmed  our  wet  bodies,  and  then 
skinned  the  goat,  and  having  found  a 
small  brass  pot  we  boiled  some  of  her. 
Our  drink  was  brackish  water,  bread, 
we  had  none. 

There  we  remained  until  Monday 
following,  when  about  three  of  the 
clock  in  the  afternoon,  in  a  boat  that 
came  that  way,  we  went  off  that  des- 
olate island,  which  I  named  after  my 
name,  Thacher's  Woe,  and  the  rock 
Avery,  his  fall,  to  the  end  that  their 
fall  and  loss  and  mine  own,  might  be 
had  in  perpetual  remembrance.  In 
the  isle  lieth  buried  the  body  of  mv 
cousin's  eldest  daughter,  whom  I 
found  dead  on  the  shore.  On  Tues- 
day following,  in  the  afternoon,  we 
arrived  at  Marblehead. 


JUrat  5foroa  of  an  Ammratt  Utriorg 


This  is  an  account  of  the  joy  that  reigned  throughout  America  on  the  news 
of  victory,  told  by  an  eye-witness,  Stanton  Sholes,  who  was  born  March  14,  1772, 
married  Abigail  Avery  on  March  14,  1793,  and  died  February  7,  1865,  at  Columbus, 
Ohio,  in  his  ninety-third  year— Accurate  transcript  from  Original  Manuscript 


CONTRIBUTED  BY 

SARAH  ELIZABETH  SHOLES  NIGHMAN 

GREAT-GRANDDAUOHTER  OF  THE  NARRATOR 

Bayonne,  New  Jersey 


SHE    writer    of    this    short 
Sketch  was  born  in  one  of 
the  British  North  Ameri- 
can Colinies  (as  his  fath- 
ers were)  some  years  be- 
fore    the     Revolutionary 
War      Commenced      and 
slept    in    Juvenile    darkness    till    the 
thunder  of  the  Revolution  burst  on 
the   young   mind  and  called   him  to 
his  feet  in  1775  so  that  his  first  view  on 
the  elements  of  time  were  crimsoned 
with  the  commencement  of  the  Revo- 
lutionary War.     For  me  at  this  time 
to  commence  my  worlds  tour  when 
the  elements  of  nature  were  lighted 
up  by  the  torch  of  a  bloody  war  and 
the  voice  of  distant  thunder  rolling 
over    these    young    Colinies    but    we 
had   a   Washington   and   a   Franklin 
that  could  call  down  fire  from  heaven 
to  consume  the  sacrifice. 

Wonderful  age  this  for  the  young 
stranger  to  shape  his  future  course. 
Dark  were  the  elements  that  covered 
the  path  of  the  young,  but  goodness 
and  mercy  by  the  hand  and  as  years 
passed  away  his  mind  expanded  more 
to  the  cause  of  the  war  and  this 
bloody  strife.  My  Father  and  four 
brothers  older  than  myself  all  warmly 
engaged  in  this  war.  The  town  of 
Groton  my  birthplace  and  New  Lon- 
don had  been  suffered  to  remain  in 
peace  till  the  sixth  day  of  Sept.  1781 
when  at  daylight  there  was  discovered 
twenty  four  British  anchored  at  the 
mouth  of  the  river  three  miles  below 
the  city.  They  soon  landed  eight 
hundred  troops  on  each  side  of  the 


river.  Arnold  commanded  one  di- 
vision and  led  them  to  the  City  and 
burned  it.  The  other  division  marched 
upon  Groton  side  of  the  river  to 
attach  Ft.  Griswold  on  Groton 
Heights.  This  bloody  strife  and 
massacre  of  the  garrison  of  Ft.  Gris- 
wold was  in  sight  of  my  home,  there 
my  eyes  saw  and  my  ears  heard  the 
death  strife  and  struggle  of  that  ill- 
fated  garrison. 

I  will  not  attempt  a  description  of 
the  next  days  scene,  it  was  awful 
to  all  that  could  stand  within  hear- 
ing of  this  slaughter  house.  The 
town  that  gave  the  young  stranger 
being  and  opened  its  arms  to  re- 
ceive him  to  its  bosom  is  now  in 
lamentation  and  mourning  and  sack- 
cloth its  daily  uniform.  I  had  one 
brother  in  the  Fort  he  was  one 
of  the  few  that  escaped  with  life. 
At  this  time  my  Father  was  in  the 
army  and  two  Brothers  and  one  in  a 
priviteer  at  Sea.  This  sixth  day  of 
Sept.  1781  was  a  dark  day  for  Groton 
more  than  forty  widows  and  two  hun- 
dred orphans  were  left  in  a  few 
hours  to  mourn  the  loss  of  husbands 
and  fathers.  The  writer  had  two 
Uncles  and  seven  Cousins  killed  in 
the  Fort. 

In  October  was  heralded  to  us  the 
joyful  news  of  the  surrender  of  Lord 
Cornwallis  and  his  whole  army  to  the 
combined  armies  of  America  and 
France.  Oh!  how  my  young  heart 
leaped  for  joy.  In  spring  of  1782  Sir 
Guy  Carleton  arrived  in  New  York 
bringing  the  cheering  news  of  the 


nf 


Btrtnrg  in  IT  B2 


probability  of  a  peace  being  soon  re- 
stored between  the  two  countries. 
When  Sir  Guy  arrived  with  his  news 
the  people  were  filled  with  great  joy 
some  sang,  some  cried,  some  danced, 
some  prayed,  and  others  drowned  sor- 
rows with  a  good  mug  of  flip.  It 
was  a  mighty  great  joy  in  our  own 
way  so  that  1782  passed  away  with 
but  little  blood  shed  and  the  year 
rolled  away  in  much  quiet.  In  the 
spring  of  1783  intelligence  arrived 
that  articles  of  peace  had  been  signed 
by  Great  Britain. 

In  the  independence  of  the  United 
States,  in  the  general  joy  all  party 
animosity  seemed  to  be  forgotten  and 
mingled  in  one  exultation.  Through- 
out the  country  all  was  cheer  and 
good  feeling  toward  each  other,  and 
when  they  met  they  met  on  a  level, 
and  as  freemen  and  a  heavenly  joy 
beaming  in  every  face.  How  beau- 
teous nature  now  at  the  end  of  the 
war  and  how  dark  and  gloomy  be- 
fore. With  heavenly  joy  they  met  the 
change  and  natures  God  adored  in 
high  praises. 

Now  peace  reigns  over  the  land 
everyone  commences  as  if  he  had  be- 
gun in  a  new  state  or  some  new  in- 
heritance gained,  but  in  great  peace 
and  love  did  the  young  nation  com- 
mence its  proud  stand  beside  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth.  In  Novr.  of  this 
year  the  British  troops  left  New 
York  for  Great  Britain.  In  June  of 
this  year  1783  my  Father  returned 
from  the  Army  and  in  Oct.  two 
Brothers  all  poor  and  destitute. 
These  three  served  in  the  Revolu- 
tionary War  over  eleven  years.  My 
Father  had  served  several  years  in 
the  British  army  aginst  the  French 
and  Indians  before  and  at  the  time 
Buebeck  fell  into  the  hands  of  the 
British.  The  fourth  of  Oct.  1789, 
My  Father  died  and  now  with  the 
consent  of  my  mother  I  commenced 
the  sea  faring  business  and  in  this 
I  continued  for  many  years.  It  was 
a  hard  life  to  manage  yet  I  was  very 
fortunate  in  all  I  undertook. 


In  all  this  I  must  acknowledge 
God's  guardian  care  over  me  in  all 
my  wanderings  by  land  and  sea  not 
to  make  mention  of  his  mercy  and 
goodness  in  the  special  providence  of 
God  in  the  saving  of  my  life  and 
while  I  followed  the  sea.  I  contin- 
ued the  Sea  faring  business  till  1803 
at  that  time  the  war  between  Great 
Britain  and  France  almost  swept  the 
American  Commerce  from  the  sea, 
for  this  cause  I  quit  the  Sea  and  re- 
turned back  into  the  State  of  New 
York  and  after  a  few  years  moved 
into  the  state  of  Pennsylvania  and 
bought  a  farm  on  the  Ohio  river 
twenty  two  miles  below  Pittsburg; 
here  I  remained  till  1812.  I  was 
then  commissioned  a  Captain  in  the 
U.  S.  Artillery  and  soon  entered  the 
service  of  my  country  and  remained  in 
its  service  till  July  1814.  I  then  set 
tied  up  with  my  government  and  in  a 
year  or  two  entered  trade  and  in  this 
business,  continued  many  years  and 
was  extremely  fortunate  in  my  trade. 

In  1836  I  wound  up  my  business 
and  then  rambled  about  till  1842  then 
settled  down  in  the  city  of  Columbus, 
Ohio,  where  we  now  live  in  great 
peace  and  love  up  to  this  1859.  Now 
what  watchfulness  my  heavenly 
Father  has  had  over  me  in  all  my 
rambling  by  Sea  and  land.  In  my 
early  life  He  took  me  up  and  bare  me 
on  his  hands  through  the  war  or  the 
scene  of  the  Revolution,  and  through 
the  dangers  of  the  sea  my  life  boat, 
and  in  war  my  shield  and  safeguard. 

Oh!  wonderful  Providence!  When 
He  first  called  me  to  light  there  was 
no  nationality  to  this  great  people  but 
now  in  this  my  day  and  time  have 
stretched  their  arms  like  seas  and  be- 
come a  mighty  nation  all  in  my  day 
or  single  lifetime.  Oh,  the  wonder- 
ful improvements!  A  few  brave 
squatters  combined  to  draft  a  Consti- 
tution that  should  bind  these  thirteen 
Colinies  under  one  government  and 
laws  was  no  small  work  in  these 
days. 


g>ioru»0  of  Gallant  Ammnms 


IGanea— 


nf 


£>nutlf 


3n  thr  Ware  of  Earlg  Atnrrira 

BT 

MRS.  LOUISA  KENDALL,  ROGERS 

Barnesville,  Georgia 


is  the  story  of  one  of 
the  most  distinguished 
and  influential  of  the 
early  settlers  of  Virginia, 
Maryland  and  the  Caro- 
linas. 

The  family  is  said  to  be 
collaterally  descended  from  Sir  Ralph 
Lane  who  sailed  from  Plymouth,  Eng- 
land, in  one  of  the  vessels  fitted  up  by 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  in  1585.  Captain 
Lane  was  a  brave,  daring  young  cava- 
lier, the  son  of  Sir  Ralph  Lane  of  Or- 
lingbury,  whose  wife,  nee  Parr,  was 
first  cousin  of  Catherine  Parr,  the  fav- 
ored queen  of  Henry  VII.  Sir  Ralph 
Lane,  junior,  was  the  first  colonial 
governor  appointed  on  "American  soil. 
Although  history  asserts  that  the  col- 
ony was  broken  up  by  the  Croatan  In- 
dians at  Roanoke,  it  is  generally  be- 
lieved some  of  the  party  drifted  into 
North  Carolina  and  assisted  greatly 
toward  building  up  the  commonwealth 
of  the  state.  Sir  Ralph  Lane  died  in 
1604,  while  on  a  visit  to  Ireland,  so  it 
is  not  positively  known  how  long  he 
remained  in  America. 

During  the  summer  of  1618,  two 
years  before  the  Pilgrims  and  Puri- 
tans landed  in  America,  Joseph  Lane 
(supposed  to  be  a  descendant  of  Sir 
Ralph  Lane)  came  from  England  to 
Jamestown,  Virginia,  which  was  set- 
tled in  1607  by  Captain  John  Smith 
and  his  London  Company,  who  estab- 
lished a  code  of  laws  for  the  colony. 
From  there  this  family  of  Lanes 
found  their  way  to  Roanoke  and  Hal- 
ifax, North  Carolina.  There  was 
born  Joseph  Lane,  junior,  the  true 
lineal  ancestor  of  a  noted  family  of 


American  patriots  whose  descendants 
are  scattered  throughout  all  the  states, 
from  the  storm-washed  coast  of  the 
Atlantic  to  the  middle  Pacific  and 
from  the  great  lakes  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico.  The  old  family  records 
handed  down  for  many  generations 
have  grown  to  vast  proportions,  and 
several  volumes  might  be  filled  with 
thrilling  accounts  of  their  daring  ex- 
ploits during  the  Revolution,  the  Mex- 
ican War,  The  War  between  the 
States,  and  the  late  Spanish  War. 

Joseph  Lane  of  1710  married  Pa- 
tience McKinne,  daughter  of  a 
wealthy  Scotch  immigrant  who  owned 
vast  quantities  of  land  in  what  was 
then  known  as  the  Caledonian  re- 
gions. Their  sons  were  Joel,  Jesse 
and  Joseph  Lane.  They  moved  from 
the  vicinity  of  Halifax  on  the  Roa- 
noke to  a  comparative  wilderness  in 
Johnson  County  where  Raleigh,  the 
capital  of  North  Carolina,  now  stands. 

Colonel  Joel  Lane  was  a  statesman 
"to  the  manner  born,"  and  during  the 
War  for  Independence  was  at  onetime 
its  presiding  Justice.*  Throughout 
the  entire  conflict  with  Great  Britain 
he  served  with  fidelity  in  many  impor- 
tant civil  stations.  He  not  only  repre- 
sented his  county  as  senator  for  four- 
teen years,  but  his  name  appears  in 
"Colonial  Records"  as  Lieutenant 
Colonel,  1772.  His  dwelling  still 
stands,  a  landmark  of  the  Revolution, 
and  was  considered  at  the  time  a  rare 
specimen  of  architectural  elegance. 
He  was  a  member  of  the  first  Provi- 
sional Congress  which  met  at  Hills- 

*See  Court  Records  of  Wake  County. 


— <Eatialt?r0     nf    tlj? 


borough  twenty-first  of  August,  17/5, 
in  defiance  of  the  proclamation  of 
Governor  Martin,  issued  twelve  days 
in  advance,  forbidding  such  an  assem- 
blage. 

Governor  Martin  accused  them  of 
being  "rebels  and  traitors,"  against 
the  king  and  his  government,  denounc- 
ing the  resolves  of  a  set  of  people 
styling  themselves  a  "Committee  of 
the  County  of  Mechlenburg,"  who 
traitorously  declared  the  dissolution 
of  the  laws,  government  and  constitu- 
tion of  the  country,  the  preposterous 
enormity  of  which  cannot  be  ade- 
quately described  and  abhorred. 

At  any  rate,  in  defiance  of  this  libel- 
ous  proclamation,  the  brave  and  pa- 
triotic convention  was  determined  to 
build  up  a  republic  in  America.  Con- 
sequently, the  General  Assembly  of 
this  "most  rebellious  of  provinces," 
amidst  the  darkest  hours  of  the  Revo- 
lution, met  at  the  house  of  Joel  Lane 
in  June,  1781,  and  elected  Thomas 
Burke,  one  of  the  most  eminent  of  the 
men  of  revolutionary  renown,  the 
third  governor  of  the  state,  Colonel 
Lane  at  the  time  being  senator  of 
Wake.  Wishing  to  establish  the  cap- 
itol  in  his  own  vicinity,  on  the  fourth 
of  April,  1792,  he  conveyed  to  the 
state  one  thousand  acres  of  land. 
Subsequent  to  this  arrangement  for 
Raleigh,  he  presented  six  hundred 
acres  for  the  site  of  the  University,  as 
an  inducement  to  locate  the  institu- 
tion near  the  capitol.  Thus  did  this 
grand  old  patriot  lend  his  wealth  and 
influence  toward  the  upbuilding  of  the 
American  Republic,  well  deserving  a 
monument  to  his  memory,  although  it 
has  never  been  reared. 

His  sons  served  their  country,  and 
at  the  present  day  one  of  his  great, 
great  granddaughters  is  State  Regent 
of  the  Daughters  of  the  American 
Revolution  of  Tennessee. 

Joseph  Lane,  the  second  brother, 
was  a  member  of  the  Tribunal  of  the 
First  Court  in  North  Carolina,  which 
was  held  fourth  of  June,  1771.  He 
married  Ferebe  Hunter,  reared  a  large 
family  and  died  1798.  One  of  this 


family,  Lieutenant-Colonel  Joseph 
Lane,  received  large  grants  of  land 
for  his  services  during  the  Revolution 
and  is  mentioned  in  history. 

Jesse  Lane,  the  third  brother,  was 
born  1733,  married  Winefred  Hycock 
and  reared  a  happy  household  of  fif- 
teen children,  all  of  whom  lived  to  a 
good  old  age,  contributing  of  their 
"basket  and  store"  to  the  formation  of 
a  permanent  government.  He  is  the 
ancestor  of  thousands  of  America's 
noblest  men  and  women,  among  them 
General  Joseph  Lane  of  Oregon, 
called  "The  Marion  of  the  War  with 
Mexico,"  who  was  candidate  for  vice- 
president  of  the  United  States,  gov- 
ernor of  Oregon,  and  senator  eight 
years. 

Jesse  Lane  served  his  country  with 
the  Third  North  Carolina  Continen- 
tals and  with  his  sons  bravely  fought 
in  the  battles  of  Guilford  Court 
House,  Cowpens,  and  King's  Moun- 
tain. 

General  Ferguson  of  the  British 
Army  was  a  brave,  fearless  officer  and 
at  first  eyed  the  motley  crowd  of 
American  "rebels"  with  scorn,  not 
deigning  to  think  that  they  reallv 
meant  to  attack  him,  but  when  his 
practiced  eye  reconnoitered  the  situa- 
tion he  chafed  like  a  lion  at  bay. 

The  Americans  were  divided  into 
three  sections,  Campbell  and  Shelby 
leading  the  center,  Sevier  and  McDow- 
ell the  right,  and  Cleveland  and  Wil- 
liams the  left.  Ferguson  met  the 
attack  with  the  bayonet,  and  as  there 
was  not  a  bayonet  among  the  poorly 
equipped  Americans,  they  were  at  first 
repulsed.  Soon  the  British  were  at- 
tacked from  another  quarter,  and 
Ferguson's  fury  knew  no  bounds 
when  he  saw  that  the  party  he  had 
driven  down  the  hill  with  the  bayonet 
were  renewing  the  attack  with  more 
vigor  than  before.  He  rode  from 
point  to  point,  leading  his  men  with 
desperate  bravery,  but  soon  fell  to  the 
ground  pierced  by  a  well-aimed  rifle 
ball. 

The  American  loss  was  only  about 
thirty  men,  while  the  British  lost  one 

see 


of 


Am^rtrana 


hundred  and  fifty  killed  and  nine  hun- 
dred prisoners.  At  this  battle  of  the 
mountain,  Jesse  Lane,  his  son  John 
(who  was  father  of  General  Joseph 
Lane  of  Oregon),  Charles  Lane, 
another  son,  and  his  sons-in-law,  gal- 
lantly threw  their  whole  strength  into 
their  efforts  for  independence,  so  that 
the  battle  of  King's  Mountain,  not- 
withstanding the  smallness  of  the 
numbers  engaged,  put  a  new  phase  on 
the  struggles  of  the  South.  When  the 
news  of  the  entire  destruction  of  Fer- 
guson's army  reached  Cornwallis  he 
was  made  to  tremble  for  his  own 
safety.  The  heroes  of  King's  Moun- 
tain having  so  well  accomplished  their 
plans,  returned  in  triumph  to  their 
homes  and  delighted  in  handing  down 
to  their  descendants  a  true  history  of 
their  victories.  They  scarcely  real- 
ized the  immense  service  they  had 
rendered  the  United  States,  but  the 
value  of  that  service  was  soon  to  be 
realized  by  General  Greene  who  had 
been  appointed  commander  at  the 
South,  and  who,  whether  fighting  or 
retreating,  was  to  justify  the  confi- 
dence by  which  he  had  been  chosen 
for  this  post  by  General  Washington. 
The  little  town  of  Halifax  is  one  of 
the  oldest  in  North  Carolina,  and  not 
only  its  first  settlers,  the  Lanes,  were 
brave  and  courageous,  but  all  of  its 
whole  population.  It  was  the  first  to 


celebrate  the  Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence after  it  was  signed  in  Philadel- 
phia, and  it  was  there  Cornwallis  and 
his  army  were  quartered  several 
months,  as  was  also  General  Tarleton. 
William  Hooper,  one  of  the  signers  of 
the  Declaration,  though  put  down  as 
a  delegate  from  Wake,  came  from  the 
eastern  part  of  the  state. 

A  late  historian  who  had  occasion 
to  refer  to  the  history  of  Raleigh  in 
connection  with  the  triumphant  march 
and  occupancy  of  the  city  by  Sher- 
man's army,  speaks  of  Colonel  Joel 
Lane  as  the  progenitor  of  the  notori- 
ous "Jim  Lane"  of  Kansas.  This  is 
a  mistake.  They  are  not  of  the  same 
family.  General  Joseph  Lane,  who 
won  fame  and  renown  in  Mexico, 
Governor  Henry  S.  Lane  of  Indiana, 
General  Alfred  H.  Colquitt  of 
Georgia,  "The  Hero  of  Olustee," 
Lieutenant-Governor  Robertson  of 
North  Carolina,  Governor  David 
Swain  of  Chapel  Hill,  and  Honorable 
George  W.  Lane  of  Alabama,  District 
Judge  of  the  United  States,  were  all 
ccusins,  great  nephews  of  Colonel 
Joel  Lane,  and  grandsons  of  Jesse 
Lane.  The  latter  moved  to  Elbert 
County,  Georgia,  in  1786,  and  died  in 
Missouri,  1806,  leaving  descendants 
throughout  all  the  states  of  the  union, 
who,  like  the  three  brothers,  are  noted 
for  their  uprightness,  patriotism  and 
intesritv  of  character. 


THE     HISTORIAN 

BT 

HERBERT  HUGHES 

Gait,  Ontario,  Canada 


Into  dim  and  dusty  archives  of  the  past, 
In   buried   cities,   'mongst   rude   pictured 

stones, 
'Mid  ruined  temples  and  long-mouldered 

bones, 
He  delves,  nor  shudders   at  the  problem 

vast. 
He    hears    the    ancient    warrior's    trumpet 

blast, 

He    mounts    the    mediaeval     monarchs' 
thrones. 

567 


He  spans  all  ages  and  surveys  all  zones. 
He  sees  the  Then  and  Now,  the  First  and 

Last. 

And,  comprehending  all,  he  weighs,  divides, 
Unraveling  myths  and  fables  from  their 

maze, — 

Between  conflicting  annals  he  decides ; 
Traditions    melt    before    his    searching 

gaze. 

And  then  he  paints  the  picture  of  the  tides 
Of  all  past  life,  for  this  and  future  days. 


FAIR  COOLING  SPRAY,  O  LOVELY  SEA! 


BT 

DR.  FREDERICK  H,  WILLIAMS 


Fair,  cooling  spray,  oh,  lovely  sea ! 

How  maiden  coy  thy  changing  mood; 
To-night  thou'rt  sweet  with  smiles  for  me, 

Scarce  yestertide  I  vainly  wooed 
Thy  fretful  features  for  a  smile, 
Naught  could  for  me  one  thought  beguile. 

Yet  must  I  love  thee,  soft-eyed  sea, 
Whate'er  may  be  thy  changing  mood; 

Or  hast  thou  smiles  or  frowns  for  me, 
Forever  am  I  strangely  wooed 

To  cast  me  by  thy  pulsing  side, 

Wistful  to  wait  thy  changing  tide. 

But  when  thou  donn'st  thy  garments  blue 
To  bask  beneath  yon  sunlit  sky; 

When  lace-white  clouds  flit  over  you 
And  bright-hued  birds  amid  them  fly; 

Thou  turn'st  on  me  thy  sweetest  smile 

And  all  thy  ways  my  thoughts  beguile. 


Or  when,  come  eve,  the  god  of  day 
Stoops   low   to   wreathe   his   hairs   with 
thine, 

Swift  raptures  o'er  thy  ripples  play, 
Thy  wanton  waters  blush  like  wine: 

While  waving  willows  by  thy  side 

Waft  love-soft  whispers  o'er  thy  tide. 

When  night  her  dusky  mantle  sends, 
As  sleep  sows  silence  o'er  the  sea; 

When  distance  into  presence  blends 
All  things  commingling  magicly, 

I  see  thy  spirit,  yearning  rise 

Communing  with  the  bending  skies. 

Yes,  must  I  love  thee,  blue-eyed  sea ! 

Whate'er  may  be  thy  changing  mood; 
Thy  wondrous  self  constraineth  me, 

And  all  that  mighty  brotherhood 
Of  life,  thou  broodest  on  thy  breast 
Impelleth  me  to  love  and  rest. 


ON  THE  HILLTOPS-BY  JOSEPHINE  CANNING 


I  close  fast  the  portals  behind  me 

Where  dwelleth  contention  and  strife; 
Where  trouble  embitters  the  fountains 

That  spring  from  the  rivers  of  life. 
I  close  fast  the  portals  behind  me 

And  wander  in  spirit  afar 
To  hills  standing  blue  in  the  distance, 

With  naught  that  can  hinder  or  mar. 
How  cool  the  fresh  air  on  the  uplands; 

How  bright  the  blue  sky  overhead ; 
How  fragrant  the  pine  and  the  balsam, 

Whose  odors  like  incense  are  shed. 


How  restful  the  sound  of  the  brooklet 

That,  murmuring,  runs  to  the  sea; 
How  wondrous  the  gift  of  God's  blessings 

So  bountifully  given  and  free. 
Thus,  unto  the  soul  that  is  weary 

With  conflict  and  question  and  doubt, 
How  sweet  is  the  peace  on  the  hilltops 

And  all  the  fair  country  about. 
Alone  on  the  heights  where  God  dwelleth 

So  close  to  the  heavens  above, 
There  only  do  war  and  dissension 

Give  place  to  the  Angel  of  Love. 

568 


Country  life 
in  Bmertca 


ALONG    THE    ROCK-BOUND    COAST 


THOUSANDS    OF    LAKES    LIKE    MIRRORS 
REFLECT    THE    NOONDAY    SUN 


ntrg  lite 
Imerica 


THE     RUSH    OF    THE    RIVERS    TO    THE    SEA 


Country  life 
in  Bmcrica 


FROM  THE  FOREST-CLAD  HILLS 


Country  Xlfe 
in  Bmcrfca 


• 

ft 


SUMMERTIME    IN    THE    LAND    OF    REST 


ESTATE    OF  A     WELL-TO-DO"  VIRGINIAN  IN    1674 

THA  NSC  HI  It  i:  1>   FROM  THE  ORIGINAL  BT 

DR.  JOSEPH  LYON  MILLER. 

GRANDSON  or  THE  SEVENTH  GENERATION 
Thomas,  West  Virginia 

"AN  INVENTORY  OF  ALL  &  SINGULAR  TIIE  GOODS  AND  CHAT- 
TELS OF  MR.  AMBROSE  FFEILDING  GENT:  OF  WICKOCOMOCO 

HALLDEC'D.  APPRAYSED  &  VALUED  UPON  OATHE  BY  US  THE 
SUBSCRIBERS  BY  VERTUE  OF  AN  ORDER  OF  NORTHUMBER- 
LAND COUNTY  COURT  DATED  YE  17TH  DAY  OF  MARCH  1674" 

YE  SERVANTS 

£     s  d 

i  Servt  man — \Vm  Farecloth  3  yeares  to  serve 6    oo  oo 

I     Do     Thos:  Holmes  2  Do  Do  ,£5  i  Servt  Boy  John  Sonpin  7  yrs.  £(>. . .  12    oo  oo 
i     Do     maide  Jane  Farecloth  3  Do  Do  £2  i  Do  Maide  Jane  Cooper  2  Do 

£l..IO 3          I0  °° 

i  Negro  man  Ned  £15,  i  Do  Symon  .£20  i  Do  Boy  Chubb  £7 42    oo  oo 

i  Do  woman  Jude  ,£io.     i  Do  girl  Prosee  £s     i  Do  Boy  Ran  £10 25    co  oo 

YE  STOCK 

i"Black  Cow  &  Caff  24/1  pyde  cow  &  Caff  24/  2  red  Cows 407  i  Bull  22/  5     10  oo 

i  White  Do  i8/  i  Red  Do  20  i  Pr  Oxn  48 / 4    06  oo 

5  Yearling  hey ffers  £2.  .16    7  Do  Steeres  £3.  .04 6    oo  oo 

4  two  Yr  old  steers  4  i  old  mare  40 /  i  bay  mare  85/1  white  horse  70  /  . .  13     15  oo 

i  black  Horse  4&/  i  <wo  yr.  old  filly  50/2  yerlings  att  iS/ 5    05  oo 

30  Hogges  &  pigs  £6.  .4    All  the  whole  Stock  of  Fowls  i8/ 7    02  oo 

YK  HALL  PARLOUR 

i  Ovell  Tabel  12/1  turkey  Worke  Carpet  18/5  pictures  io/ a    oo  oo 

7  Turkey  worke  Chears  3O\ 3  Rusha  leather  Do  22 / 2     12  oo 

4  Family  portraits  unpraysed.     i  Tapstry  Couch  17 \ 17  oo 

i  Court  Cubbard  io/  A  pcell  of  old  small  Bookes  28 / i    08  oo 

A  pcell  of  old  large  bookes  33/1  large  Bibel  18  / a     n  oo 

i  ould  Silke  Cheare  8/    i   Dutch  Carved  Chare   io/    i  pr  brass  And 

Irons  13  / i     it  oo 

i  pr.  old  Silver  Candle  Stickes  47  /  i  small  tabel  3/ a     io  oo 

YK  PARLOUR  CHAMBER 

i  ould  Leather  Cheare  8/  i  ould  silke  do  ?/ 15  oo 

i  Greate  Bedd  &  cord  wth  Curtaines  &  Vallaines  lines  wth  Silke,  teasters, 

&  Damaske  &  Silke  Counterpayne io     13  oo 

i  Feather  bedd,  bowlsters,  pillows  &  two  blankettes 4     io  oo 

1  Carved  Chest  wth  locks  and  keys  25  / i    05  oo 

2  pr.  Linnen  Sheetes  1 8  /  3  Do  Pillowbers  6  / i     04  oo 

2  pr  Canvis  Do  8/  a  Do  Canvis  Do  2/ io  oo 

i  pewter  Bason  Ewer  &  Chamber  pott  5/6 05  06 

i  Looking  Glass  3/6  i  brass  Candelstick  a  / 05  06 

i  Wanning  pann  1/2    i  Ivory  Combe  /  io    i  Cloath  brush  / 5 oa  06 


573 


YK  GREAT  ROOME  £     s  d 

i  Long  Dining  Tabel  I?/   i  small  Tabel  2/8    i  Serving  Do/ 5 i    oo  08 

14  Rush  Chears  14/1  Large  ould  bottle  Case  &  bottles  3/8 17  08 

i  Ould  chest  4/   i  small  Dos/  i  pr.  and  Irons  io/ , 17  oo 

i  Large  Damaske  Tabel  Cloath  &  22  Napkins 2     io  oo 

3  Ould  canvis  Do  6/   13  Do  Do  4/ io  oo 

4  New  towelles  4/  7  ould  Do  2 / 06  oo 

i  Cubbard  7/  All  ye  Earth  i/  Glasse  Ware  15/4 i     02  oo 

31  old  pewter  ware  att  sd  p.  p.  101/2  new  Do  att  i2d  p.  p i     03  oo 

i  Silver  Tankard  wth  ye  Ffeilding  Armes  on  it 5    07  oo 

i  Do  small  Do  markt  "A.  F."  38/   i  Silver  bowle  40 / 3     18  oo 

i  Do  Dram  Cupp  s/    i   Do  Sacke  Do  io/     i    Do  Tumblr  mkt  wth  ye 

Armes  12  / i     07  oo 

n  Large  Silver  Spoones  22 /  8  small  Do  Do  8 /   i  Silver  Salt  5/ i     15  oo 

21  Alchimy  Do  2/7  17  Quart  bottles  2/8 05  03 

3  brasse  Candl  stks  3/1  brass  kittle  7  / io  oo 

1  old  Fowling  Peace  9 /   i  muskt  \i /  2  Pistolls  i2/ i     19  oo 

2  Rapere  i / 1  hanger  12/1  brass  morter  &  pestil  4/4  i     16  oo 

YE  CHAMBER  OVER  YE  HALL  PARLOUR 

i  Leather  Trunk  5/1  Chest  7/  i  ould  Do  wth  locke  %/ 17  oo 

i  beddstid  cord  Curtains,  Vallaines,  blanket  &  Rugge 3     18  oo 

i  Feather  bedd,  bowlster  &  pillowes 3     14  oo 

i  small  tabel  1/3  2  rush  chears  2/1  ould  Chamber  pott 03  n 

Looking  Glasse  2/82  home  combes  3d  i  ink  horn  $d 03  04 

i  pr  Canvis  sheetes  6/  2  pr  pillowbers  1/5  ould  sheetes  7/   &  pillowbers 

2/ 09  05 

i  pr  Virga.  Shewes  1/3  i  pr  Rusha  Leather  shewes  2/8    i  pr  Gloves  1/2  04  n 

1  Broad  cloath  Gt  Coat  iS/   i  Do  short  lind  wth  silk  i4/    i  ould  cloath 

suit  is/ 2    07  oo 

2  pr  britches  7/    i  pr  silk  Stuckings  2/3    2  pr  Cotton  Do  1/3    i   peri- 

wigge  is/ i    05  oo 

i  ould  hatt  wth  a  hole  in  it  2 /2  3  shirts  and  a  pcell  of  ribband  4/ 06  02 

i  pr  Silver  buckls  2  pr  Do  Buttons  i  Do  Watch  &  scale  i  Do  Tobaky  box. .  3     15  oo 

i  plaine  gold  Ringe  i  Sealed  Do  Do  2  mourning  Do 2    02  oo 

YK  CHAMBER  OVER  YE  PARLOUR  CHAMBER 

i  Bedd,  cord,  feather  bedd  &  furniture  82/1  other  Do.,  Do.  Do.  78 / 8    oo  oo 

i  ould  trunk  $/  i  ould  Chest  a,/  1   Tabel   lod  3   stools   i/  i   pcell  old 

Cloatbes  &  other  trumpery  S/ 18  io 

YE   OUTE   KlTCHIN    AND   SHRVTS    RoOME 

i  pr.  and  Irons  z/  i  Large  Iron  pott  -j/    i  small  Do  g/    i  other  Do  3/  i 

old  Do  r/3 18  oo 

3  pr  pott  Racks  5/  2  Do  lids  i/  i  flesh  fork  6d  4  spitts  3/4 09  io 

3  ould  Tubbes  1/6  2  new  Do  2/  5  Cyder  casks  io/  2  Cow  belles  1/2.. . .  14  08 

i  Ox  Chaine  &  rings  2/10  a  pcell  old  Iron  trumpery  1/8 04  06 

a  pcell  ould  Carps  &  Coopers  tooles  6/  a  pcell  old  bottles  2/8 08  08 

i  Create  Kittle  to  containe  40  Gals.  i8/  i  small  brass  Do  i/ 05  oo 

i  Drip  pan  i/  3  ould  tin  pannes  1/6  4  frying  panns  2  ould  2  new  5/ 06  06 

1  pr  Stillards  4/  i  brass  skimer  i/  i  ould  tabel  &  form 08  oo 

2  Sad   Irons   1/8    2  old  Spinnying  wheeles   S/    a  pcell  old  Rugges  & 

blanketts  5  / 14  08 

^222    05  05 

The  remainder  of  this  inventory  is  missing,  but  probably  listed  the  supply  of  grain , 
hay,  etc.,  on  hand  and  the  plantation  tools  kept  in  out-buildings 


(Emtfrmporarg  Sfyaugljt  in  Ammra 

"  Qttp  Jlrrea  of  thr  iRruublir  IB  llir  ffloiilorr  of 
?ttblU    ©pinion  —  tlje   Craorr  anb   tboralor** 


COLORADO 


THE    AMERICAN     PEOPLE     MUST 
LEAD  VAN  OF  PROGRESS 


•  DITOHTAX.    YVBITCK 
I«    THK    DKITVEB    BBPVBLICAV 

Statistics  printed  by  the  department  of 
commerce  and  labor  covering  the  period  in 
the  history  of  this  country  from  1800  to 
the  present  time,  reveal  the  wonderful 
growth  which  the  United  States  has  made ; 
and  from  the  information  thus  presented 
one  may  form  an  idea  of  the  conditions  ex- 
isting at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century, 
when  the  country  was  young,  although  it 
had  already  attained  respectable  rank 
among  the  nations  of  the  world.  The  fact 
that  the  population  per  square  mile  is 
nearly  twenty-eight  at  the  present  time, 
whereas  in  1800  it  was  only  six  and  a  half, 
is  in  itself  remarkable,  but  the  extent  of 
this  growth  will  be  more  fully  appreciated 
when  it  is  considered  that  the  area,  ex- 
clusive of  Alaska  and  the  island  posses- 
sions, is  nearly  three  and  a  half  times  as 
great  now  as  it  was  in  1800.  The 
American  people  have  not  only  made 
many  inventions  in  which  the  world 
at  large  has  sharedv  but  they  have 
developed  a  wonderful  capacity  to  utilize 
their  own  devices  as  well  as  those  of  other 
countries.  What  the  future  has  in  store  no 
man  can  conjecture,  but  we  know  that  the 
productive  power  is  increasing  in  an  accel- 
erating ratio.  Every  decade  reveals  a  re- 
markable advance  over  the  one  next  pre- 
ceding, and  we  have  every  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  the  century  upon  which  we  have 
entered  will  witness  a  more  remarkable 
growth  than  the  one  just  closed.  The 
enormous  increase  during  the  last  one  hun- 
dred years  of  the  per  capita  wealth  is  evi- 
dence of  rapidly  improving  conditions  for 
the  people,  which  we  have  no  reason  to 
question  will  continue.  The  fact  that  the 
per  capita  wealth  is  nearly  four  times  as 
great  now  as  it  was  in  1850  is  an  indica- 
tion of  this  growth.  Apart  from  the  indi- 
vidual possession  of  wealth,  the  condition 
of  the  people  has  been  most  wonderfully 
improved  through  improvements  affecting 
the  manner  of  living,  especially  in  urban 
communities.  Systems  of  public  water 
works,  lighting  systems,  facilities  of  trans- 
portation, and  greatly  improved  sanitation 
have  made  the  lives  of  people  of  moderate 
means  more  luxurious  in  many  respects 
than  those  kings  and  princes  a  hundred 
years  ago.  In  all  this  the  American  peo- 
ple have  shared  to  a  more  remarkable  de- 
gree than  the  inhabitants  of  any  other  part 
of  the  world. 


OHIO 


CIVILIZATION'S  GREAT  WORK  IS 
IN  ITS   BEGINNING 


KIMTOKIAI.    WHITKV 
I*   THK    TOLKDO    BLADK 

"Of  approximately  one  hundred  million 
horses  in  the  world,"  says  O.  P.  Austin, 
of  commerce  and  labor,  "eighty  million  are 
found  in  the  temperate  zone,  and  nearly  all 
among  Occidental  people,  while  the  re- 
maining twenty  million,  scattered  princi- 
pally throughout  the  tropics,  are  largely 
employed  in  service  of  temperate  zone  visi- 
tors or  residents,  and  are  but  feeble  repre- 
sentatives of  that  noble  animal  as  he  is 
known  to  the  people  of  Europe  and  Amer- 
ica. 

"The  United  States  and  Canada  have 
one  horse  for  every  three  and  a  half 
persons ;  in  South  America,  one  for  every 
seven;  in  Mexico,  one  for  every  twelve; 
in  Japan,  one  for  every  thirty-three;  in 
Turkey,  one  for  every  forty;  in  the  Phil- 
ippines, one  for  every  fifty;  in  Africa,  one 
for  every  one  hundred  and  fifty,  and  in 
India  and  in  China,  probably  one  for  every 
two  hundred.  Throughout  the  tropics  and 
the  Orient  are  scattered  approximately 
three  million  camels,  ten  million  donkeys 
and  twenty  million  water  buffalos,  or  car- 
abao,  with  oxen  utilized  to  some  extent 
almost  everywhere  and  millions  of  men,  es- 
pecially in  the  Far  East,  doing  the  work  of 
the  horse.  The  freight  motor  vehicle  is 
being  used  successfully  in  New  Mexico  and 
Arizona,  Porto  Rico,  Central  and  South 
America,  Egypt,  Turkey,  India,  Japan, 
South  Africa  and  almost  all  other  coun- 
tries, in  many  of  which,  with  the  thermom- 
eter well  above  the  one  hundred  mark,  the 
horse  cannot  live,  but  where  the  heavy 
freight  motor  can  pull  its  string  of  trailers 
with  almost  the  capacity  of  a  small  rail- 
road train.  The  tropics,"  said  Mr. 
Austin,  "and  the  Orient  are  the  great  un- 
developed sections  of  the  world.  Within 
the  tropics  are  millions  of  square  miles  of 
productive  land  and  billions  of  dollars' 
worth  of  products  for  which  the  temperate 
zones  are  calling  loudly.  In  the  Orient 
are  hundreds  of  millions  of  patient  workers 
and  for  their  products  the  Occident  is  in- 
creasing its  demands.  The  inability  of 
each  of  these  sections  to  respond  to  our 
demands  has  been  because  of  the  absence 
of  some  available  method  of  transporta- 
tion." 


®I?nugI?t     tn     Amerua 


PENNSYLVANIA 


INDIANA 


AN  ATTEMPT  TO   SOLVE   THE 
RIDDLE  OF  THE  PLANETS 


MDITOHIA.L,   -WRITKR 
TKK    PHILADELPHIA 


Thirty  years  ago  it  was  generally  assumed 
that  the  planets  were  inhabited  by  beings 
similar  to  ourselves,  and  this  largely  be- 
cause of  the  popular  book  written  by  Rich- 
ard Proctor.  The  book  was  not  intended 
to  be  conclusive;  in  fact,  only  opened  the 
question,  and  before  his  lamented  death  the 
author  felt  that  he  had  proved  nothing. 
In  the  storm  of  disapproval  which  came 
from  astronomers  popular  opinion  veered 
to  the  other  side,  and  it  has  for  some  time 
been  held  that  there  is  no  evidence  that  the 
planets  are  occupied. 

Then  came  Dr.  Wallace,  the  co-discov- 
erer with  Darwin  of  the  principle  of  nat- 
ural selection  as  the  prime  factor  in  evolu- 
tion, and  one  of  the  most  honored 
scientific  men  of  the  day.  who  still 
survives.  He  wrote  a  book  to  prove 
not  only  that  our  planets  were  not 
inhabited,  but  that  all  the  available  evi- 
dence went  to  show  that  of  the  hundred 
millions  or  more  of  suns  which  we  call 
stars,  and  which  may  have  planets,  not  one 
of  the  latter  could  be  populated  by  human 
beings.  He  held  that  the  earth  was  at  or 
near  the  center  of  the  universe,  and  the 
sole  abode  of  animal  life,  in  which  he  curi- 
ously agreed  with  the  ancient  Greek  philos- 
ophers and  the  medieval,  as  well  as  some 
modern  theologians.  Professor  Percival 
Lowell  showed  by  careful  observations  con- 
ducted in  Arizona  that  the  "canals"  of  Mars 
not  only  exist,  but  give  evidence  of  design. 
Last  year  he  published  a  book  in  which  he 
thought  he  had  substantially  proved  that 
the  canals  were  artificial,  and  that  life  on 
Mars  was  proved  as  clearly  as  anything  so 
practically  undemonstrable  could  be.  This 
deduction  was  not  entirely  satisfactory, 
and  the  new  expedition  sets  forth  in  the 
hope  of  securing  better  observations  from 
the  summit  of  the  Andes. 

In  viewing  the  planets  it  is  not  so  much 
a  large  telescope  as  clear  atmosphere  that 
is  needed,  since  the  largest  telescopes  mag- 
nify the  variations  of  the  atmosphere  and 
becloud  the  objective.  It  is  hoped  that 
from  the  height  of  some  fifteen  thousand 
feet  an  almost  undisturbed  vision  can  be 
procured.  Lowell  holds  that  the  laws  of 
chance  are  totally  against  any  such  acciden- 
tal arrangements  of  canals  as  he  has  found. 
If  his  expedition  confirms  his  views,  a 
great  gain  will  be  accomplished. 


AMERICAN  SCIENTISTS  BELIEVE 
JAPANESE  ARE  CAUCASIANS 


EDITORIAL    WKITKH   IIS 

THE    I  V  I>I  A  ,\  A  I'Ol.l  >    STAR 

The  basic  stock  of  the  Japanese  is  Ainiu, 
or  Aino,  aboriginal  in  the  north  and  east 
of   the   islands;    the   secondary   stock,   the 
Yamatos,  were  not  pure  Mongolians,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  of  Caucasian  origin,  and 
the    comparatively    recent    Mongolian    im- 
portations   have   affected    but   slightly   the 
national  type  according  to  Dr.  N.  Gordon 
Monro,  who  has  been  studying  the  terra 
cotta   figures    recovered   by   excavation    in 
Japan   from   a   remote   antiquity.    He   has 
devoted  many  years  to  this  work,  and  finds 
that  these  figures,  in  general,  exhibit  a  dis- 
tinctly Caucasian  appearance,  and  the  aris- 
tocratic type  of  Japanese  preserves   these 
features  to  this  day.    The  beau  ideal  of  the 
artists  and  poets  of  Japan  indicates  a  pro- 
totype   of    Iranian     (Persian)     or    other 
Semitic  affinity.     "The  Mongolian  element 
in  Japan,"  says  Dr.   Monro,  "was  an  im- 
ported,  not   an   original    stock."    He   also 
declares  that  "the  leaven  of  Ainu,"  that  is, 
of  white  blood,  "is  present  in  the  Japanese 
composite  to  a  greater  degree  than  is  appar- 
ent"   Of    the    Caucasian    origin    of    this 
basis  stock  there  is  no  doubt  whatever.     It 
is   well   known   that   the   Ainu   people,   of 
whom  some  thirty  thousand  are  now  left  in 
the  northern  island  of  Hokkaido,  are  white 
men,   in   essential    respects   similar   to   the 
people    of    Southern    Russia.     Their    lan- 
guage is  also  related  to  the  people  of  the 
Asiatic  Aryan  group,  the  successors  to  the 
ancient  Sanscrit,  from  which  the  Greek  is 
also  derived.     Dr.   Monro  shows  that  the 
Yamato  people,  the  parents  of  modern  Ja- 
pan, were  also  partly  or  wholly  of  white 
origin.     Dr.  David  Starr  Jordan,  formerly 
of  Indiana,  but  long  the  famous  president 
of  Stanford  University,  gives  his  full  ad- 
herence   to    Dr.    Monro's    opinions.     The 
conclusion     of     science      seems     to     be, 
therefore,  that  the  Japanese  race  is  prim- 
itively one  of  the  white  races  allied  to  the 
Persians  and  the  Hebrews  and  not  to  the 
Chinese.    To    the   military,   economic    and 
industrial     aspect    of    American    relations 
with  Japan  the  fact  is  not,  perhaps,  impor- 
tant;   but    it    certainly    deserves    emphasis 
among  that  large  element  of  our  popula- 
tion who  rely  upon  color  and  other  racial 
peculiarities  to  determine  the  worth  of  a 
man  to  the  world  and  his  right  to  the  earth 
and  air. 


C0nt?mpnrarg 


in     Am?rtra 


MARYLAND 


NEW   JERSEY 


WILL,     MAN     HARNESS    POWERS 
OF  SUN.  MOON  AND  TIDE 


KDITOKXAX.  •VTXITH  IV 

THK         BALTIMO«»         8TJIC 

Perennial  interest  attaches  to  the  idea  of 
utilizing  tides  as  sources  of  electric  power, 
and  the  Electrical  Review  mentions  some 
promising  enterprises.  One  of  these  is 
based  on  the  plan  of  creating  two  reser- 
voirs or  basins  which  communicate  with 
the  sea  by  means  of  control  valves.  One 
of  these  basins  is  filled  at  high  tide  and 
the  other  emptied  at  low  tide.  The  water 
is  allowed  to  flow  from  one  to  the  other, 
driving  turbines  connected  to  generators. 
A  study  of  the  tides  has  shown  that  in  this 
way  continuous  power  can  be  depended 
upon  for  about  ten  hours  a  day. 

In  England  three  important  installations 
are  now  being  considered.  One  of  these  is 
at  Chichester.  where  the  estuary  may  be 
easily  divided  into  two  basins  approxi- 
mately equal  in  area.  It  is  estimated  that 
under  ordinary  tides  about  6,800  horse- 
power may  be  obtained,  and  under  unusu- 
ally high  tides,  13,800  horse-power,  for  ten 
hours  a  day.  At  Menai  strait  a  dividing 
dam  will  give  power,  owing  to  the  differ- 
ence in  time  for  the  tides  at  the  two  ends 
of  the  strait  and  to  the  difference  of  twenty- 
eight  feet  in  the  height 'of  the  tides  at  the 
two  ends.  At  Bristol,  by  having  two  reser- 
voirs, a  fall  of  thirty  feet  will  be  obtained, 
giving  two  hundred  and  forty  thousand 
horse-power.  On  the  coast  of  Brittany  and 
Normandy  the  difference  between  high  and 
low  tide  is  4.0  feet.  In  the  bay  of  Fundy, 
on  this  continent  the  rise  and  fall  are  still 
greater.  The  pull  of  the  moon  on  the  sea 
produces  immense  effect,  measured  in 
horse-power,  and  it  naturally  vexes  this 
utilitarian  age  to  see  so  much  power 
•wasted.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the 
daily  waste  of  the  sun's  heat,  especially  in 
rainless  countries.  By  the  time  our  forests 
are  consumed  and  our  coal  mines  are  ex- 
hausted— as  they  must  be  after  a  while — 
inventive  jrenius  will  doubtless  have  found 
a  way  of  harnessing  the  neglected  powers 
of  the  sun  and  moon. 


Twenty  American  institutions  of  learn- 
ing, from  the  Smithsonian  Institution 
down,  have  been  granted  rights  under  the 
act  of  Congress  of  June  8,  1906,  to  make 
archaeological  investigations  in  this  country, 
provided  they  conform  to  reasonable  regu- 
lations as  to  the  use  of  such  antiquities  as 
they  discover,  and  aid  the  government  in 
saving  valuable  ruins  from  vandals.  Bos- 
ton Herald. 


UTILIZATION   OF  INVENTION   OF 
GENIUS    OF    MAN 


•  DITOMIAX,    WHIT*»    IK 
TH»   PATKKHOV  MOBJTIVO   CALX. 

In  five  Eastern  states,  with  Illinois,  Ohio 
and  Indiana,  is  manufactured  more  than 
ninety  per  cent  of  all  the  electrical  appar- 
atus turned  out  in  the  United  States. 
These  states  are  New  Jersey,  Pennsylva- 
nia, Connecticut,  Masachusetts  and  New 
York.  According  to  a  bulletin  issued  by 
the  Census  Bureau  last  week  the  growth 
of  this  business  in  the  five  year  period  from 
1900  has  been  remarkable.  In  1905  there 
were  seven  hundred  and  eighty-four  es- 
tablishments engaged  in  the  manufacture  of 
electrical  machinery,  apparatus  and  sup- 
plies, with  a  capital  of  $174.066,026.  Of 
these  seven  hundred  and  eighty-four  estab- 
lishments, New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Con- 
necticut, Massachusetts,  New  York,  Illi- 
nois, Ohio  and  Indiana  reported  six  hun- 
dred and  thirty-one.  The  figures  in  total 
capital  was  greatest  in  Pennsylvania,  and 
the  capital  and  value  of  products  of  the 
other  eastern  states  follow :  New  Jersey — 
capital,  $18.457,821,  and  products,  $13,803,- 
476;  Massachusetts—  capital,  $12.735.427, 
and  products,  $15,882,216;  New  York — 
capital,  $30,643,167,  and  products.  $35-348,- 
276.  The  remarkable  growth  in  the  use  of 
the  telephone  is  illustrated  by  the  fact  that 
in  1905  the  value  of  telephonic  apparatus 
manufactured  was  nearly  $16.000,000  as 
compared  with  approximately  $10.500.000 
in  1900.  Illinois  was  the  great  center  of 
this  industry  more  than  one-half  of  the 
total  products  being  from  that  state. 


Theoretically  at  least,  arbitration  as  a 
means  of  settling  international  disputes  is 
no  new  thing.  In  1623  Emeric  Cruce  sug- 
gested an  international  tribute  at  Venice — 
a  court  that  should  be  world-wide.  China 
and  other  Eastern  nations  were  to  be  rep- 
resented in  like  manner  as  China  and 
Japan  are  represented  at  The  Hague  at  the 
present  time.  Even  in  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury the  learned  Grotius  had  in  his  mind 
a  forecast  of  the  present  conference.  He 
advocated  the  utility  and  necessity  of  the 
Powers  forming  some  kind  of  a  body  in 
whose  assembly  the  quarrels  of  each  might 
be  terminated  by  the  judgment  of  others 
not  interested.  New  York  Press. 


577 


THE  LAST  LEAF 


The  key  of  Yesterday 
I  threw  away, 
And  now,  too  late, 
Before  tomorrow's  close- 
locked  gate 


Helpless  I  stand— in  vain  to 

pray! 

In  vain  to  sorrow! 
Only  the  key  of  Yesterday 
Unlocks  tomorrow! 


K  I11TOHIAI.     CO.MM  KN  T 


This  last  page  of  the  book  brings  us 
again  to  retrospect.  We  are  in  a  world  of 
books,  and  crowding  upon  us  from  every 
direction,  rising  from  beneath  and  falling 
from  above — it  is  books,  books,  books ! 
There  are  books  philosophic,  books  pole- 
mic, books  psychologic,  books  didactic,  and 
books  pedantic.  We  are  living  in  a  great 
democracy  of  books  in  which  the  renegat 
of  liberty-loving  print  and  the  highest  lit- 
erary morals  jostle  one  another  in  the  pub- 
lic mart;  where  direst  literary  poverty  lies 
down  with  intellectual  riches.  And  each 
finds  its  affinity  in  the  hearts  and  minds 
of  men ;  there  is  not  one  but  finds  some 
day  and  somewhere  a  loyal  friend  in  man- 
kind. Good  Dr.  Van  Dyke  says  that  Art 
for  Art's  sake  is  heartless,  and  soon  grows 
artless;  Art  for  the  public  market  is  not 
Art  at  all,  but  commerce;  Art  for  the  peo- 
ple's service,  for  the  diffusion  "of  joy  in 
widest  commonality  spread"  is  a  noble, 
vital,  permanent  element  in  life.  This 
is  the  heart  and  soul  of  these  pages — 
public  service;  "seeking  to  strengthen, 
deepen  and  improve  the  relations  of  Amer- 
ican literature  to  the  American  people, 
that  it  may  really  enrich  the  common  life, 
promote  the  liberty  of  the  individual  from 
the  slavery  of  the  superficial,  and  wisely 
guide  and  forward  men  in  the  pursuit  of 
happiness." 


Literature  has  never  before  meant  so 
much  as  it  does  in  this  democratic  age, 
when  education  is  being  widely  diffused 
and  the  struggle  between  good  and  bad 
reading,  between  great  books  and  trivial, 
has  become  a  question  of  serious  discre- 
tion. It  takes  all  kinds  of  books  to  make 
a  world  just  as  it  takes  all  kinds  of  men — 
and  as  books,  like  men,  have  characters 
there  is  nothing  within  the  range  of  hu- 
man strength  and  human  frailty  that  will 
not  be  boldly  reflected  upon  their  pages. 
Every  man  owes  it  to  himself  to  drink  into 
his  life  the  purest  and  sweetest  that  the 
earth  can  offer  him.  Dr.  Channing  once 
remarked  that  there  is  but  a  very  minute 
portion  of  the  creation  which  we  can  turn 
into  food  and  clothes,  or  gratification  for 
the  body,  but  the  whole  creation  may  be 
used  to  minister  to  the  sense  of  beauty — 
the  ocean,  the  mountains,  the  clouds,  the 
heavens,  the  stars,  the  rising  and  setting 
sun,  all  overflow  with  beauty;  the  universe 
is  its  temple,  and  those  men  who  are  alive 
to  it  cannot  lift  their  eyes  without  feeling 
themselves  encompassed  with  it  on  every 
side.  When  men  discover  beauty  it  will 
radiate  through  their  entire  lives,  in  their 
deeds  and  in  their  leisure,  in  their  busi- 
ness and  in  the  home,  and  more  than  all,  in 
the  books  which  they  invite  into  their 
homes. 


There  is  an  inclination  among  the  fel- 
lowmen  of  the  older  civilizations  to  look 
upon  the  Western  Continent  as  grossly 
material.  It  is  charged  against  us  that  the 
greed  for  gold  has  stunted  the  higher 
growth  and  blinded  our  eyes  to  nobler  pur- 
suits. A  few  days  ago  an  eminent  Amer- 
ican journalist  remarked  that  it  is  quite  the 
custom  among  foreign  peoples  to  refer  to 
this  great  republic  as  a  "dollar-worshiping 
nation."  During  the  present  month  a  Jap- 
anese statesman  said :  "America  is  essen- 
tially a  commercial  nation,"  meaning  that 
money  value  here  rises  above  other  con- 
siderations. The  journalist  took  a  true 
American's  exception  to  the  Oriental  esti- 
mate of  our  motives  and  morals  and  re- 
plied :  "We  respectfully  submit  that  the 
American  record  is  all  to  the  contrary." 
Industry  may  be  the  dominant  note  in 
American  character  but  it  is  not  selfish- 
ness. The  peoples  of  the  earth  have 
reaped  the  fruits  of  America's  restless  en- 
ergy. It  is  a  nation  of  builders  and  there 
will  come  a  day  when  from  the  ranks  of 
the  workers  there  will  rise  poets  and 
aesthetes,  such  as  the  world  has  never  yet 
seen.  The  epoch  of  science  and  scholar- 
ship has  dawned  and  we  are  on  the  thresh- 
old of  the  most  beautiful  revelations. 


There  is  much  truth  in  the  philosopher's 
remark  that  every  time  every  book  we  take 
up  without  a  purpose  is  an  opportunity 
lost  of  taking  up  a  book  with  a  purpose.  It 
was  Milton  who  charged  that  one  might 
almost  as  well  kill  a  man  as  kill  a  good 
book.  The  eminent  Frederick  Harrison 
truly  said  that  the  difficulties  of  literature 
are  in  their  way  as  great  as  those  of  the 
world  and  that  true  books  are  not  easier  to 
find  than  true  men ;  those  who  are  on  good 
terms  with  the  first  book  they  meet  run  as 
much  risk  as  those  who  become  friends  of 
the  first  man  that  passes  in  the  street;  a 
man  aimlessly  wandering  about  in  a 
crowded  city  is  of  all  men  the  most  lonely, 
so  he  who  takes  up  only  the  books  that  he 
"comes  across"  is  pretty  certain  to  meet 
but  few  that  are  worth  knowing.  In  this 
day  of  books,  and  books  again,  one  of  the 
first  marks  of  a  man's  quality  is  his  ability 
to  choose  the  printed  pages  with  which  he 
wishes  to  associate.  His  culture  is  meas- 
ured by  his  reading  table;  a  man  is  known 
by  the  books  he  reads.  This  book  comes 
to  you  as  one  who  knocks  at  your  door  and 
seeks  entrance  into  your  home.  It 
does  not  come  to  you  with  the  pretense 
of  being  a  perfect  book,  but  it  does  come 
to  you  true  to  its  purpose,  noble  in  its  im- 
pulses, and  staunchly  American. 


578 


Journal  *f 


Amrriran 


Journal  rf 


Jjiatorj 


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tljat  Ijaw  ^nter^ft  tntn 
nf  ttj^  Utea&rtt 


REPRODUCTIONS  FROM  RARE 

PRINTS  AND  WORKS  OF  ART 

(AMERICANA) 


Original  Rrerarrl|rg  into  Atrtl|nritatiw  £nnrrr 3 — Am^riran.  Sritialf  ani 

turnpran  Arrl]iuro — Jlriuatr  Snurualn.  Siarira  anb 

SiirumrntH 
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JFolklnre 


nf  Am^riran 


by  tlir  Aa0oriat*fl  ^nbUabrra  of  Amrriran  Krrorba.  3nr. 

in  tljr  Anr  trnt  fKuictripality  of  Nrui  fcjaurn.  (Commnmnralth,  of  (Eon. 

nrrtirnt,  in  (fhtartr  rig  Art  tuitions,  fonr  hooka  to  ilir  voluinr 

at  QJ  wo  Sollara  annually.  3Fif  ty  (£  rnta  a  ropy  o&  (C  n  mp  t  Ir  & 

in  (Collaboration  uuth  thr  (Tounrrtirut  ilagazin^ 

flrototea  b^  ropgrinht  anb  ^rintri  from  prraa 

of  tljr  Snratan  £itljinirauh,tng   (Eompany 

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LONDON     .    .  . 
PARIS      .... 

BERLIN       .    .  . 

DUBLIN       .    .  . 

EDINBURGH  . 

MADRID      .    .  . 
ROME 


B.  F.  Stevens  &  Brown 
4  Trafalgar  Square,  W.  C. 
Brentano's 
37,  Avenue  de  1'Opera 
Asher  and  Company 
Unter  den  Linden  66 
Combridge  and  Company 
18  Graf  ton  Street 
Andrew  Elliott 
17  Princes  Street 
Libreria  Internacional  de  Ad- 
rian Romo,  Alcala  5 
L.  Piale 
1  Piazza  di  Spagna 


ST.  PETERSBURG  Watkins  and  Company 

Marskata  No.  36 
CAIRO F.  Diemer 

Shepheard's  Building 
BOMBAT Thacker  and  Company  Limited 

Esplanade  Road 
TOKIO Methodist  Publishing  House 

2  Shichome,  Giz  Ginza 
MEXICO  CITT    .    .  American  Book  &  Printing  Co. 

1st  San  Francisco  No.  18 
ATHENS Const.  Electheroudakta 

Place  de  la  Constitution 
BUENOS  AYHES    .  John  Grant  &  Son 

Calle  Cangallo  460 


of  tl|g    Anntttgrgarg    Number 

FIRST  VOLUME  FOURTH  NUMBER 

This  book  marks  the  close  of  the  first  year  of  the  institution  of  a 
Periodical  of  Patriotism  in  America,  inculcating  the  principles 
of  American  Citizenship,  and  narrating  the  Deeds  of  Honor 
and  Achievement  that  are  so  true  to  American  Character — This 
Anniversary  Number  is  Dedicated  to  all  Loyal  Americans 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION — Coat-of-armB  of  Mary  Ball,  the  Mother  of  the  First 
President  of  the  First  Republic  In  the  World — Emblazoned  In  gold,  silver  and 
colors  by Charles  L.  N.  Camp 

TWO  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  MOTHER  OF  WASH- 
INGTON— Ancient  Engraving  Dedicated  to  her  Memory — The  Original  Is  In  the 
Collection  of  John  M.  Crampton,  and  Is  known  as  "Washington's  Last  Interview 
with  his  Mother" 

THE  GREETING  TO  THE  NATIONS — AMERICA'S  BIRTHDAY— 1607— 1907— Words 
of  Wisdom  spoken  by  the  Man  who  has  been  chosen  by  the  People  of  our  United 
States  of  America  as  their  Leader — Excerpt  from  the  Speech  of  the  President  at 
the  opening  of  the  Jamestown  Exposition — Autograph  copy  kindly  presented  to 
"The  Journal  of  American  History"  by Theodore  Roosevelt  681 

AN  ODE  TO  AMERICA— THE  BUILDERS  OF  THE  REPUBLIC— Poem  by  Judge  Daniel 
J.  Donahoe,  Author  of  "A  Message  to  Americans"  in  the  preceding  issue  of  "The 
Journal  of  American  History" 589 

"THE  PASSING  OF  THE  DAY  OF  GREED" — Symbolic  Photograph  by  John  Gudebrod, 

of  New   York — Taken   In    the   Early    Evening  at   Castle   Craig   on    the   Peaks   of 

Meriden 

SCULPTURE  IN  AMERICA — A  Symposium  of  the  Finest  Pieces  of  Sculpture  erected 

during  the  year  of  1907 697 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  HEART  OF  THE  SOUTH— An  Allegorical  Figure  bearing 
a  Palm  of  Peace  and  Branch  of  Laurel  covering  the  Sword,  an  Emblem  of  Glory 
For  erection  at  Houston,  Texas By  Louis  Amateis,  Sculptor  697 

A  TRIBUTE  TO  PEACE — Lunette  on  McKinley  Memorial  at  Canton,  Ohio 

By  Charles  H.  Nlehaus,  Sculptor  699 

PROSPERITY — Pediment  for  Kentucky  State  Capitol.. By  Charles  H.  Niehaus,  Sculptor  699 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  GREAT  AMERICAN  MATERIALIST— Colonel  John  A.  Roeb- 
llng,  First  Engineer  of  Brooklyn  Bridge — Builder  of  the  Great  Span  across  Niagara 
Falls — For  erection  at  Trenton,  New  Jersey By  William  Couper.  Sculptor  600 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  GERMAN-AMERICAN  SOLDIER— General  Franz  Sigel— For 

Riverside  Drive,  New  York  City By  Karl  Bitter,  Sculptor  601 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  TEXAS  RANGERS — Erected  at  the  State  House  in  Austin. 

Texas By  Pompeo  Copplnl,  Sculptor  602 

TO   THE   MEMORY   OF   AMERICAN    SACRIFICE — Erected   at    the    old    Andersonvllle 

Prison  Grounds,  In  Georgia By  Bela  Lyon  Pratt,  Sculptor  603 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER — For  the  monument  to  Soldiers  and 

Sailors  at  Webster.  Massachusetts By  Finn  H.  Frolich,  Sculptor  604 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SAILOR— For  the  monument  to  Soldiers  and 

Sailors  at  Webster,  Massachusetts By  Finn  H.  Frolich.  Sculptor  605 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  AN  AMERICAN  WARRIOR— General  George  Brinton  McClellan 

Erected  at  Washington.  District  of  Columbia.. By  Frederick  MacMonnles.  Sculptor  606 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  DISPATCH  RIDER  OF  THE  WAR  FOR  AMERICAN 
INDEPENDENCE — Erected  at  Orange,  New  Jersey 

By  Frank  Edwin  Elwell,  Sculptor  607 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  FIRST  FALLEN  IN  THE  SPANISH-AMERICAN  WAR— 
Ensign  Worth  Bagley,  U.  S.  N.,  the  only  Naval  Officer  killed  during  that  war — 
Erected  in  Capitol  Square,  Raleigh,  North  Carolina By  F.  H.  Packer,  Sculptor  608 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  SOUTHERN  WARRIOR — General  John  B.   Gordon— Erected 

at  State  Capitol  Grounds  at  Atlanta,  Georgia By  Solon  H.  Borglum,  Sculptor  609 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  MARTYRED  PRESIDENT— WILLIAM  McKINLEY— 
Erected  In  bronze  in  front  of  the  National  Memorial  at  Canton,  Ohio 

By  Charles  H.  Niehaus,  Sculptor  610 

INDEX  CONTINUED  (OVER) 


untfr  JEngrautnga   an& 


FOURTH   QUA.KTEH  NINETEEN  SEVEN 

Chronicles  of  Those  Who  Have  Done  a  Good  Day's  Work  — 
Rich  in  Information  upon  Which  May  Be  Based  Accurate 
Economic  and  Sociologic  Studies  and  of  Eminent  Value  to 
Private  and  Public  Libraries  —  Beautified  by  Reproductions  of 
Ancient  Subjects  through  the  Modern  Processes  of  American  Art 

CONTINUATION  OF  INDEX 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  ROUGH  RIDER  WITH  ROOSEVELT  AT  SANTIAGO—  Cap- 
tain "Buckey"  O'Neill,  killed  in  battle  —  Erected  at  Prescott,  Arizona 

By  Solon  H.  Borglum,  Sculptor  611 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  FIRST  AMERICANS  —  Statue  of  the  Indian  Chief,  Mahaska 
Now  being  exhibited  in  the  Salon  at  Paris  —  To  be  erected  at  Oskaloosa,  Iowa 

By  S.  E.  Fry,  Sculptor  612 

ANNIVERSARIES  OF  THE  AMERICANS  —  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Birth  of 
Whittier  the  Poet  —  Two  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Birth  of  the  Mother  of 
"Washington  —  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  Washington  Irving's  "Salmagundi" 
and  William  Cullen  Bryant's  "Embargo"  —  The  Half  Century  Anniversary  of  the 
"Atlantic  Monthly"  ..............................................................  613 

ONE  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  FOUNDING  OF  THE  "SALMAGUNDI" 
IN  1807  —  Reproduction  from  an  Old  Engraving  of  Washington  Irving,  after  a 
painting  by  Alonzo  Chappel  —  Likeness  from  a  daguerreotype  in  possession  of  the 
family  of  the  distinguished  litterateur  ...........................................  615 

PHOTOGRAPHIC  REPRODUCTION  OF  THE  TITLE-PAGE  OF  FAMOUS  OLD 
"BISHOP'S  BIBLE"  —  Published  in  1584,  and  still  in  possession  of  the  Seymour 
Family  in  America  —  A  survival  of  the  earliest  book-making  ......................  616 

ACROSS  THE  AMERICAN  CONTINENT  IN  A  CARAVAN—  REMINISCENCES  OF  CAP- 
TAIN JOSEPH  ARAM  —  Recollections  of  a  Journey  from  New  York  through  the 
Western  Wilderness  and  over  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific  in  1846  —  Adven- 
tures with  the  Indians  —  First  discovery  of  gold  —  First  white  child  born  in  Cali- 
fornia —  Early  days  on  the  Pacific  Coast  —  Experiences  of  Captain  Joseph  Aram  — 
Transcript  from  the  Original  now  in  Possession  of  His  Children  in  California 

By  Colonel  James  Tompkins  Watson,  of  Clinton,  New  York  617 

FOUR  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  THE  PANAMA  CANAL—  First  White  Man  to  Cross  the 
Isthmus  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  —  Futile  attempts  to  find  a  Natural  Water- 
way Connecting  the  two  Great  Oceans  —  First  Plans  ever  made  to  sever  the  Ameri- 
cas with  an  artificial  strait  by  Cortez  in  1529  —  Investigations  by  Dr.  Willis 
Fletcher  Johnson,  of  the  "New  York  Tribune"  —  Resume  from  his  researches 
recently  presented  after  more  than  twenty-five  years'  study  of  South  American 
affairs  and  Isthmian  Canal  Transit  in  his  book  "Four  Hundred  Years  of  Panama," 
published  by  Henry  Holt  and  Company  of  New  York  .............................  633 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  THE  CONTROL  OF  AMERICA  —  THE  GREAT  STORY  OF  THE 
CARIBBEAN  SEA  —  Ambition  of  the  European  Powers  to  add  the  Western  Conti- 
nent to  their  Empires  —  America's  fate  in  the  balance  during  the  Great  Battles  on 
the  Spanish  Main  —  Daring  adventures  of  the  Great  Admirals  of  the  Caribbean  Sea  — 
Researches  by  Franklin  Russell  Hart,  Member  of  many  learned  societies  and 
Fellow  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  of  Great  Britain  —  Copyright  assigned 
to  the  author  ...................................................................  64° 

AN  EARLY  AMERICAN  FINANCIER—  General  Robert  Patterson  of  Philadelphia- 
Born  in  1792  —  He  was  prominent  in  the  development  of  the  Sugar  Industry  of 
Louisiana  and  the  Cotton  Mills  of  the  South  —  An  organizer  of  Railroad  Communi- 
cation with  Baltimore,  a  Financier  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  and  Steamship 
Transportation  with  the  Southern  ports  and  Europe  —  Portrait  in  possession  of 
his  granddaughter,  Mrs.  Lindsay  Patterson  of  North  Carolina  ....................  C52 

OBSERVATIONS  OF  AN  EARLY  AMERICAN  CAPITALIST—  "HE  WAS  BORN  A 
KING"—  An  Early  Journey  in  the  Mississippi  Valley—  Accurate  Transcript  from 


(Srangrrtptg    jffrom    Anmttt   Borumgntg 

OCTOBER  NOVEMBER  DECEMBER 

Collecting  the  Various  Phases  of  History,  Art,  Literature, 
Science,  Industry,  and  Such  as  Pertains  to  the  Moral,  Intellectual 
and  Political  Uplift  of  the  American  Nation — Inspiring  Nobility 
of  Home  and  State — Testimonial  of  the  Marked  Individuality 
and  Strong  Character  of  the  Builders  of  the  American  Republic 

CONTINUATION   OF  INDEX 

Journal  of  General  Robert  Patterson,  born  In  1792 — An  intimate  friend  of  all  the 
Presidents  from  Jefferson  to  Garfleld,  and  one  of  the  greatest  merchant-magnates 
of  his  generation — Eminent  Americans  and  Europeans  gathered  at  his  mansion  In 
Philadelphia — Original  diary  in  possession  of  his  granddaughter,  Mrs.  Lindsay 
Patterson,  of  Winston-Salem,  North  Carolina 653 

HIEROGLYPHIC  NARRATIVE  OF  THE  CAREER  OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  PATTER- 
SON— Reproduction  from  original  made  by  his  son,  Colonel  William  Houston  Pat- 
terson, in  Imitation  of  the  character  writing  of  the  American  aborigines 660 

THE  FATHER  OF  THE  AMERICAN  NAVY— JOHN  BARRY— First  commander  of  the 
first  vessel  to  fight  under  the  American  Flag — The  "Lexington,"  named  after  the 
first  battle  in  the  American  Revolution,  captured  the  first  British  ship  in  the  strug- 
gle for  Independence — The  story  of  Commodore  John  Barry,  Born  in  1745 

By  Richard  M.  Reilly,  Member  of  the  Pennsylvania  Bar  669 

THE  RISE  OF  A  NEW  SURGICAL  SCIENCE — Evolution  of  a  Personal  Adornment  into 
the  Self-Protection  of  the  Human  Race — Uplift  of  a  Menial  Trade  to  a  Great 
American  Profession  which  now  bears  the  "Hall  Mark"  of  Culture  and  has  become 
a  part  of  the  American  Educational  System — The  birth  of  Dental  surgery 

By  Dr.  James  McManus, 
Author  of  a  Treatise  on  "History  of  Anaesthesia," 

and  a  Dean  of  American  Dentistry  675 

CENTENNIAL  OF  THE  SAVINGS  BANK— One  hundred  years  ago  the  modern  sys- 
tem was  first  outlined  in  the  House  of  Commons — Duke  of  Wellington  remarked 
that  if  men  had  money  to  spare  it  was  time  to  reduce  their  pay — First  savings 
banks  in  America  and  their  marvelous  effect  on  Industry  and  Thrift 

By  Honorable  Norman  White  685 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  FINANCE— Its  moral  effect  on  American  citi- 
zenship— Liberty  and  the  mighty  economic  problem — The  democracy  of  negotiable 
securities — The  Ten  Commandments  in  business — By  the  Editor  of  the  "Wall  Street 
Journal" Sereno  D.  Pratt  687 

FIRST  PAPER  MONEY  IN  AMERICA  IN  1690 — Actual  facsimile  of  the  First  Paper 
Money  In  America,  which  eventually  led  to  the  American  Banking  System — First 
authorized  to  meet  the  necessities  of  the  Colonial  Treasuries  to  wage  war,  and 
soon  became  generally  established  in  relieving  commercial  and  financial  embar- 
rassment   By  Henry  Russell  Drowne, 

Of  the  American  Numismatic  and  Archaeological  Society  693 

LETTERS  OF  EARLY  AMERICAN  WARRIORS — Correspondence  of  the  first  citizens 
of  the  Nation,  revealing  their  Personalities  and  Private  Lives — A  Romance  of  the 
North  and  South  more  than  a  century  ago — Intimate  friendships  of  distinguished 
Americans — Social  relations  of  the  families  of  Officers  in  the  early  wars — Cut  of 
Powder  Horn  presented  to  General  Jackson  in  1782  for  his  Bravery  in  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution — From  original  leters  now  in  possession  of  Charles  Eben  Jackson, 
a  descendant  of  General  Michael  Jackson By  Mabel  Cassine  Holman  697 

ANCIENT  MINIATURE  OF  EBENEZER  JACKSON.  SENIOR.  A  GENTLEMAN  OF  THE 
FIRST  DAYS  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC— Original  in  the  possession  of  Mr. 
Charles  Eben  Jackson 698 

ANCIENT  MINIATURE  OF  CHARLOTTE  FENWICK— A  BEAUTY  OF  THE  REVOLU- 
TIONARY PERIOD  IN  AMERICA— Original  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Charles  Eben 
Jackson 708 

INDEX    CONTINUED    (OVER) 


(gotuluHton    of    tfrg    jffttBt 

FRANCIS   T.  KILLER  EDWARD    O.  DOHMAN  MAHLETTE    GROUSE 

PHBHIDESTT  H  K  OR  E  T  A  H  T  TBEASUBRK 

In  presenting  this  last  number  of  the  First  Year  of  "The  Journal 
of  American  History"  the  publishers  take  pleasure  in  making 
public  recognition  of  the  eminent  services  of  the  writers  who 
have  appeared  in  the  initial  volume — It  is  only  through  them 
that  the  periodical  has  become  notable  in  American  Letters 

CONCLUSION  OF  INDEX 

AMERICA'S    TRIBUTE    TO    FRANCE— A    Centennial    Ode    to    Comte    de    Rochambeau 

By  John  Gaylord  Davenport,  D.D.  712 

AN  ANECDOTE  OF  COUNT  ROCHAMBEAU  IN  AMERICA— "Come,  Haste  to  the  Wed- 
ding"— An  Old  Song — By  the  granddaughter  of  the  heroine  of  this  incident 

Susan  E.  M.  Jocelyn  713 

EXPERIENCES  OF  AN  AMERICAN  EDUCATOR  IN  FIRST  TEARS  OF  THE  REPUB- 
LIC— Manuscript  of  James  Morris,  born  in  1752,  in  which  he  tells  of  being  charged 
with  violation  of  Christian  peace  and  placed  on  trial  for  conducting  a  private 
school  and  instructing  young  women  in  higher  education — Personal  narrative  of 
an  early  lecturer  on  public  morals — Original  manuscript  in  possession  of  Mrs. 
Washington  Choate,  great-granddaughter  of  James  Morris — Sketches  by  Florence 
E.  D.  Muzzy 717 

FIRST  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  IN  NEW  YORK — Rare  old  print  made  in  1840— The  Lan- 
caster Monitorial  School,  an  educational  idea  imported  from  England 718 

OLD  PRINT  OF  AN  INFANT  SCHOOL  IN  NEW  YORK  IN  1825 718 

AN  AMERICAN'S  EXPERIENCE  IN  THE  BRITISH  ARMY— Manuscript  of  Colonel 
Stephen  Jarvis,  born  in  1756,  revealing  the  life  of  the  Loyalists  who  refused  to 
renounce  their  allegiance  to  the  king  and  fought  to  save  the  Western  Continent 
to  the  British  Empire — Relating  the  remarkable  experiences  as  a  recruit  in  the 
lines  of  the  British  army — Accurate  transcript  from  the  original  manuscript  which 
was  lost  for  many  years  and  has  been  recently  recovered  now  in  possession  of 
Honorable  Charles  Maples  Jarvis,  Descendant  of  Colonel  Jarvis  and  Member  of 
many  American  learned  and  patriotic  societies 727 

NATURE'S   GRANDEUR   IN   AMERICA — The   Monarch   Niagara — Four    Reproductions 

from    Nature    Illustrations 741 

FIRST  FORTUNES  IN  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC — Letters  of  a  Banker  who  helped  to 
Establish  the  Credit  of  American  Business  Houses  in  the  European  Market — 
Great  Commercial  Ventures  In  the  Tropics — Trading  Voyages  to  China — Opening 
Traffic  on  the  St.  Lawrence  River  and  Lake  Ontario — Founding  a  Fortune  in 
America  one  hundred  years  ago — Correspondence  of  David  Parish  and  Joseph 

Rosseel By  Frank  R.  Rosseel,  Buffalo,  New  York 

Grandson  of  Joseph  Rosseel,  the  Financial  Agent  of  the  Parish  Estate  745 

CONTEMPORARY    THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA — "The    Press    of    the    Republic    is    the 

Moulder  of  Public  Opinion,  the  Leader  and  Educator" 762 

Americanism   calls   for   the   good   in   man,   not   the   bad — Editorial   writer   in    the 

"Atlanta    Constitution" 762 

An  American  view  of  the  future  of  South  Africa — Editorial  writer  in  the  "New 

Orleans    Picayune" 762 

America's  greatest  political  Idol  and  his  failure — Editorial  writer  in  the  "Indian- 
apolis   Journal" 763 

America  should  lead  world  to   universal  peace — Editorial   writer  in   the  Lincoln 

"Commoner" 763 

World's  upbuilding  is   in  need  of  more  money — Editorial  writer  in   the   "Seattle 

Post-Intelligencer" 764 

Tremendous  power  held  by  one  American  financier — Editorial  writer  In  the  "St 
Louis     Globe-Democrat" 764 

AMERICANA  DUBIA— MOOTED  QUESTIONS  IN  HISTORY— Opem  Discussions 765 

THE   LAST   LEAF — Editorial   Comment 766 


On  this  Two  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Birth  of  the  Mother  of  Washington,  this  Ancient  Engraving 

Heated  to  Her  Memory-The  Original  is  in  the  Collection  of  John  M.  Crampton, 
a  is  known  as  "  Washington's  Last  Interview  with  His  Mother." 


Journal 


Ainpriran  Jjtstorii 


VOLUME    I  M'MHKRIV 

l    HI  I   I.I.     BV     I    M  VNI-I-    THEVKLVAN-     Mil. I    I    I. 
XIXFTBIC.V     BEVKX  KOUHTH    QUAHTKH 


in  tlje  Natuma 

IBflr-Amertra'a  $t 


A  he  outset  I  wish  to  say  a  word  of  special  greeting  to 
the   representatives   of  the   foreign   governments. 
They  have  coir.e  to  assist  us  in  celebrating  what 
was  in  very  truth  the  birthday  of  this  nation,  for  it 
was  here   that   the  colonists   first   settled,   whose 
incoming,  whose  growth  from  their  own  loins  and 
by  the  addition  of  newcomers  from  abroad,  was  to 
make  the  people  which  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine  years  later 
assumed  the  solemn  responsibilities  and  weighty  duties  of  com- 
plete independence. 

In  welcoming  all  of  you  I  must  say  a  special  word,  first  to  the 
representative  of  the  people  of  Great  liritain  and  Ireland.  The 
fact  that  so  many  of  our  people,  of  whom  as  it  happens  I  myself 
am  one,  have  but  a  very  small  portion  of  English  blood  in  our 
veins,  in  no  way  alters  the  other  fact  that  this  nation  was  founded 
by  Englishmen,  by  die  Cavalier  and  the  Puritan.  Their  tongue, 
law,  literature,  the  fund  of  their  common  thought,  made  an  inher- 
itance which  all  of  us  >h.ur.  and  marked  deep  the  lines  along 
which  we  have  developed.  It  was  the  men  of  English  stock  who 
did  most  in  casting  the  mold  into  which  our  national  character 
was  run. 


me  furthermore  greet  all  of  you,  the  representa- 
tives  of  the  people  of  continental   Europe.     From 
almost  every  nation  of  Europe  we  have  drawn  some 
part  of  our  blood,  some  part  of  our  traits.     This 
mixture  of  blood  has  gone  on  from  the  beginning, 
and  with  it  has  gone  on  a  kind  of  development  unex- 
ampled among  peoples  of  the  stocks  from  which  we 
spring;  and  hence  to-day  we  differ  sharply  from,  and  yet  in  some 
ways  are  fundamentally  akin  to,  all  of  the  nations  of  Europe. 

Again,  let  me  bid  you  welcome,  representatives  of  our  sister 
Republics  of  this  continent.  In  the  larger  aspect,  your  interests 
and  ours  are  identical.  Your  problems  and  ours  are  in  large 
part  the  same ;  and  as  we  strive  to  settle  them,  I  pledge  you  here- 
with on  the  part  of  this  nation  the  heartiest  friendship  and  good- 
will. 

Finally,  let  me  say  a  special  word  of  greeting  to  those  repre- 
sentatives of  the  Asiatic  nations  who  make  up  that  newest  East 
which  is  yet  the  most  ancient  East,  the  East  of  time  immemorial. 
In  particular,  let  me  express  a  word  of  hearty  welcome  to  the 
representative  of  the  mighty  island  empire  of  Japan ;  that  empire, 
which,  in  learning  from  the  West,  has  shown  that  it  had  so  much, 
so  very  much,  to  teach  the  West  in  return. 

To  all  of  you  here  gathered  I  express  my  thanks  for  your 
coming,  and  I  extend  to  you  my  earnest  wishes  for  the  welfare 
of  your  several  nations.  The  world  has  moved  so  far  that  it  is 
no  longer  necessary  to  believe  that  one  nation  can  rise  only  by 
thrusting  another  down.  All  far-sighted  statesmen,  all  true 
patriots,  now  earnestly  wish  that  the  leading  nations  of  mankind, 
as  in  their  several  ways  they  struggle  constantly  toward  a  higher 
civilization,  a  higher  humanity,  may  advance  hand  in  hand,  united 
only  in  a  generous  rivalry  to  see  which  can  best  do  its  allotted 
work  in  the  world.  I  believe  that  there  is  a  rising  tide  in  human 
thought  which  tends  for  righteous  international  peace ;  a  tide 
which  it  behooves  us  to  guide  through  rational  channels  to  sane 
conclusions ;  and  all  of  us  here  present  can  well  afford  to  take  to 
heart  St.  Paul's  counsel :  "If  it  be  possible,  as  much  lieth  in  you, 
live  peaceably  with  all  men." 

We  have  met  ...  to  celebrate  the  .  .  .  Exposi- 
tion which  itself  commemorates  the  first  permanent  settlement 
of  men  of  our  stock  in  Virginia,  the  first  beginning  of  what  has 
since  become  this  mighty  Republic.  Three  hundred  years  ago 
a  handful  of  English  adventurers,  who  had  crossed  the  ocean  in 
what  we  should  now  call  cockle-boats,  as  clumsy  as  they  were 
frail,  landed  in  the  great  wooded  wilderness,  the  Indian-haunted 
waste,  which  then  stretched  down  to  the  water's  edge  along  the 
entire  Atlantic  coast.  They  were  not  the  first  men  of  European 
race  to  settle  in  what  is  now  the  United  States,  for  there  were 
already  Spanish  settlements  in  Florida  and  on  the  headwaters  of 
the  Rio  Grande;  and  the  French,  who  at  almost  the  same  time 
were  struggling  up  the  St.  Lawrence,  were  likewise  destined  to 
form  permanent  settlements  on  the  Great  Lakes  and  in  the  vallev 
of  the  mighty  Mississippi  before  the  people  of  English  stock 
went  westward  of  the  Alleghenies. 


582 


OkEOVER,  both  the  Dutch  and  the  Swedes  were" 
shortly  to  found  colonies  between  the  two  sets  of 
English  colonies,  those  that  grew  up  around  the 
Potomac  and  those  that  grew  up  on  what  is  now 
the  New  England  coast.  Nevertheless,  this  land- 
ing at  Jamestown  possesses  for  us  of  the  United 
States  an  altogether  peculiar  significance,  and  this 
without  regard  to  our  several  origins.  The  men  who  landed  at 
Jamestown  find  those  who,  thirteen  years  later,  landed  at 
Plymouth,  all  of  English  stock,  and  their  fellow-settlers  who 
during  the  next  few  decades  streamed  in  after  them,  were  those 
who  took  the  lead  in  shaping  the  life  history  of  this  people  in  the 
colonial  and  revolutionary  days.  It  was  they  who  bent  into  defi- 
nite shape  our  nation  while  it  was  still  young  enough  most  easily, 
most  readily,  tp  take  on  the  characteristics  which  were  to  become 
part  of  its  permanent  life  habit. 

Yet  let  us  remember  that  while  this  early  English  colonial 
stock  has  left  deeper  than  all  others  upon  our  national  life  the 
mark  of  its  strpng  twin  individualities,  the  mark  of  the  Cavalier 
and  of  the  Puritan — nevertheless,  this  stock,  not  only  from  its 
environment  bu.t  also  from  the  presence  with  it  of  other  stocks, 
almost  from  the  beginning  began  to  be  differentiated  strongly 
from  any  European  people.  As  I  have  already  said,  about  the 
time  the  first  English  settlers  landed  here,  the  Frenchman  and 
the  Spaniard,  the  Swede  and  the  Dutchman,  also  came  hither  as 
permanent  dwellers,  who  left  their  seed  behind  them  to  help 
shape  and  partially  to  inherit  our  national  life.  The  German,  the 
Irishman  and  the  Scotchman  came  later,  but  still  in  colonial  times. 
Before  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  the  American  people,  not 
only  because  of  their  surroundings,  physical  and  spiritual,  but 
because  of  the  mixture  of  blood  that  had  already  begun  to  take 
place,  represented  a  new  and  distinct  ethnic  type.  This  type  has 
never  been  fixed  in  blood.  All  through  the  colonial  days  new- 
waves  of  immigration  from  time  to  time  swept  hither  across  the 
ocean,  now  fropi  one  country,  now  from  another.  The  same 
thing  has  gone  on  ever  since  our  birth  as  a  nation ;  and  for  the 
last  sixty  years  the  tide  of  immigration  has  been  at  the  full.  The 
newcomers  are  soon  absorbed  into  our  eager  national  life,  and 
are  radically  and  profoundly  changed  thereby,  the  rapidity  of 
their  assimilation  being  marvelous.  But  each  group  of  new- 
comers, as  it  a<Jds  its  blood  to  the  life,  also  changes  it  somewhat, 
and  this  change  and  growth  and  development  have  gone  on 
steadily,  generation  by  generation,  throughout  three  centuries. 

The  pioneefs  of  our  people  who  first  landed  on  these  shores 
on  that  eventful  day  three  centuries  ago,  had  before  them  a  task 
which  during  the  early  years  was  of  heartbreaking  danger  and 
difficulty.  The  conquest  of  a  new  continent  is  iron  work.  Peo- 
ple who  dwell  in  old  civilizations  and  find  that  therein  so  much 
of  humanity's  lot  is  hard,  are  apt  to  complain  against  the  condi- 
tions as  being  solely  due  to  man  and  to  speak  as  if  life  could  be 
made  easy  pmd  simple  if  there  were  but  a  virgin  continent  in 
which  to  work. 


583 


jj^^s  T  is  true  that  the  pioneer  life  was  simpler,  but  it  was 

^  •       certainly  not  easier.     As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  first 

^^  work  ot  the  pioneers  in  taking  possession  of  a  lonely 

^B  wilderness  is  so  rough,  so  hard,  so  dangerous  that  all 

J  I        but  the  strongest  spirits  fail.     The  early  iron  days  of 

^^±^r        such  a  conquest  search  out  alike  the  weak  in  body  and 

the  weak  in  soul.     In  the  warfare  against  the  rugged 

sternness  of  primeval  Nature,  only  those  can  conquer  who  are 

themselves  unconquerable,     it  is  not  until  the  first  bitter  years 

have  passed  that  the  life  becomes  easy  enough  to  invite  a  mass 

of  newcomers,  and  so  great  are  the  risk,  hardship,  and  toil  of  the 

early  years  that  there  always  exists  a  threat  of  lapsing  back  from 

civilization. 

The  history  of  the  pioneers  of  Jamestown,  of  the  founders  of 
Virginia,  illustrates  the  truth  of  all  this.  Famine  and  pestilence 
and  war  menaced  the  little  band  of  daring  men  who  had  planted 
themselves  alone  on  the  edge  of  a  frowning  continent.  More- 
over, as  men  ever  find,  whether  in  the  tiniest  frontier  community 
or  in  the  vastest  and  most  highly  organized  and  complex  civilized 
society,  their  worst  foes  were  in  their  own  bosoms.  Dissension, 
distrust,  the  inability  of  some  to  work  and  the  unwillingness  of 
others,  jealousy,  arrogance  and  envy,  folly  and  laziness — in  short, 
all  the  shortcomings  with  which  we  have  to  grapple  now,  were 
faced  by  those  pioneers,  and  at  moments  threatened  their  whole 
enterprise  with  absolute  ruin,  it  was  some  time  before  the 
ground  on  which  they  had  landed  supported  them,  in  spite. of  its 
potential  fertility,  and  they  looked  across  the  sea  for  supplies. 
At  one  moment  so  hopeless  did  they  become  that  the  whole  colony 
embarked,  and  was  only  saved  from  abandoning  the  country  by 
the  opportune  arrival  of  help  from  abroad. 

At  last  they  took  root  in  the  land,  and  were  already  prospering 
when  the  Pilgrims  landed  at  Plymouth.  In  a  few  years  a  great 
inflow  of  settlers  began.  Four  of  the  present  states  of  New  Eng- 
land were  founded.  Virginia  waxed  apace.  The  Carolinas  grew 
up  to  the  south  of  it,  and  Maryland  to  the  north  of  it.  The 
Dutch  colonies  between,  which  had  already  absorbed  the  Swedish, 
were  in  their  turn  absorbed  by  the  English.  Pennsylvania  was 
founded  and,  later  still,  Georgia.  There  were  many  wars  with 
the  Indians  and  with  the  dauntless  captains  whose  banners  bore 
the  lilies  of  France.  At  last  the  British  flag  flew  without  a  rival 
in  all  eastern  North  America.  Then  came  the  successful  strug- 
gle for  national  independence. 

For  half  a  century  after  we  became  a  separate  nation  there 
was  comparatively  little  immigration  to  this  country.  Then  the 
tide  once  again  set  hither,  and  has  flowed  in  ever-increasing  size 
until  in  each  of  the  last  three  years  a  greater  number  of  people 
came  to  these  shores  than  had  landed  on  them  during  the  entire 
colonial  period.  Generation  by  generation  these  people  have  been 
absorbed  into  the  national  life.  Generally  their  sons,  almost 
always  their  grandsons,  are  indistinguishable  from  one  another 
and  from  their  fellow-Americans  descended  from  the  colonial 
stock. 


584 


t^&7^&{  *R  a'l  alike  the  problems  of  our  existence  are  funda- 
^  m  mentally  the  same,  and  for  all  alike  these  problems 

0m  KJ        change  from  generation  to  generation.    In  the  colo- 
nial period,  and  for  at  least  a  century  after  its  close, 
mW  m  I        the  conquest  of  the  continent,  the  expansion  of  our 
^^^^  people  westward,  to  the  Alleghenies.  then  to  the 

Mississippi,  then  to  the  Pacific,  was  always 
one  of  the  most  important  tasks,  and  sometimes  the  most 
important,  in  our  national  life.  Behind  the  first  settlers 
the  conditions  grew  easier,  and  in  the  older-settled  regions 
of  all  the  colonies  life  speedily  assumed  much  of  comfort  and 
something  of  luxury :  and  though  generally  it  was  on  a  much 
more  democratic  basis  than  life  in  the  Old  World,  it  was  by  no 
means  democratic  when  judged  by  our  modern  standards :  and 
here  and  there,  as  in  the  tide-water  regions  of  Virginia  a  genuine 
aristocracy  grew  and  flourished.  Rut  the  men  who  first  broke 
ground  in  the  virgin  wilderness,  whether  on  the  Atlantic  coast, 
or  in  the  interior,  fought  hard  for  mere  life.  In  the  early  stages 
the  frontiersman  had  to  battle  with  the  savage,  and  when  the 
savage  was  vanquished  there  remained  the  harder  strain  of  war 
with  the  hostile  forces  of  soil  and  climate,  with  flood,  fever,  and 
famine.  There  was  sickness,  and  bitter  weather ;  there  were  no 
roads :  there  was  a  complete  lack  of  all  but  the  very  roughest  and 
most  absolute  necessaries.  Under  such  circumstances  the  men 
and  women  who  made  ready  the  continent  for  civilization  were 
able  themselves  to  spend  but  little  time  in  doing  aught  but  the 
rough  work  which  was  to  make  smooth  the  ways  of  their  suc- 
cessors. In  consequence,  observers  whose  insight  was  spoiled  by 
lack  of  sympathy  always  found  both  the  settlers  and  their  lives 
unattractive  and  repellant.  Tti  Martin  Chuzzlewit  the  descrip- 
tion of  America,  culminating  in  the  description  of  the  frontier 
town  of  Eden,  was  true  and  lifelike  from  the  standpoint  of  one 
content  to  look  merely  at  the  outer  shell :  and  yet  it  was  a  com- 
munity like  Eden  that  gave  birth  to  Abraham  Lincoln  ;  it  was 
men  such  as  were  therein  described  from  whose  loins  Andrew 
"Jackson  sprang.  Each  generation  has  had  its  allotted  task, 
now  heavier,  now  lighter.  In  the  Revolutionary  War  the  busi- 
ness was  to  achieve  independence.  Immediately  afterwards  there 
was  an  even  more  momentous  task ;  that  to  achieve  the  national 
unity  and  the  capacity  for  orderly  development,  without  which 
our  liberty,  our  independence,  would  have  been  a  curse  and  not  a 
blessing.  In  each  of  these  two  contests,  while  there  were  many 
great  leaders  from  many  different  states,  it  is  but  fair  to  say  that 
the  foremost  place  was  taken  by  the  soldiers  and  the  statesmen  of 
Virginia :  and  to  Virginia  was  reserved  the  honor  of  producing 
the  hero  of  both  movements,  the  hero  of  the  war.  and  of  the 
peace  that  made  good  the  results  of  the  war — George  Washing- 
ton :  while  the  two  great  political  tendencies  of  the  time  can  be 
symbolized  by  the  names  of  two  other  great  Virginians — Jeffer- 
son and  Marshall — from  one  of  whom  we  inherit  the  abiding 
trust  in  the  people  which  is  the  foundation  stone  of  dem<>crac\ . 
and  from  the  other  the  power  to  develop  on  behalf  of  the  people 
a  coherent,  powerful  government,  a  representative  nationality. 


^  *  generations  passed  before  the  second  great 
crisis  of  our  history  had  to  be  faced.  Then  came  the 
Civil  War,  terrible  and  bitter  in  itself  and  in  its  after- 
math,  but  a  struggle  from  which  the  Nation  finally 
emerged  united  in  fact  as  well  as  in  name,  united  for- 
ever.  Oh,  my  hearers,  my  fellow  countrymen,  great 
indeed  has  been  our  good  fortune ;  for  as  time  clears 
away  the  mists  that  once  shrouded  brother  from  brother  and  made 
each  look  "as  through  a  glass  darkly"  at  the  other,  we  can  all  feel 
the  same  pride  in  the  valor,  the  devotion  and  the  fealty  toward  the 
right  as  it  was  given  to  each  to  see  the  right,  shown  alike  by  the 
men  who  wore  the  blue  and  by  the  men  who  wore  the  gray. 
Rich  and  prosperous  though  we  are  as  a  people,  the  proudest 
heritage  that  each  of  us  has,  no  matter  where  he  may  dwell,  North 
or  South,  East  or  West,  is  the  immaterial  heritage  of  feeling, 
the  right  to  claim  as  his  own  all  the  valor  and  all  the  steadfast 
devotion  to  duty  shown  by  the  men  of  both  the  great  armies, 
of  the  soldiers  whose  leader  was  (irant  and  the  soldiers 
whose  leader  was  Lee.  The  men  and  the  women  of  the 
Civil  War  did  their  duty  bravely  and  well  in  the  days  that  were 
dark  and  terrible  and  splendid.  We,  their  descendants,  who  pay 
proud  homage  to  their  memories,  and  glory  in  the  feats  of  might 
of  one  side  no  less  than  of  the  other,  need  to  keep  steadily  in 
mind  that  the  homage  which  counts  is  the  homage  of  heart  and 
of  hand,  and  not  of  the  lips,  the  homage  of  deeds  and  not  of 
words  only.  We,  too,  in  our  turn,  must  prove  our  truth  by  our 
endeavor.  We  must  show  ourselves  worthy  sons  of  the  men  of 
the  mighty  days  by  the  way  in  which  we  meet  the  problems  of 
our  own  time.  We  carry  our  heads  high  because  our  fathers  did 
well  in  the  years  that  tried  men's  souls ;  and  we  must  in  our  turn 
so  bear  ourselves  that  the  children  who  come  after  us  may  feel 
that  we  too  have  done  our  duty. 

We  cannot  afford  to  forget  the  maxim  upon  which  Washing- 
ton insisted,  that  the  surest  way  to  avert  war  is  to  be  prepared 
to  meet  it.  Nevertheless,  the  duties  that  most  concern  us  of  this 
generation  are  not  military,  but  social  and  industrial.  Each  com- 
munity must  always  dread  the  evils  which  spring  up  as  attendant 
upon  the  very  qualities  which  give  it  success.  We  of  this  mighty 
western  Republic  have  to  grapple  with  the  dangers  that  spring 
from  popular  self-government  tried  on  a  scale  incomparably 
vaster  than  ever  before  in  the  history  of  mankind,  and  from  an 
abounding  material  prosperity  greater  also  than  anything  which 
the  world  has  hitherto  seen. 

As  regards  the  first  set  of  dangers,  it  behooves  us  to  remem- 
ber that  men  can  never  escape  being  governed.  Either  they  must 
govern  themselves  or  they  must  submit  to  being  governed  by 
others.  If  from  lawlessness  or  fickleness,  from  folly  or  self- 
indulgence,  they  refuse  to  govern  themselves,  then  most  assur- 
edly in  the  end  they  will  have  to  be  governed  from  the  outside. 
They  can  prevent  the  need  of  government  from  without  only  by 
showing  that  they  possess  the  power  of  government  from  within. 


586 


SOVEREIGN  cannot  make  excuses  for  his  failures;  a 
sovereign  must  accept  the  responsibility  for  the 
exercise  of  the  power  that  inheres  in  him ;  and 
where,  as  is  true  in  our  Republic,  the  people  are 
sovereign,  then  the  people  must  show  a  sober 
understanding  and  a  sane  and  steadfast  purpose 
if  they  are  to  preserve  that  orderly  liberty  upon 
which  as  a  foundation  every  republic  must  rest. 

In  industrial  matters  our  enormous  prosperity  has  brought 
with  it  certain  grave  evils.  It  is  our  duty  to  try  to  cut  out  these 
evils  without  at  the  same  time  destroying  our  well-being  itself. 
This  is  an  era  of  combination  alike  in  the  world  of  capital  and  in 
the  world  of  labor.  Kach  kind  of  combination  can  do  good,  and 
yet  each,  however  powerful,  must  be  opposed  when  it  does  ill. 
At  the  moment  the  greatest  problem  before  us  is  how  to  exercise 
such  control  over  the  business  use  of  vast  wealth,  individual,  but 
especially  corporate,  as  will  insure  its  not  being  used  against  the 
interest  of  the  public,  while  yet  permitting  such  ample  legitimate 
profits  as  will  encourage  individual  initiative.  It  is  our  business 
to  put  a  stop  to  abuses  and  to  prevent  their  recurrence,  without 
showing  a  spirit  of  mere  vindictiveness  for  what  has  been  done  in 
the  past.  In  John  Morley's  brilliant  sketch  of  lUirke  he  lays  espe- 
cial stress  upon  the  fact  that  Uurke  more  than  almost  any  other 
thinker  or  politician  of  his  time  realized  the  profound  lesson  that 
in  politics  we  are  concerned  not  with  barren  rights  but  with 
duties;  not  with  abstract  truth,  but  with  practical  morality.  lie 
especially  eulogizes  the  way  in  which  in  his  efforts  for  economic 
reform.  liurke  combined  unshakable  resolution  in  pressing  the 
reform  with  a  profound  temperateness  of  spirit  which  made  him. 
while  bent  on  the  extirpation  of  the  evil  system,  refuse  to  cherish 
an  unreasoning  and  vindictive  ill-will  toward  the  men  who  had 
benefited  by  it.  Said  Uurke,  "If  1  cannot  reform  with  equity  I 
will  not  reform  at  all.  *  *  *  (There  is)  a  state  to  preserve 
as  well  as  a  state  to  reform." 

This  is  the  exact  spirit  in  which  this  country  should  move  to 
the  reform  of  abuses  of  corporate  wealth.  The  wrong-doer,  the 
man  who  swindles  and  cheats,  whether  on  a  big  scale  or  a  little 
one,  shall  receive  at  our  hands  mercy  as  scant  as  if  he  committed 
crimes  of  violence  or  brutality.  We  are  unalterably  determined 
to  prevent  wrongdoing  in  the  future;  we  have  no  intention  of 
trying  to  wreak  such  an  indiscriminate  vengeance  for  wrongs 
done  in  the  past  as  would  confound  the  innocent  with  the  guilty. 
( )ur  purpose  is  to  build  up  rather  than  to  tear  down.  We  show 
ourselves  the  truest  friends  of  property  when  we  make  it  evident 
that  we  will  not  tolerate  the  abuses  of  property.  We  are  steadily 
bent  on  preserving  the  institution  of  private  property;  we  combat 
every  tendency  toward  reducing  the  people  to  economic  servi- 
tude ;  and  we  care  not  whether  the  tendency  is  due  to  a  sinister 
agitation  directed  against  all  property,  or  whether  it  is  due  to  the 
.utiims  of  those  members  of  the  predatory  classes  whose  anti- 
social power  is  immeasurably  increased  because  of  the  very  fact 
that  they  jxissess  wealth. 


587 


]>OVE  all,  we  insist  that  while  facing  changed  condi- 
tions  and  new  problems,  we  must  face  them  in  the 
spirit  which  our  forefathers  showed  when  they 
founded  and  preserved  this  Republic.  The  corner- 
stone  of  the  Republic  lies  in  our  treating  each  man 
on  his  worth  as  a  man,  paying  no  heed  to  his 
creed,  his  birthplace,  or  his  occupation,  asking  not 
whether  he  is  rich  or  poor,  whether  he  labors  with  head  or 
hand ;  asking  only  whether  he  acts  decently  and  honorably 
in  the  various  relations  of  his  life,  whether  he  behaves 
well  to  his  family,  to  his  neighbors,  to  the  state.  We  base 
our  regard  for  each  man  on  the  essentials  and  not  the  acci- 
dents. We  judge  him  not  by  his  profession,  but  by  his  deeds ;  by 
his  conduct,  not  by  what  he  has  acquired  of  this  world's  goods. 
Other  republics  have  fallen,  because  the  citizens  gradually  grew 
to  consider  the  interests  of  a  class  before  the  interests  of  the 
whole ;  for  when  such  was  the  case  it  mattered  little  whether  it 
was  the  poor  who  plundered  the  rich  or  the  rich  who  exploited 
the  poor ;  in  either  event  the  end  of  the  Republic  was  at  hand. 
We  are  resolute  in  our  purpose  not  to  fall  into  such  a  pit.  This 
great  Republic  of  ours  shall  never  become  the  government  of  a 
plutocracy,  and  it  shall  never  become  the  government  of  a  mob. 
God  willing,  it  shall  remain  what  our  fathers  who  founded  it 
meant  it  to  be — a  government  in  which  each  man  stands  on  his 
worth  as  a  man,  where  each  is  given  the  largest  personal  liberty 
consistent  with  securing  the  well-being  of  the  whole,  and  where, 
so  far  as  in  us  lies,  we  strive  continually  to  secure  for  each  man 
such  equality  of  opportunity  that  in  the  strife  of  life  he  may  have 
a  fair  chance  to  show  the  stuff  that  is  in  him.  We  are  proud  of 
our  schools  and  of  the  trained  intelligence  they  give  our  children 
the  opportunity  to  acquire.  But  what  we  care  for  most  is  the 
character  of  the  average  man ;  for  we  believe  that  if  the  average 
of  character  in  the  individual  citizen  is  sufficiently  high,  if  he 
possesses  those  qualities  which  make  him  worthy  of  respect  in  his 
family  life  and  in  his  work  outside,  as  well  as  the  qualities  which 
fit  him  for  success  in  the  hard  struggle  of  actual  existence — that 
if  such  is  the  character  of  our  individual  citizenship,  there  is  liter- 
ally no  height  of  triumph  unattainable  in  this  vast  experiment  of 
government  by,  of,  and  for  a  free  people. 


These  Words  of  Wisdom  from  the  Man  who  has  been  chosen  by  the  People  of  the 
First  Republic  in  the  World  as  their  Leader,  mark  an  Epoch  in  the  annals  of  Mankind  - 
Spoken  at  the  Three  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  First  Permanent  English  Settle- 
ment in  America,  the  observance  of  which  is  now  drawing  to  a  close  at  Jamestown, 
Virginia,  they  are  emblazoned  on  these  pages  as  a  significant  contribution  to  American 
historical  literature -This  publication,  with  the  permission  of  the  President,  is  from  an 
autograph  copy  kindly  presented  by  Mr.  Roosevelt  to  The  Journal  of  American  History 


588 


of  tljr 

An    ®&e    tn    Amprira 


HY 
JUDGE    DANIEL,   j.    DONAIIOE 

AUTHOR  OF  "A  MKSXAI.K  T<>  AMERICANS"  IN  THK  ruetKniM.  mure  or 
TIIK  JOURNAL  OK  AMERICAN  HIMTORY 

®IIK  bloom  of  summer  shines  upon  the  world 
In  changing  glory;  over  field  and  grove 
Floats  a  soft  breathing,  and  a  voice  of  joy 
Rises  from  hill  and  valley.     Every  stream 
Mirrors  the  beauty  both  of  earth  and  sky, 
And,  murmurous  of  music,  runneth  on 
Above  the  shallows;  while  against  the  sun. 
Silent  and  broad,  the  curving  river  gleams 
Like  a  great  saber,  from  some  giant  hand 
Cast,  'mid  the  cloven  hills,  and  flashing  lies. 
A  symbol  of  eternal  power  and  peace. 

But  not  alone  the  granite  hills  that  stand 
Against  the  ocean,  and  the  river's  flood 
Moving  in  majesty,  make  manifest 
The  power  that  guards  the  nation.     On  each  hand 
Our  eyes  are  blessed  with  marvels  that  bespeak 
Man's  greatness,  and  the  sovereignty  he  bears 
O'er  nature's  forces.      Like  a  willing  slave. 
The  fettered  lightning  bows  unto  his  needs, 
And  trained  to  harmless  toil,  obeys  his  will. 
The  streams  that  leap  in  laughter  down  the  hills 
Are  caught  and  harnessed  to  the  restless  wheels 
That  sing  in  ceaseless  industry  ;  while  clouds, 
Rising  above  the  myriad-windowed  mills 
In  folds  of  light,  show  where  the  strength  of  steam 
Makes  great  the  cities  with  the  night  of  toil. 

Thus  is  the  power  of  labor  multiplied, 

And  thus  unto  the  toiler's  hand  brings  home, 

As  guerdon  of  his  skill,  unbounded  wealth, 

And  opportunity  wide  as  the  stars  ; 

While  peace,  with  shining  footsteps,  through  the  land 

Walks,  where  a  thousand  farmsteads,  rich  with  meads, 

Pastures  and  fields  of  tilth,  drink  in  the  rays 

Of  the  new  morn  that  rises  with  the  light 

Of  prophecy,  and  promises  to  all 

A  golden  harvest. 


Sutlers 
of  % 
S^titbltr 


OUND  each  village  spire, 

That,  pointing  starward,  speaks  eternal  truths, 

Cluster  a  group  of  cottages  with  lawns 

Wide  to  the  street.     These  are  the  glad  abodes 

Of  labor,  culture,  love  and  liberty. 

Here  nought  of  evil  on  the  surface  shows, 

Nor  cloud  of  sorrow  darkens ;  but  where'er 

The  gazer  turns,  such  happiness  as  blessed 

The  primal  Eden  seems  to  fill  the  land. 


Long  on  these  grateful  scenes  we  turn  our  eyes, 
Drinking  unto  our  souls  dreams  of  delight; 
And  backward  glancing,  lift  our  heads  aloft 
With  a  broad  meaning ;  for  we  see  how  broad 
Have  been  the  strides  of  progress  since  the  bell 
From  Independence  Hall  startled  the  world 
And  thrilled  the  people  with  new  life  and  hope. 
Nor  shall  the  present  and  the  past  suffice ; 
But  down  the  shining  slope  of  future  years 
We  peer  with  souls  high-swelling,  and  descry 
The  vision  of  the  wonders  yet  to  be. 


But  let  nor  pride  nor  hope  our  souls  deceive 
And  soothe  us  with  a  false  security ; 
Nay,  let  us  pause  amid  our  sunny  dreams 
And  pierce  with  searching  eye  the  golden  veil 
That  covers  o'er  with  splendor  all  the  land, 
Yet  hides,  perchance,  some  foul  or  evil  blight 
That  worketh  waste  or  woe.     Sharp  scrutiny 
Must  needs  be  made  of  license  and  of  law 
By  men  who  love  their  country  and  would  keep 
Her  strength  and  honor  safe.     This  wisdom  wills, 
Lest  all  too  confident,  in  strength  assured, 
Our  souls  become  elate  and  filled  with  pride 
Of  past  achievements,  both  in  peace  and  war. 
Of  foolish  dreams  of  greatness,  that  may  well 
Betray  us,  while  corruption  threatens  death. 

Neither  by  day  nor  night  may  rest  be  ours ; 
But  care  and  watching  shall  our  duty  be, 
For  we  are  toilers  still.     Our  work  remains 
All  unaccomplished,  while  a  flaw  abides, 
Or  chance  of  danger.     Perfect  government 
In  town  and  state  and  nation,  this  must  be 
Our  dear  ambition. 


And  though  hero  souls 
Are  ours,  and  ours  the  age  of  heroes,  God 
Demands  our  best  of  labor.   Serious  thought, 
Not  overweening  boasts,  will  satisfy 
The  everlasting  Justice.     Bowed  in  soul, 
True  servants,  we  must  look  for  Heaven's  behest, 
And  with  the  light  that  shineth  from  the  Throne, 
Bend  to  achieve  the  glory  of  His  will. 


590 


( )I<  may  we  our  stern  duty  minimize: 
As  men  of  might,  within  our  hand  is  placed 
A  sacred  charge  requiring  holiest  care, 
A  trust  that  brooks  no  faltering  in  faith. 


We  are  the  nation's  builders.     If  we  strive 
With  heart  and  hand  and  brain  to  raise  the  walls 
And  glorify  the  temple,  we  but  yield 
To  conscience  that,  with  unrelenting  voice, 
Guides  us  to  justice  ;  and  the  house  we  build 
Must  be  the  house  of  justice.     Light  and  law 
Shall  shine  within  its  portals.     Let  it  be 
A  palace  worthy  of  the  Lord,  whose  love 
Smiles  on  no  worthless  effort.     And  unless 
Me  build  with  us  our  labor  is  but  vain  ; 
And  our  achievements,  howsoever  brave, 
Are  like  the  splendors  of  a  sunset  cloud; 
And  howsoever  high  the  house  we  build, 
And  bright  with  grandeur,  'tis  a  Babel  Tower. 
A  monument  of  folly  and  of  shame. 

But  where  shall  we  find  justice?     Who  shall  guide 
Our  footsteps  lest  we  stumble  in  the  dark? 
Masked  in  the  garb  of  wisdom,  danger  walks. 
Lighting  false  beacons,  that  may  lead  to  death. 
While  boasting  of  supremacy  and  power. 

Let  us  beware.     This  increase  manifold 

Of  labor's  gain  from  nature's  mastered  powers.  — 

Where  shall  it  go?     Shall  men,  who  worship  wealth. 

Make  for  themselves  a  privilege  and  hold 

The  ninety  parts  and  nine,  while  labor's  host. 

The  mighty  army  that  has  made  the  wealth. 

Takes  but  the  single  unit  as  its  wage? 

Shall  the  rich  revel  in  wild  luxury, 

While,  as  in  France  of  old.  the  poor  attempt 

To  quell  their  hunger  with  the  grass,  like  beasts? 

1  f  men  are  thus  oppressed  what  power  can  save 

The  nation  from  disgrace?     Xo  wrong  can  live, 

But  ruin,  soon  or  late,  avenging  comes 

To  blaze  a  road  for  justice.     Then,  beware! 

Xot  for  the  money-changer  is  the  house 

Of  honor  builded.  but  for  men  whose  souls 

Look  heavenward  and  seek  the  things  of  God. 

Yet  in  our  temple  we  behold,  even  now, 

The  holy  place  proclaimed  as  Mammon's  throne  ; 

The  worshipers  of  wealth  its  walls  profane, 

And  on  its  altars  raise  a  golden  calf. 

Scorning  the  broader  Brotherhood  of  Christ, 

And  swollen  with  privilege,  in  robes  of  gold, 

The  priest  of  Mammon  lifts  his  impious  face. 

And  sends  hi>  proud  voice  echoing  through  the  skies: 


lUir 


of 


of 


God  of  the  golden  horn, 

Bright  in  thy  golden  rays; 
God  from  whose  hand  is  born 
All  that  our  lives  adorn, — 
God  of  the  golden  horn, 

Thee  we  adore  and  praise. 
Thou  that  art  proud  and  great, 

Honor  the  great  and  proud; 
Lift  up  our  souls  elate ; 
Keep  us  to  rule  the  state! 
Thou  that  art  proud  and  great, 

Hear  us;  our  heads  are  bowed. 

Ruler  of  ivcalth  and  ease, 
Keep  us  in  ease  and  wealth; 

Poverty,  toil,  disease  ; — 

Save  us  from  ills  like  these ; 

Ruler  of  wealth  and  case, 

Bless  us  with  peace  and  health. 

God  of  the  golden  horn, 
Thee  w>e  adore  and  praise; 

Safe  on  thy  strength  upborne, 

Lead  us  from  need  and  scorn; 

God  of  the  golden  horn, 

Guide  us  through  golden  days. 


OR  comes  less  danger  from  the  wretch,  whose 

fare  ^n    •  \  v 

Is  with  the  beast.  The  innocent  toiler,  stung 
By  hunger's  fangs,  may  grow  more  ravenous 
Than  tiger  in  the  jungle.  In  his  soul 

The  wrong  may  rankle,  and  break  forth  in  fire 

Whose  flame  shall  scorch  the  heavens.     When  the  cry 

Rose  from  the  rabid  masses  in  the  streets 

Of  Paris,  reason  slept;  and  nought  could  save 

The  crown  of  privilege  from  the  guillotine. 

How  shall  injustice  thrive  more  safely  here. 

And  walk  with  steps  impune  upon  the  neck 

Of  prostrate  industry?     Beware!  the  hour 

Of  reckoning  comes  and  danger's  signal  flies ! 

Have  ye  not  heard  the  shout  of  wild  despair 

That  rises  from  the  slums?     Your  hand  can  save 

Only  by  lifting  up  with  tenderness 

And  weighing  in  the  balances  of  Right 

The  portion  due  to  labor. 

All  too  long 

Justice  has  been  delayed.     The  dens  of  crime. 
Where  day  is  turned  to  night,  and  sin  Incomes 
The  stay  of  hunger,  threaten  to  destroy 
The  glory  of  your  building.     If  unmoved 
By  reason  and  pure  justice,  let  your  fear 
Arouse  your  souls  to  honor.     Moloch's  sons. 
A  hideous  host,  are  in  your  temple  now, 
And  loud  in  adoration.     Hear  their  hymn ! 


593 


ijgmu  of  ilj? 


MS,  O  Goo1  o/  Shame, 

Moloch!  we  call  thy  name, 
And  seek  thy  evil  service,  poiver  divine! 

To  thee  we  bend  the  knee ; 

We  look  for  help  to  thee; 
Crushed  in  the  mire  of  sin,  our  souls  are  thine. 


Thou  baneful  deity, 

We  sacrifice  to  thee 
Our  children;  soul  and  body  they  arc  thine! 

Through  long  and  iveary  years, 

Through  misery  and  tears, 
They  bow  beneath  thy  influence  unbenign. 

What  boots  it,  loathsome  god, 
To  feel  the  cruel  rod, 

Unless  we  gain  the  pleasures  that  ive  seek? 
'Mid  drudgery  and  grime 

We  find  our  good  in  crime, 
With  flinty  hearts  and  bloody  hands  that  reek. 


594 


OT  out  of  gilded  palaces  shall  come 
Abiding  righteousness ;  nor  shall  we  seek 
An  uplift  from  the  rotting  tenements. 
These  are  alike  sure  tokens  of  disease 

01    tll£  That  warn  the  nation  of  impending  death. 

-0  -  - »  Not  out  of  these  our  dreams  of  grandeur  come ; 

J\l  JJIUHU  put  from  trie  farmsteads  and  the  toilers'  homes, 

Scattered  like  new-blown  roses  o'er  the  hills, 
And  through  the  sounding  valleys,  where  the  streams 
Roar  through  their  channels,  loud  with  cheerful  toil. 

<       !     . :    i  i    , :     .    . 
Out  of  such  homes  may  wisdom  hear  the  voice 

Of  freedom  chanting  hymns  of  sacred  peace ; 

Out  of  such  homes  alone  the  call  shall  lead 

To  honor's  court,  where  even-handed  right 

Demands  that  crime,  in  hovel  or  in  hall, 

Shall  suffer  equal  shame.     The  hour  requires 

Strong  men,  brave  men  of  wisdom  and  of  will 

To  break  the  sleep  of  justice.     Let  her  rise 

And  render  unto  every  man  his  due. 

Both  interest  and  wages,  while  the  land, 

With  all  the  unbought  gifts  of  bounteous  heaven, 

Shall  bear  the  nation's  burden. 

This  must  come ; 

For  only  by  its  coming  may  we  hope 
To  build  aright  our  temple's  holy  walls 
And  rear  its  hallowed  altars ;  only  thus 
The  law  of  love  shall  fill  its  ample  space 
With  such  effulgence  as  can  never  pale. 


-d 


labor  shall  uplift  a  thousand  homes, 
True  shrines  of  godliness  and  liberty, 
Where  now  the  castle  of  the  millionaire 
^^  ^J       Usurps  with  gorgeous  insolence  the  land, 

And  holds  wide  acres  in  dead  idleness. 
Out  of  the  slums  pale  children  shall  be  brought 
To  rise  and  run  in  new-found  life  and  joy, 
To  play  like  the  young  lambs  among  the  fields, 
And  sing  like  birds  under  the  blue  heaven. 
The  haunts  of  pestilence  and  poverty, 
Where  beggared  merit  oft  in  hunger  weeps, 
With  dens  of  degradation,  sin  and  death, 
Like  the  rich  robber's  hold  shall  be  brought  low 
And  the  pure  winds  of  heaven  shall  breathe  thereon. 
The  city  streets  and  the  wide  country-side 
Shall  sweeten  like  flower-gardens  in  God's  air ; 
And  men  shall  lift  their  faces  to  the  stars, 
Unscathed  by  wrong,  guiltless  of  infamy. 

Then  shall  our  hearts  be  lifted  up  to  heaven 

When  we  behold  the  bloom  upon  the  hills ; 

And  to  the  voice  of  gladness  from  the  vales 

Our  souls  shall  swell  in  answer.     Evermore 

The  river  in  its  silent  course  shall  gleam, 

Like  a  great  saber,  flashing  to  the   skies, 

A  symbol  of  eternal  power  and  peace. 

Then  from  the  earth  shall  rise,  in  thunder-tones, 

The  blessings  of  the  ransomed  multitudes ; 

Forever  swell  along  the  echoing  skies, 

The  song  of  neither  arrogance  nor  shame, 

But  a  true  hymn  of  glory  unto  God, 

From  souls  strong  with  the  brotherhood  of  love. 


596 


'THE  PASSING  OF  THE  DAY  OF  GREED" 


Symbolic  Photograph  by  John  Gudebrod  of 

New  York 

Taken  in  the  Early  Evening  at  Castle  Craig  on  the 
Peaks  of  Meriden 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OP  THE  HEART  OP  THE  SOUTH-An  Allegorial  Pigure 
bearing  a  Palm  of  Peace  and  Kranch  of  Laurel  covering  the  Sword, 
an  Emblem  of  Glory— By  Louis  Ainateis,  Sculptor— 
For  Erection  at  Houston,  Texas 


''   1 


tt  of  tfjr 


O  God  of  life  and  lore  and  light, 
U  Y  send  our  voice  in  song  to  thee; 

Thy  hand  Iiath  led  us  through  the  night, 
T/iy  power  Iiath  raised  and  made  its  free. 


Be  still  our  guide,  our  strength,  our  stay; 

Blest  by  Thy  name  from  shore  to  shore, 
To  Thee  we  turn  both  night  and  day, 

From  humbled  hearts  thy  graee  implore. 


Let  justice,  truth  and  love  abound; 

Keep  us  as  brothers,  hand  in  hand; 
Be  neither  fear  nor  falsehood  found, 

Nor  greed  nor  hunger  mar  the  land. 


A  ransomed  nation,  strong  and  free, 
Let  grateful  lore  our  aims  upraise; 

God  of  our  fathers,  unto  Thee 
We  send  our  songs  in  holy  praise. 


A  TRIBUTE  TO  1'E  ACS— Lunette  on  McKinley  Memorial  at  Canton,  Ohio  Central  figure  of  "Peace"  hearing  the  ancient  breast- 
plate designating  the  protection,  wisdom,  fame  and  guardian  peace  which  distinguished  McKinley's  administration— The  two  figures 
under  her  mantle  are  "War,"  a  youth  full  of  ardor  laying  down  his  arms  at  her  feet,  and  "Industry"— By  C.  H.  Xk-haus.  Sculptor 


i>ntl;pture  in  Ammra 


MKRICA  is  witnessing  the 
dawn  of*  its  Age  of 
Art.  The  foundation 
has  been  strongly  laid 
for  its  magnificent  ma- 
terial upbuilding:  the 
ugly  lines  in  its  struct- 
ure of  finance  are  being  remodelled 
and  its  great  pillars  of  civic  purity  are 
re-set  on  solid  rock.  It  is  the  begin- 
ning of  an  epoch  of  poets  who  will 
sing  of  strength  of  American  man- 
hood :  of  nainters  whose  brushes  will 
tell  the  story  of  American  virtue;  of 
sculptors  whose  genius  will  create 
from  stone  tributes  to  Fidelity,  to 
Truth,  and  to  justice — to  all  lives 


consecrated  to  the  service  of  God  and 
Man.  Americans  are  feeling  the  in- 
spiration of  Art.  The  voice  of  the 
people — Xorth.  South,  East  and  West 
— is  calling  upon  the  genius  of  the 
sculptor  to  idealize  their  conception 
of  courage  and  daring  and  achieve- 
ment. The  year  now  closing  has 
given  truer  encouragement  to  sculp- 
ture than  any  other  twelve-month  in 
American  life.  In  recognition  of  this 
new  a?stheticism,  especially  as  it  re- 
lates to  men  and  events  of  historic 
eminence,  reproductions  of  some  of 
the  year's  work  of  sculpture  in  Amer- 
ica are  presented  in  these  pages  and 
dedicated  to  the  mission  of  Art. 


PROSPERITY— Pediment  by  C.  H.  Niehaus  at  Kentucky  State  Capitol 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  GREAT  AMERICAN  M ATERIALIST-Coloncl  John  A. 
Roebling,  First  Engineer  of  Brooklyn  Bridge— Builder  of  the  Great  Span 
across  Niagara  Falls— By  William  Couper,  Sculptor— 
For  Erection  at  Trenton,  New  Jersey 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  GERMAN -AMKK1CAN  SOLDIER- General  Franz  Sigel- 
By  Karl  Bitter,  Sculptor -For  Riverside  Drive,  New  York  City 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OP  THE  TEXAS  RANGERS— By  Pompeo  Coppini,  Sculptor- 
Erected  at  the  State  House  in  Austin,  Texas 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OP  AMERICAN  SACRIFICE-By  Bela  Lyon  Pratt, 
Sculptor— Erected  at  the  old  Andersonville  Prison 
grounds  in  Georgia 


TO    THE    MEMORY    OF    THE    AMERICAN    SOLDIER 
By  Finn  H.  Prolich,  Sculptor— For  the  Monument 
to  Soldiers  and  Sailors  at  Webster, 
Massachusetts 


TO    THE    MEMORY    OP   THE    AMERICAN   SAILOR- 
By  Finn  H.  Krolich,  Sculptor— For  the  Monument 
to  Soldiers  and  Sailors  at  Webster, 
Massachusetts 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  AN  AMERICAN  WARRIOR-General  George  Brinton  McClellan- 
By  Frederick  MacMonnies,  Sculptor— Erected  at  Washington,  District  of  Columbia 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OP  THE  DISPATCH  RIDER  OF  THE  WAR  FOR  AMERICAN  INDEPENDENCE— 
By  Prank  Edwin  Elwell,  Sculptor— Erected  at  Orange,  New  Jersey 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OP  THE  FIRST  FALLEN  IN  SPANISH-AMERICAN  WAR— 
Ensign  Worth  Bagley,    U.  S.  N.,  the  only  Naval  Officer  killed  during 
that    war— By    F.    H.    Packer.    Sculptor— Erected    in 
Capitol  Square,  Raleigh,  North  Carolina 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  SOUTHERN  WARRIOR -General  John  B.  Gordon-By  Solon  H. 
Borglum,  Sculptor— Erected  at  State  Capitol  Grounds  at  Atlanta,  Georgia 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  MARTYRED  PRESIDENT— William  McKinley- 
By  Charles  H.  Niehaus,  Sculptor— Erected  in  bronze  in  front 
of  the  National  Memorial  at  Canton,  Ohio 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  KOTdH  KIDKK  WITH  ROOSEVELT  AT 
SANTIAGO  -Captain  "Huckey"  o'Xrill— Killed  In 
Battle— By  Solon  H.  Borglum,  Sculptor- 
Erected  at  Prescott.  Arizona 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  FIRST  AMERICANS-Statue  of  the  Indian  Chief, 
Mahaska-By  S.  E.  Fry,  Sculptor— Now  being  exhibited  In  the  Salon 
at  I'aris— To  be  erected  at  Oskaloosa,  Iowa . 


Atttttw?r0art?H  of  ify*  Ammrana 

(Dnr  Sfimftrriitlj  Annitirraarg  of  Hjr  Virib.  of  Wljtttlrr 
thr  Part  -*  tZtoa  Ijuu&rrotli  Ammirruaru,  of  Strth; 
of  tljr  IHnthrr  of  9aBtfinoyton  J*  (Dne 
Auninrrcarij  of  UlaBljtngton  3mtno/0  "  fc 
anb  William  QJullrn  Srgant'a  "  umbargu " 
(Crntunj  Aiuunrraant  of  thr  "Atlantic 


IS  is  the  one  hundredth 
^  anniversary  of  the  found- 

ing1  of  one  of  the  first  lit- 
I  L  erary  periodicals  in  the 
American  Republic,  by 
one  who  is  frequently 
considered  the  first  great 
American  of  letters.  One  hundred 
years  ago,  Washington  Irving,  a 
youth  of  twenty-four,  established,  in 
1807,  the  "Salmagundi"  along  the 
lines  developed  by  Addison's  "Specta- 
tor." Associated  with  him  were  his 
brother,  William  Irving,  and  James 
K.  Paulding,  who  was  a  facile  essay- 
ist and  humorist.  Literature  did  not 
prove  a  profitable  trade  in  America 
and  the  journal  was  short-lived.  Irv- 
ing abandoned  intellectual  pursuits, 
but,  after  failures  in  the  mercantile 
world,  returned  to  literature  when  it 
had  become  more  acceptable  to  the 
American  people.  One  hundred 
years  ago,  there  were  but  few  period- 
icals in  America,  and  they  were 
struggling  for  a  bare  existence.  The 
first  attempt  to  establish  an  English 
newspaper  in  America  was  intended 
as  a  monthly,  in  Boston,  in  1690.  It 
carried  the  dignified  title  of  Publick 
Occurrences,  both  Foreign  and  Do- 
mcstick,  and  was  immediately  sup- 
pressed by  the  authorities.  The  first 
weekly  newspaper  printed  in  North 
America  was  the  Boston  Neivs  Letter, 
which  appeared  in  1704.  The  first 
daily  newspaper  in  America  was  The 
American  Daily  Advertiser,  pub- 
lished in  Philadelphia  in  1784.  The 
first  American  literary  periodical  was 
The  American  Magazine  in  1741. 
Three  days  later,  Franklin  issued  his 
General  Mazazine.  Both  publications 
were  destined  to  become  early  failures. 

6,3 


This  is  the  one  hundredth  anniver- 
sary of  the  birth  of  the  American 
poet,  John  Greenleaf  Whittier.  The 
centenary  will  be  observed  by  the 
literary  culture  of  America  on 
the  seventeenth  of  this  December. 
Whittier  was  born  at  Haverhill,  Mas- 
sachusetts. His  parents  were  Quak- 
ers, and  he  was  reared  on  a  farm  un- 
til his  eighteenth  year.  When 
twenty-two  years  of  age  he  became 
editor  of  The  American  Manufactu- 
rer at  Boston,  but  one  year  later, 
accepted  the  editorship  of  the  Con- 
necticut Mirror  at  Hartford.  It  was 
here  that  he  began  the  culture  of  his 
poetic  genius,  and  entered  the  hearts 
of  the  American  people.  The  be- 
loved poet  died  at  the  grand  old  age 
of  eighty-five  years,  at  Hampden 
Falls,  New  Hampshire.  Shortly  be- 
fore his  death,  he  told  a  friend  that 
he  had  written  about  five  hundred 
poems.  The  first  collected  edition  of 
Whittier's  poems  was  published  just 
fifty  years  ago.  To  his  memory 
these  lines  from  his  own  pen  are  re- 
called : 

44  But  still  I  wait  with  ear  and  eye 

For  something  gone  which  should  be  nigh, 

A  loss  in  all  familiar  things, 

In  flower  that  blooms  and  bird  that  sings. 

And  yet,  dear  heart!  remembering  thee, 

Am  I  not  richer  than  of  old  ? 

Safe  in  thy  immortality. 
What  change  can  reach  the  wealth  I  hold  ? 
What  chance  can  mar  the  pearl  and  gold  'f 
Thy  love  hath  left  jn  trust  with  me  ? 
And  while  in  life's  late  afternoon, 

Where  cool  and  long  the  shadows  grow, 
I  walk  to  meet  the  night  that  soon 

Shall  shape  and  shadow  overflow. 
I  cannot  feel  that  them  art  far, 
Since  near  at  need  the  angels  are ; 
And  when  the  sunset  gates  unbar, 

Shall  I  not  see  thee  waiting  stand, 
And  white  against  the  evening  star, 

The  welcome  of  thy  beckonmg  hand  ? " 


Ameriran  Ifenpl* — 1911? 


is  the  two  hundredth 
^  anniversary  of  the  birth 

of  the  mother  of  "The 
il  Father  of  Our  Country," 
George  Washington,  the 
first  president  of  the 
United  States.  The  bi- 
centennial is  observed  by  the  first  fam- 
ilies of  the  South  who  treasure  the 
memory  of  this  good  woman.  Mary 
Ball  was  born  in  Virginia  in  1707. 
At  twenty-three  years  of  age,  she 
became  the  second  wife  of  Augustin 
Washington,  whom  she  married  in 
1730.  She  was  left  a  widow  with  six 
children  in  her  thirty-sixth  year.  In 
prudence  and  tenderness  she  led 
them  to  the  beauty  of  maturity.  Her 
great  mother-heart  returned  to  its 
Creator  in  the  joy  of  having  lived  to 
know  the  fullest  blessings  of  life — the 
mother's  joy  of  knowing  that  her  chil- 
dren are  living  in  honor  and  venera- 
tion. She  died  in  the  splendor  of  her 
eighty-second  year,  having  witnessed 
a  few  months  previously  the  magni- 
ficent spectacle  of  her  oldest  son 
chosen  as  the  first  great  leader  of  the 
world's  first  republic.  There  is  an  in- 
teresting story  that  may  be  appropri- 
ately related  at  this  time:  Mother 
Washington,  when  her  son  George 
was  fourteen  years  of  age,  consented 
to  his  joining  the  English  Navy.  The 
boy's  baggage  was  actually  put  on 
board  of  one  of  the  king's  ships,  an- 
chored on  the  Potomac,  when  the 
mother's  heart  failed  her,  and  she 
plead  with  him  to  remain  on  Ameri- 
can soil.  It  is  interesting  to  conjec- 
ture what  might  have  resulted  if  her 
counsel  had  not  prevailed.  It  is  very 
probable  that  the  environment  and 
friendship  of  the  English  Navy  would 
have  made  him  as  loyal  to  the  crown 
as  he  later  proved  to  American  lib- 
erty. It  is  even  possible  that  as  an 
English  naval  officer  he  might  have 
fought  under  the  king's  colors  in  the 
American  Revolution.  Another  in- 
teresting bi-centennial  anecdote  was 
brought  to  light  a  few  days  ago.  It 
relates  to  the  first  public  recognition 
of  George  Washington,  and  was  writ- 


ten by  an  English  army  officer  under 
the  ill-starred  General  Braddock.  The 
appreciation  was  published  in  Scot's 
Magazine  of  Edinburgh,  in  1757,  a 
year  after  the  famous  defeat.  The 
officer  who  wrote  the  letter  said  that 
the  entire  command  would  have  been 
annihilated  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
bravery  and  sagacity  of  Major  George 
Washington  and  Captain  Stephen 
Rozzell  Donohoe,  of  the  Alexandria 
rifles.  A  faded  copy  of  this  maga- 
zine is  exhibited  with  pardonable 
pride  by  the  seventh  Stephen  Rozzell 
Donohoe,  who  is  now  the  editor  of 
the  county  paper  at  Fairfax  Court 
House,  Virginia.  The  greatness  of 
Washington  was  due  largely  to  the 
strong  character  molded  by  his  beau- 
tiful mother.  In  recognition  of  this 
devoted  American  woman,  the  Amer- 
ican people  bow  in  reverence  on  this 
bi-centennial  of  her  birth. 


One  hundred  years  ago,  the  Ameri- 
can poet,  William  Cullen  Bryant,  first 
won  distinction  by  his  poem  "The 
Embargo."  The  year  1807  was  one 
of  political  turmoil.  The  victories  of 
Napoleon  were  threatening  the  future 
of  the  Western  Continent.  It  was 
generally  believed  that  he  intended  to 
force  America  to  bow  to  his  sover- 
eignty. Aaron  Burr  was  indicted  for 
treason  and  it  was  freely  predicted 
that  the  end  of  the  American  Repub- 
lic was  near.  Bryant,  then  a  boy  of 
but  thirteen  years,  caught  the  spirit  of 
the  times, and  won  his  first  distinction. 
Twenty  one  years  later,  he  became 
the  editor-in-chief  of  the  New  York 
Evening  Post,  which  for  fifty  years 
he  endowed  with  the  literary  individ- 
uality which  it  still  maintains. 


This  is  also  the  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  America's  minister  of  literary  cul- 
ture, the  Atlantic  Monthly,  which  was 
established  in  the  fall  of  1857.  Dur- 
ing the  last  half  century,  the  vene- 
rated Atlantic  has  gathered  about  it 
the  literary  genius  of  the  epoch  and 
has  done  distinguished  service  to 
American  letters  and  intellectuality. 


ONB  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  POUNDING  OF  THE  "SALMAGUNDI,"  in  1807- One  of  the  first 
literary  periodicals  in  the  American  Republic,  modelled  upon  Addison's  "Spectator,*1  under  the  editorship  of  Washing- 
ton Irving  who  gathered  about  him  the  literary  culture  of  the  Nation — Reproduction  from  an  old  engraving  after  a  paint- 
ing by  Alonzo  Chappel— Likeness  from  a  daguerreotype  in  the  possession  of  the  family  of  the  distinguished  litterateur 


WE'T 

(lament  of  qur  Sauiour 
lefus  Christ. 


ROT*.;. 

^T  I  am  not  afhamcd  o/rhe  Gofpel  of 
Chrift ,  bccaufe  it  is  the  ppwer  of 
God  vnto  faluation  to  au  that  bc- 
lecue» 


M  m  m.iiii. 


PHOTOGRAPHIC  REPRODUCTION  OF  THE  TITLE-PAGE  OF  FAMOUS  OLD  "BISHOP'S  BIBLE"— 
Published  la  1584,  and  still  in  possession  of  Seymour  Family  in  America— A  survival  of  earliest  book-making 


Olnntw^nt  t«  a  (Oarmron 


HrrullrrtUmfi 

n  f  a  Jimrnrg  from  IXrui 

fork  Hjronglj  tlj*  WraUrn  Htlomtwa  ani 

nu*r  tlje  Rorkg  IHoutitaina  lu  tlj*  farifir  tn  104fi  J* 

Aourntnrrfl  nrttlj  tiff  Jnotana  •*  JFlrBl  BtBnrorru.  cf  (Sola  J*  3Flrat 

miiitr   <£t|U&  Burn   tn  California   •.*    Exprrirnrro   of  (Captatu   3Juurph   Aram 

BY 

COLONEL  JAMES  TOMPKINS  WATSON 

CLINTON,  N«w  YORK 

MEXBER  or  THE  AMERICA*  HUTOBICAI.  Soonrrr—  THB  NBW  YORK  STATB   HISTORICAL  SOCIETY—  THB  OixntA 

HISTORICAL  SOCIETY  AT  UTICA 


has  been  my  fortune  to 
know  personally  some  of 
the  first  Americans  to 
cross  the  continent  and 
lay  the  foundation  for  the 
wonderful  building  of  the 
Golden  West.  Among 
my  acquaintances  is  the  first  white 
child  born  in  California;  also  one  of 
the  first  pupils  in  the  first  American 
school  on  the  Pacific  coast.  It  is  to 
the  memory  of  his  father,  who  was 
the  first  signer  of  the  old  constitution 
of  California  and  a  member  of  the 
first  legislature,  that  these  incidents 
are  related. 

The  first  American  emigrant 
wagon -train  reached  California 
eighty-one  years  ago,  and  there  are 
but  few  living  who  remember  it  It 
was  not  until  the  discovery  of  gold 
some  twenty  years  later  that  the  Land 
of  Sunshine  claimed  the  full  attention 
of  the  world.  There  are  a  few  pa- 
triarchs still  living  who  crossed  the 
continent  in  the  gold  craze  of  1849. 
It  was  three  years  before  this  that  the 
man  of  whom  I  now  write,  Captain 
Joseph  Aram,  undertook  the  hazard- 
ous journey  with  his  family.  Reach- 
ing California  in  September,  1846,  he 
camped  near  the  Yalu  river,  and  his 
wife,  while  engaged  in  doing  the  fam- 
ily washing  at  the  river-bank,  picked 
up  some  thin  scales  of  gold  the  size  of 
a  ten  cent  silver  coin.  This  was  the 
first  discovery  of  gold. 

The  country  was  being  harassed 
from  Mexico.  There  were  rumors 


that  it  was  to  be  seized  by  England. 
Fremont  was  in  command  of  the 
Americans  who  had  proclaimed  a  re- 
public. Pioneer  Aram  was  stationed 
as  a  captain  at  Fort  Santa  Clara  and 
here,  on  January  26,  1848,  was  born 
the  first  American  child  in  California 
—  Eugene  Aram,  who  has  since  been 
identified  with  the  development  of 
Arizona  and  legal  practice  on  the 
Pacific  coast. 

With  Captain  Aram's  expedition, 
in  crossing  the  plains,  was  Dr.  Isbell 
and  his  wife,  "Aunt  Olive,"  who 
gathered  the  children  of  the  wilder- 
ness under  her  care  and,  without 
books,  instructed  them  by  writing  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet  with  a  pencil 
on  the  backs  of  their  hands.  This 
was  the  beginning  of  the  first  Amer- 
ican school  on  the  Pacific  coast.  It 
is  a  far  cry  from  the  first  small  be- 
ginning of  our  American  schools  in 
California  to  Stanford  University 
and  the  State  University  at  Berkeley, 
and  yet  one  woman's  life,  and  she  not 
aged,  and  still  wearing  her  years 
lightly,  has  spanned  the  entire  devel- 
opment and  growth  of  the  school  sys- 
tem of  the  state.  Mrs.  Sarah  M. 
Cool,  now  residing  in  Los  Angeles, 
is  the  daughter  of  Captain  Aram,  and 
as  a  child  of  ten  years  was  a  pupil  in 
the  first  California  school. 

Mrs.  Cool  often  recalls  her  experi- 
ences as  a  ten-year-old  girl  in  passing 
through  the  wilds  of  Middle  and 
Western  America  from  New  York  to 
California  in  1846,  her  acquaintance 


ilf*  Ammran  (Enntttmtt  in  a  (Earanan 


with  Fremont,  and  the  memory  of  her 
father's  planting  the  first  nursery  in 
the  land  now  known  world-wide  for 
its  wonders  in  horticulture. 

In  recently  speaking  of  these  pio- 
neer days  she  said  that  when  they 
arrived  at  the  Old  Mission  they  were 
welcomed  by  most  of  the  ills  that  flesh 
is  heir  to.  The  floors  were  of  earth 
and  the  fires  were  built  in  the  corners 
of  the  rooms.  They  suffered  much 
sickness  during  the  first  winter  and 
were  kept  in  a  state  of  constant  alarm 
by  their  Mexican  neighbors.  All 


JOSEPH 

ARAM  was  born  in 
1810,  in  New  York 
state,  in  a  large  two- 
story  house  built  by  his 
father  on  the  south  side 
of  the  old  Senaca  Turn- 
pike leading  from  Utica  to  Buffalo, 
about  five  miles  west  of  Utica,  and  a 
short  distance  west  of  the  village  of 
New  Hartford,  which  at  that  time  was 
a  strong  competitor  of  Utica  in  the 
race  for  supremacy.  The  house  has 
recently  been  renovated  and  is  a  fine 
mansion  to-day.  A  large  meadow 
directly  across  the  pike  was  used  for 
the  annual  parade  and  drill  of  the 
state  militia.  His  father,  Captain 
Matthias  Aram,  who  had  been  con- 
nected with  the  English  soldiery  in 
England  before  he  emigrated  to 
America,  was  skilled  in  army  tactics 
and  acted  as  drillmaster.  Captain 
Aram's  ancestry  were  English  and 
Scotch.  His  father  was  a  recent 
arrival.  On  his  mother's  side  the 
Tompkin's  branch  took  grants  of  land 
in  Ireland  under  Oliver  Cromwell. 
The  Hanna  branch  came  to  Ireland  in 
the  time  of  King  James  First  and  set- 
tled in  the  north  part  of  the  island  in 
and  near  Londonderry  and  were  in 
that  city  when  it  was  besieged  by 
James  the  Second  and  suffered  great 
hardships.  The  Hanna  family  later 
located  in  Kings  County,  of  which 
the  Honorable  Nathaniel  Hanna  was 
sheriff  about  1760  to  1770.  The  un- 


doors  and  windows  were  closed  at 
nightfall,  and  all  callers  were  refused 
entrance.  Good  bread  was  a  luxury. 
The  only  means  to  crush  the  wheat 
and  corn  was  by  a  hand  mill  or  stones. 
Wild  cattle  covered  the  plains.  A 
fat  steer  cost  three  dollars  and  you 
could  get  one  dollar  for  the  hide. 

It  is  of  her  father,  one  of  the  first 
citizens  of  California,  that  I  now  re- 
late. My  life  has  been  largely  spent 
in  the  vicinity  of  his  birth  and  the 
scenes  of  his  boyhood  days  are  all 
familiar  to  me. 


settled  condition  of  the  country  led 
them  to  consider  discretion  the  better 
part  of  valor  and  about  1770  the  sev- 
eral branches  of  the  family  joined  Sir 
William  Johnson's  Colony  at  and  near 
Johnstown.  Captain  Aram's  branch, 
led  by  his  great-grandfather,  the  ex- 
sheriff,  joined  the  Colony  of  Bishop 
Emburg  and  settled  in  Cambridge, 
Washington  County,  in  1770.  At  the 
little  hamlet  of  Ash-Grave  they  built 
their  church  in  1788,  which  was  the 
second  Methodist  Church  built  in 
America. 

They  came  to  a  country  just  enter- 
ing into  the  throes  of  a  bloody  Civil 
War.  Like  all  other  families,  they 
were  divided  in  their  ideas  of  loyalty 
to  king  or  colony.  I  find  it  a  difficult 
matter  to  trace  the  war  record  of  the 
family  during  the  Revolution.  I  do 
not  find  that  any  of  them  disting- 
uished themselves  by  acts  of  valor  on 
either  side.  A  few  of  them  found  it 
expedient  to  move  to  Canada,  but  I 
think  the  greater  part  kept  quiet  as 
possible  or  "sat  on  the  fence."  They 
were  too  recent  arrivals  to  have  very 
much  sympathy  with,  or  for  the 
Dutch  settlers  of  the  Mohawk  Valley. 

Mrs.  Sara  Tompkins,  daughter  of 
Nathaniel  Hanna,  esquire,  and  grand- 
mother of  Captain  Joseph  Aram,  was 
born  in  Ireland,  1759,  died  in  West- 
moreland, New  York,  1847.  She 
lived  a  long  and  useful  life  and  left 
six  gray-headed  sons  and  daughters 
to  mourn  her  loss.  She  was  truly  a 

618 


OLD  PRAIRIE  SCHOONER  AND  STAGE  COACH  OF  FIRST  DAYS  IN  THE  WEST- Photograph 
taken  of  two  ancient  relics  of  early  American  pioneer  life— Originals  are  at  Sutler's  Port  in  Sacramento, 
California,  which  is  maintained  as  a  museum  by  the  Native  Sons  and  Daughters  of  the  Golden  West— The 
stage  coach  is  riddled  with  bullets  through  its  encounters  with  early  outlaws  and  pioneer  highwaymen 


faithful  and  true  American  mother. 

The  boyhood  of  Joseph  Aram  was 
much  like  that  of  your  father's  and 
mine.  There  was  the  post-rider  and 
the  stage ;  the  grist-mill  was  the  pivot 
of  industry;  the  tavern. and  meeting- 
house were  the  social  centers.  The 
savage  West  was  more  impenetrable 
than  the  Africa  of  to-day,  but  young 
Aram  had  a  longing  to  blaze  his  way 
through  its  wilds,  and  laid  prepara- 
tions for  the  hazardous  undertaking. 

It  was  on  the  first  day  of  May,  1846, 
that  he  joined  his  little  company  of 
friends  at  a  place  called  Independ- 
ence, on  the  same  side  of  the  river,  to 
prepare  for  their  long  and  hazardous 
trip.  They  lost  but  little  time  in  mak- 
ing the  necessary  preparations  for  an 
early  start  on  the  long  journey.  Here 
they  were  joined  by  two  men  by  the 
name  of  Taggart  who  accompanied 
them  to  California.  Captain  Aram 
spared  no  pains  in  rigging  his  wagon 
to  make  it  as  comfortable  as  possible ; 
by  extending  the  wagon  bed  one  foot 
over  the  sides  to  give  more  room,  he 
procured  bows  of  a  proper  shape  for 
forming  the  cover,  which  was  over- 
laid with  half  inch  lumber  nicely  fitted 
over  the  bows,  and  then  covered  with 
oilcloth,  making  the  top  water-tight; 


the  sides  were  covered  with  heavy 
canvas  that  could  be  tightly  fitted 
down  to  exclude  the  night  air  when 
desirable.  He  had  a  small  cooking- 
stove  in  the  rear  end  of  the  wagon 
which  answered  a  good  purpose  by 
keeping  everything  dry  in  the  wagon, 
as  they  had  much  rain  during  the 
month  of  May.  In  traveling  through 
Iowa  they  pursued  a  southwesterly 
course,  as  they  intended  to  cross  the 
Missouri  river  at  St.  Jo.  After  trav- 
eling a  few  weeks  they  struck  the 
Mormon  trail.  It  will  be  recollected 
that  the  people  of  Illinois  had  become 
so  dissatisfied  with  the  Mormons  at 
Nativoo  that  they  gave  them  notice 
that  they  must  leave  by  the  twenty- 
second  of  February  or  take  the  conse- 
quences that  might  follow  should  they 
not  heed  the  warning.  The  Mormons 
left,  perhaps  thinking  that  discretion 
was  the  better  part  of  valor.  They 
soon  struck  their  trail ;  they  had  cut 
up  the  road  in  a  horrible  condition, 
making  it  almost  impossible  for  the 
company  to  follow  as  the  road  was  so 
deeply  rutted;  they  soon  found  the 
camp  where  the  Mormons  had  re- 
mained as  long  as  their  teams  could 
find  anything  to  subsist  upon ;  many 
trees  were  cut  down  to  furnish  browse 


Ammran  (Ennitami  in  a  (Earmrati 


FIRST  SIGNER  OF  FIRST  CONSTITUTION 
OF  CALIFORNIA— Captain  Joseph  Aram,  leader  of 
the  Aram  expedition  over  the  continent  from  New 
York  to  California  in  1846— Portrait  taken  when  he 
was  sixty  years  old — Now  in  possession  of  his  daugh- 
ter, Mrs.  Sarah  M.  Cool  of  Los  Angeles,  California 


for  the  cattle;  the  horses  had  been 
tied  to  trees  until  they  had  eaten  the 
bark  from  them  as  high  as  they  could 
reach. 

In  traveling  in  their  wake  they 
found  it  unpleasant  as  the  inhabitants 
looked  upon  them  as  Mormons  and 
would  decline  selling  them  such  arti- 
cles as  they  needed  for  their  teams. 
On  denying  being  Mormons,  "Oh,  you 
all  say  so,"  was  their  reply.  But  when 
told  that  they  had  money  to  pay  for 
what  the  party  needed,  they  would  re- 
ply that  the  Mormons  had  no  money 
and  it  looked  as  though  they  were  tell- 
ing the  truth,  for  the  Mormons  always 
wanted  to  work  for  what  they  got. 
Aram's  party  were  several  days  fol- 
lowing their  trail  before  they  reached 


the  great  camp.  They  were  quite  sur- 
prised to  find  such  a  large  body  of 
people  with  their  hundreds  of  wagons 
and  the  quantity  of  horses  and  cattle 
scattered  over  the  broad  prairie  trying 
to  find  a  little  grass,  as  the  season  was 
quite  backward.  Aram  and  his  party 
passed  by  seemingly  unobserved ;  as 
they  mingled  in  the  great  throng  they 
doubtless  supposed  they  were  a  part 
of  the  great  company  that  had  just 
arrived ;  it  was  a  matter  of  much  re- 
lief to  be  well  clear  of  the  Mormons. 
And  they  were  careful  that  they 
should  not  know  that  they  were  not  of 
their  kind  of  people.  The  Mormons 
had  brought  with  them  cannons  and 
a  large  quantity  of  small  arms.  It 
was  thought  it  would  have  been  better 
to  have  brought  more  flour  for  their 
starving  children  in  the  place  of  can- 
nons. The  Mormons  remained  where 
they  were  in  Western  Iowa  and  raised 
crops  that  year  and  did  not  reach  Salt 
Lake  until  1847.  The. rains  had  been 
very  heavy,  which  made  traveling 
quite  slow.  The  Aram  party  soon 
joined  with  other  emigrants,  Dr.  I.  C. 
Isbel  and  family,  James  Isbel  and 
family;  soon  after,  a  man  by  the 
name  of  Savage  with  a  large  family. 
Passing  through  the  northern  part  of 
the  state  of  Missouri  they  had  several 
acquisitions  to  their  company,  num- 
bering in  all  about  twenty  wagons. 
They  found  the  streams  very  hieh ; 
coming  to  a  small  river  with  full 
banks  and  with  no  ferry,  it  looked  as 
though  they  would  be  obliged  to  wait 
for  the  water  to  fall.  The  stream  ran 
through  a  very  narrow  channel,  with 
heavy  timber  on  both  sides.  They  hit 
upon  a  plan  of  falling  two  quite  large 
trees  across  the  stream,  about  twelve 
feet  apart,  then  cut  poles  and  bridge 
the  stream.  The  oxen  were  forced  to 
swim  over,  and  by  the  help  of  a  long 
rope  that  they  had  brought  with  them, 
making  it  fast  to  the  tongues  of  the 
wagons,  with  the  help  of  the  oxen  on 
the  opposite  bank  and  with  the  help  of 
the  men  to  steady  the  wagon  on  the 
tottering  bridge  were  enabled  to  get 
all  safely  over.  It  was  a  tedious  job, 


620 


tl|P  Sorkg    Mountains  In  tljf  JJartftr 


but  better  than  to  wait  for  the  water 
to  fall.  They  then  took  the  road  lead- 
ing to  the  Missouri  river.  Arriving 
at  the  crossing  at  St.  Jo,  they  laid  in 
their  last  supply  of  provisions.  The 
next  day  they  ferried  across  the  Mis- 
souri river  and  commenced  their  long 
journey  through  the  Indian  Territory. 
It  seemed  a  wild  country  to  them  as 
they  could  see  nothing  but  Indians, 
and  fell  in  with  a  large  party  of 
Sioux  and  Foxes,  Blackhavvk's  men. 
Charles  Imus,  who  had  been  in  the 
Blackhawk  War,  had  quite  a  chat 
with  them,  as  some  of  them  spoke 
good  English.  They  were  mounted 
on  ponies  with  fine  trappings.  A  few 
days  after  that  the  party  struck  the 
Platt  river,  and  had  no  sooner  got 
settled  in  camp  than  a  band  of  about 
fifty  Pawnee  Indians,  that  had  been 
out  on  a  buffalo  hunt,  came  and 
pitched  their  tents  near  them ;  the 
party  was  not  pleased  with  their  com- 
pany. The  Indians  came  to  camp, 
bringing  dried  buffalo  meat  as  a  pres- 
ent to  them,  but  they  failed  to  relish 
the  present  after  its  being  handled  bv 
those  dirty-looking  creatures.  Aram 
gave  his  share  to  the  dog.  That  even- 
ing the  Indians  came  to  their  camp 
and  gave  a  war  dance,  accompanied 
by  their  kind  of  music :  they  were  con- 
tinually begging.  The  emigrants 
immediately  began  to  pack  up  every- 
thing for  an  early  start ;  to  their  great 
surprise  many  articles  were  missing. 
They  well  knew  that  the  Indians  must 
have  taken  them.  The  old  chief  was 
in  camp  begging  as  usual ;  they  told 
him  that  many  articles  had  been  stolen 
by  his  men ;  he  stoutly  denied  it. 
Aram  had  a  Frenchman  with  him  that 
could  speak  their  language ;  he  de- 
manded of  the  chief  that  the  stolen 
property  should  be  returned,  which  he 
positively  refused ;  finally  he  said  that 
if  they  would  give  him  a  quantity  of 
flour,  indicating  with  his  hands  how 
large  a  pile  would  do,  he  would  try 
and  make  the  boys  bring  the  propertv 
back.  Roubedou,  the  Frenchman, 
advised  them  to  make  a  prisoner  of 
the  chief  and  to  threaten  to  turn  him 

in 


WOMAN  WHO  KIRS  I"  DISCOVERED  GOLD  IN 
CALIFORNIA- Mrs.  Sarah  Ann  Aram,  wife  of  Cap- 
tain Joseph  Aram,  who  with  her  ten  year  old 
daughter  pursued  th»  hazardous  journey  with  her 
husband— Mother  of  first  American  child  born  in 
California— Portrait  taken  when  fifty-nine  years  old 


over  to  the  Sioux,  as  they  were  at  war 
with  that  tribe.  The  party  took  his 
advice  and  seized  the  old  chief  and 
pinioned  his  arms  behind  him.  The 
old  fellow  began  to  think  that  he  had 
got  into  a  tight  place ;  he  sang  out  at 
the  top  of  his  voice  for  his  men  to 
bring  everything  back,  and  in  less 
than  five  minutes  every  stolen  article 
was  returned.  He  was  given  his  lib- 
erty and  the  party  were  soon  on  their 
way. 

I  will  now  leave  the  narrative  of 
the  journey  to  Captain  Aram,  who  in 
his  own  journal  relates  many  inter- 
esting anecdotes.  The  ancient  man- 
uscript is  still  preserved  by  his  chil- 
dren, and  it  is  with  their  permission 
that  this  transcript  is  taken : 


WHERE  COMMODORE  SLOAT  FIRST  RAISED  THE  AMERICAN  FLAG  OVER  CALIFORNIA- 
Old  Custom  House  at  Monterey  where  the  Constitution  of  California  was  formulated  and  the  Stars  and  Stripes 
proclaimed  it  to  the  world  as  the  Golden  Gate  to  the  American  Republic  as  related  in  Captain  Aram's  journal 


WHERE  JOHN  MARSHALL  IN  1848  BROUGHT  THE  NEWS  THAT  HE  HAD  DISCOVERED  GOLD 
IN  CALIFORNIA— Historic  Sutler's  Fort,  in  Sacramento,  California,  before  its  recent  restoration  by  the 
Native  Sons  and  Daughters  of  the  Golden  West  who  have  now  transformed  it  into  a  museum  of  relics 
pertaining  to  the  history  of  Western  America— Captain  Aram  tells  of  this  old  fort  in  his  historic  journal 


itemitttemtraa  of  (Eapfctut  Aram 

Cife  &tnry  of  a  y  tourer  at  llir  (Srrat  IDrat  aa  2Ulai?a 
fcljortlg  «rfor?  ^ta  Heath.,  in  Ifia  £toj|tt*tb.  ?rar  ^  Arruralr 
uraiuirnut  front  the  Journal  Norn  in  ]Io<i amount  of  Ijia 
(£hiloren  in  California  J*  jEarlg  Saga  on  tb.e  JJartfir  (£oaat 


FTER  describing  the  details 
connected  with  the  or- 
ganization  of  the  jour- 
ney  from  New  York 
to  California  in  1846, 
and  the  adventures 
through  the  Middle 
West  until  their  approach  to  the  In- 
dian Territory,  Captain  Aram  makes 
these  notes  in  his  journal.  The  an- 
cient manuscript  is  a  valuable  contri- 
bution not  only  to  the  historical  lit- 
erature of  the  West  but  of  the  entire 
American  Continent,  for  in  it  are  the 
keen  observations  of  a  man  who  led 
the  way  to  the  Pacific,  who  knew 
personally  many  of  the  pioneers,  and 
who  lent  his  hand,  heart  and  head  to 
the  establishment  of  a  great  Western 
Nation : 

Our  company  was  getting  to  be 
quite  large,  where  there  are  many 
men  there  is  apt  to  be  many  minds. 
It  became  necessary  to  elect  a  man  to 
take  the  command  of  the  company, 
they  elected  Charles  Imus  as  their 
captain,  he  having  had  some  experi- 
ence with  the  Indians  in  the  Black- 
hawk  war.  His  services  proved  to  be 
of  much  value  to  the  company.  We 
fell  in  with  an  old  mountaineer,  Kit 
Carson,  that  had  spent  most  of  his 
life  with  the  Indians,  he  offered  to 
pilot  us  to  California  for  a  nominal 
sum  of  money  and  a  stipulated 
amount  of  provisions,  he  being  famil- 
iar with  the  whole  country  through 
which  we  had  to  pass,  we  closed  the 
bargain  with  him  which  proved  to  be 
of  great  service  to  the  company.  On 
arriving  at  Laramie  fork  of  the  Platt 
river  which  we  found  rather  high  for 
the  wagon  beds,  we  found  that  by 
blocking  up  about  one  foot  we  could 
pass  over  without  damaging  our 
goods.  To  test  the  depth  of  the  water 
one  of  the  company  rode  through  the 
river  on  horseback.  As  soon  as  over 


the  stream  we  were  in  the  vicinity  of 
Fort  Laramie,  where  we  found  a  large 
body  of  Sioux  Indians  in  camp.  They 
seemed  to  be  very  friendly  and  were 
the  best  behaved  Indians  that  we 
found  on  the  whole  journey,  during 
the  time  that  we  were  cooking  and 
eating  our  meals,  a  man  would  come 
through  the  camp  and  drive  all  the 
women  and  children  away;  the  chief 
told  us  that  the  women  could  come 
and  trade  with  us  as  much  as  they 
pleased,  but  they  were  not  allowed  to 
hang  around  our  camp  while  we  were 
cooking  and  eating ;  but  how  different 
we  found  it  with  other  tribes,  for 
even  the  chiefs  would  come  about  and 
beg  for  something  to  eat.  The  cap- 
tain of  Fort  Laramie  told  us  that  it 
would  be  a  good  plan  to  give  them  a 
treat  of  coffee  and  biscuit.  It  would 
secure  their  friendship.  Every  fam- 
ily set  to  work  to  make  preparations 
for  it.  When  all  was  in  readiness,  the 
ladies  spread  their  table  cloths  in  a 
long  line  on  the  grass  sufficient  to  en- 
tertain the  number  reported.  The 
food  was  spread  on  the  cloth,  and  at 
a  signal  given  the  Indians  took  their 
places ;  there  were  about  two  hundred 
of  them  at  the  table.  To  our  sur- 
prise every  tenth  man  helped  the  nine 
sitting  at  his  left,  no  one  offered  to 
help  himself  but  was  waited  upon  by 
the  appointed  one.  They  drank  about 
two  cups  of  coffee  apiece  and  ate  gen- 
erally not  more  than  two  biscuits  each. 
Then  the  women  and  children  came 
forward  and  cleaned  up  what  was  left. 
That  evening  the  young  men  and 
women  came  to  our  camp  dressed  in 
their  gayest  attire  and  gave  a  splendid 
dance.  With  their  music  and  sing- 
ing, there  was  some  degree  of  refine- 
ment in  it  all,  which  was  more  than 
we  expected  to  find  amongst  Indians. 
The  next  day  we  moved  forward 


tlj?  Ammran  OInttttttttti  tn  a  (Eanroatt 


toward  the  Black  Hills.  The  country 
was  swarming  with  countless  herds  of 
buffalo,  all  seemed  to  be  wending 
their  way  northward.  Sometimes  it 
was  difficult  to  keep  out  of  their  way. 
They  always  seemed  intent  on  pursu- 
ing their  own  course,  regardless  of 
any  obstruction  that  might  lie  in  their 
way.  The  bulls  always  travel  in  front 
of  the  band,  the  cows  next,  with  the 
calves  in  the  rear.  When  we  would 
camp  for  a  day  or  two  we  would  kill 
a  few  of  them  and  dry  the  most  suit- 
able part  of  the  meat  for  our  use.  It 
was  much  relished  by  us  all.  On 
reaching  the  waters  of  the  south  Platt 
river  we  found  the  waters  rather  deep 
for  our  wagon  beds  so  we  were 
obliged  to  block  them  up  sufficiently 
high  to  save  our  goods.  We  crossed 
with  but  little  difficulty.  Found  buf- 
faloes in  great  abundance.  After  we 
left  the  river  some  three  or  four  miles, 
we  discovered  a  great  band  of  buffalo 
running  toward  us  in  great  fury.  We 
lost  no  time  in  unhitching  our  teams 
and  getting  them  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  wagons.  They  rushed  by  us 
but  generally  between  the  wagons. 
One  very  large  bull  ran  his  head  un- 
der the  wagon  of  Mr.  Hecox  and 
raised  it  off  of  the  ground,  and  when 
it  fell  it  came  down  with  such  force 
as  to  break  the  hind  axletree.  We 
managed  to  kill  two  buffaloes  before 
they  all  got  away  from  us.  On 
account  of  the  accident  the  company 
came  to  a  halt,  and  had  to  go  several 
miles  to  get  a  pole  to  put  under  the 
axle,  that  the  wagon  might  be  hauled 
along  until  timber  could  be  found  to 
make  a  new  axletree,  the  other  wag- 
ons took  on  most  of  his  load  so  that 
we  could  move  on.  Buffalo  was  in 
sight  in  every  direction.  We  occa- 
sionally would  kill  them  when  we 
needed  fresh  meat,  but  not  for  sport 
as  many  have  done.  We  passed  over 
a  beautiful  country  mostly  prairie  un- 
til we  reached  the  north  Platt  which 
we  forded  without  difficulty.  Then 
we  commenced  the  ascent  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  It  was  a  gradual 
rise  for  several  day's  travel.  When 


we  reached  the  summit  we  found  a 
crest  of  rocks  about  eight  rods  in 
width,  with  sharp  edges  standing  up- 
wards. We  looked  out  for  the  best 
place  for  crossing,  and  by  using  our 
picks  and  axes  we  smoothed  them 
down  a  little,  but  it  was  rough  work 
for  the  oxen's  feet  and  the  wagon 
tires  but  we  got  over  without  much 
difficulty  or  damage.  We  then  de- 
scended into  the  Sweet-water  coun- 
try. Found  plenty  of  buffalo  there 
but  was  told  by  our  pilot  that  we 
would  not  find  any  after  leaving  the 
Sweet-water.  We  concluded  to  make 
a  halt  for  a  short  time  in  order  to 
kill  and  dry  what  meat  we  needed. 
In  the  stream  we  found  an  abundance 
of  mountain  trout.  We  feasted  on 
them  for  a  change  of  diet.  We  then 
commenced  to  kill  and  dry  our  meat. 
We  built  scaffolds  of  willow  poles, 
with  a  fire  under  them  and  with  the 
benefit  of  the  sun  it  was  dried  suffi- 
ciently to  keep,  in  two  or  three  days 
time.  Then  we  pushed  forward,  and 
occasionally  we  found  long  drives 
without  water.  In  such  cases  when 
there  was  a  moon  we  would  drive  bv 
night.  The  teams  could  endure  the 
thirst  better  than  in  the  day  time,  as 
the  sun  and  dust  was  almost  unbear- 
able while  crossing  the  alkali  plains. 
After  leaving  a  stream  known  as  Big 
Blue,  and  learning  that  we  were  to 
have  a  long  drive  without  water,  we 
remained  at  the  stream  until  about 
three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  when 
we  started  for  the  geysers  or  hot 
wells,  arriving  there  about  daylight  in 
the  morning.  They  consisted  of  five 
flowing  wells,  throwing  out  quite  a 
large  stream  of  boiling  water,  at  times 
they  would  throw  the  water  fifteen 
feet  high,  at  other  times  they  would 
be  quite  calm.  We  took  breakfast 
there  using  the  water  for  cooking 
purposes.  The  flow  of  water  was 
sufficient  to  form  quite  a  large  stream. 
It  was  so  hot  that  we  were  obliged  to 
drive  two  miles  down  stream  before 
we  could  venture  to  cross  it  on 
account  of  the  intense  heat,  fearing 
that  it  would  injure  the  oxen's  feet. 

624 


FIRST  BRICK  HOUSE  IN  CALIFORNIA  AND  OLD  WHALING  STATION 


I    I    I 


III 


AMERICAN  FLAG  ON  THE  FIRST  CAPITOL  OF  CALIFORNIA—  Col  ton  Hall  at  Monterey  where 
Constitutional  Convention  was  held  that  made  California  a  free  state-Captain  Joseph  Aram,  writer  of 
the  journal  herein  recorded  was  a  member  of  the  Convention  and  the  first  signer  of  the  Constitution 


FAMOUS  OLD  CARMEL  MISSION   BUILT  IN   1770  AT  MONTEREY,  CALIFORNIA— This  was  one  of  the 
first  places  where   Captain    Aram  visited  on  his  expedition  across  America  as  recorded  in  his  entertaining  journal 


FIRST  THEATER  BUILDING  IN  CALIFORNIA-A  type  of  the  ancient  adobe  structure  in  old  Monterey- 
It  !•  said  that  the  famous  Jenny  Llnd  on  her  first  tour  to  the  Pacific  Coast  in  the  fifties  sang  in  this  structure 


of   (ttaptaht 


Aram 


We  then  passed  on  to  a  broad  plain. 
During  that  day  we  saw  a  large  num- 
ber of  Indians  on  horse  back,  about 
two  hundred  coming  towards  us  at 
full  speed  and  yelling  loudly.  We  in- 
stantly formed  a  circle  with  the  wag- 
ons as  a  breast  work.  As  they  came 
near  Captain  Imus  advanced  a  few 
rods  in  front  of  us,  with  rifle  in  hand, 
motioned  for  them  to  halt.  They 
obeyed  instantly,  he  motioned  for  the 
chief  to  advance.  He  came  a  few 
steps  forward,  the  captain  laid  down 
his  gun,  then  motioned  for  the  chief 
to  do  the  same.  They  advanced  until 
they  met,  then  shook  hands.  The 
chief  told  him  all  they  wanted  was  to 
purchase  guns.  He  was  told  to  bring 
ten  men  to  our  camp  and  no  more. 
He  brought  the  men.  Our  captain 
placed  a  strong  guard  in  front  of  our 
wagons.  There  was  but  little  doubt 
at  the  time,  that  the  prompt  action  of 
our  captain  saved  us  trouble.  They 
were  of  the  Bannock  tribe.  We  were 
very  glad  to  get  rid  of  their  company. 
A  few  days  later  we  fell  in  with  a 
large  party  of  Cheyennes.  They 
were  carrying  the  United  States  flag. 
We  thought  it  looked  a  little  like  civ- 
ilization. We  came  in  sight  of  the 
Chimney  Rock,  a  tall  spire  that  could 
be  seen  at  a  great  distance  in  that 
transparent  atmosphere.  In  that  vi- 
cinity we  found  a  large  quantity  of 
wild  currants.  We  gathered  all  that 
we  needed,  they  were  quite  a  treat  to 
us.  They  were  found  on  the  creek 
bottom.  The  Indians  were  quite 
friendly.  We  were  told  by  our  pilot 
that  a  long  drive  without  water  would 
reach  Green  river.  We  drove  in  the 
night  but  did  not  reach  the  river  until 
nearly  noon  next  day.  Our  oxen 
were  so  famished  with  thirst  that  they 
would  have  rushed  into  the  water, 
wagons  and  all  if  they  had  not  been 
prevented.  Here  we  waited  a  few 
days.  While  there  several  emigrants 
arrived ;  the  Donner  party  was 
amongst  them.  While  there  Captain 
Hastings  arrived  from  California  by 
way  of  Salt  Lake.  He  advised  us  by 
all  means  to  go  that  way,  assuring  us 


that  we  would  save  a  month's  travel, 
but  our  old  pilot,  Greenwood,  who 
was  familiar  with  the  country,  told  us 
that  it  would  be  much  safer  to  go  by 
Fort  Hall.  After  much  talk  many  of 
the  emigrants  took  Hasting's  advice, 
particularly  the  Donner  party.  It 
was  a  fatal  mistake  for  them.  We 
had  a  very  good  road  to  Fort  Hall,  it 
being  the  advice  of  our  pilot  Green- 
wood. From  there  we  passed  to  the 
head  waters  of  Goose  creek.  In  that 
vicinity  we  came  to  the  forks  of  the 
road.  One  leading  to  Oregon  and 
the  other  to  California.  Many  of  our 
company  turned  toward  Oregon,  leav- 
ing us  only  about  twelve  wagons. 

In  passing  down  Goose  creek  we 
came  to  the  Thousand  Springs  valley. 
It  is  well  entitled  to  the  name.  There 
are  more  hot  springs  than  we  could 
stop  to  count.  There  is  a  lime  deposit 
that  forms  a  hard  crust.  In  walking 
over  it,  it  sounds  as  if  it  was  hollow 
beneath.  Those  springs  all  come  to- 
gether forming  quite  a  stream.  Then 
we  were  guided  to  the  head  of  the 
Humboldt,  and  followed  it  with  little 
variation  with  the  exception  of  cut- 
ting down  the  river  banks,  until  reach- 
ing the  sink  of  the  stream.  There 
are  many  Indians  living  near  that 
stream.  They  are  of  a  very  low  order 
of  humanity,  the  most  so  of  any  we 
had  met  with.  They  would  often 
come  to  our  camp  in  a  perfectly  nude 
state.  We  found  sugar-cane  in  large 
quantities  on  the  swampy  lands  of  the 
stream.  The  Indian's  mode  of  ob- 
taining sugar  was  quite  simple.  They 
would  split  the  canes  and  lay  them  in 
the  sun  to  crystallize  the  sap,  then 
scrape  out  the  pith  or  pulp,  then  rub 
it  between  the  hands  and  gather  it  on 
skins.  This  work  was  performed  by 
the  squaws.  When  we  arrived  at  the 
point  where  the  Hastings  road  would 
meet  ours,  as  we  were  told  by  our 
pilot,  we  made  a  halt  as  there  was 
plenty  of  grass.  We  rode  one  day's 
ride  to  see  if  we  could  learn  anything 
of  the  Hasting's  party.  All  the  intel- 
ligence we  could  eret  was  from  the  In- 
dians. They  told  us  by  signs  that 


tlf*  Ammran  (Enntttwit  tn  a  (Harauan 


they  were  a.  long  way  off,  and  that 
they  had  lost  many  cattle.  We  came 
to  an  Indian  village,  they  came  out  in 
strong  force  but  finding  us  friendly, 
they  treated  us  kindly.  They  were 
digging  roots  on  a  creek  bottom. 
They  looked  like  a  small  red  carrot. 
They  gave  us  some  that  were  cooked, 
they  tasted  like  a  sweet  potato.  They 
also  offered  us  some  dried  crickets 
but  those  we  declined,  thinking  they 
would  not  relish  well  with  us. 

We  then  proceeded  to  the  sink  of 
the  Humboldt.  We  remained  there 
three  days  on  account  of  the  abun- 
dance of  grass,  being  told  that  it 
would  be  altogether  a  mountain  coun- 
try where  feed  would  be  scarce.  The 
Indians  there  were  known  as  Truckee. 
Pilot  Greenwood  left  us  there.  A 
chief  "Truckee"  was  anxious  to  pilot 
us  into  California.  We  agreed  to 
accept  his  services.  A  brother  of  his 
went  along  with  him.  Chief  Truckee 
was  of  much  service  to  us  as  he  had 
been  in  California.  The  last  night 
that  we  remained  in  that  camp  the  In- 
dians stole  five  of  our  oxen  which 
was  a  great  loss  to  us  at  that  time. 
We  pursued  the  trail  where  they  had 
been  driven  until  we  found  where  the 
oxen  had  been  killed.  As  we  ap- 
proached the  Indian  village  the  in- 
habitants fled  and  hid  in  the  tules. 
To  get  even  with  them  we  set  fire  to 
their  houses  and  returned  to  camp. 
The  next  thing  was  to  make  up  our 
teams  for  a  start.  To  do  so  we  had 
to  yoke  up  some  cows.  Those  used 
were  quite  large  ones,  they  performed 
remarkably  well.  Old  Truckee  de- 
nied that  they  were  his  Indians  that 
stole  them,  but  said  they  were  Sho- 
shonees.  We  then  proceeded  on  the 
road  to  the  Truckee  river.  Some  part 
of  it  was  hard  on  the  teams  as  there 
was  little  or  no  grass  and  the  road 
was  of  deep,  soft  sand,  which  seemed 
to  exhaust  the  teams  very  much.  On 
reaching  the  river  we  let  the  teams 
rest  for  a  day  there  being  an  abun- 
dance of  feed  there.  In  traveling  up 
the  river,  we  were  obliged  to  cross  it 
several  times  in  one  day.  The  stream 


was  filled  with  smooth  boulders  mak- 
ing it  very  difficult  for  the  oxen  to 
travel. 

After  leaving  the  Truckee  we  took 
the  trail  leading  to  the  Sierra  Nevada 
mountains.  We  had  brought  a  num- 
ber of^ young  cattle,  thinking  that  we 
might  need  them  for  meat.  We 
killed  one  and  divided  it  with  the  com- 
pany. The  two  Indians  begged  the 
offal  of  the  beef,  the  head,  hide,  and 
entrails.  They  built  a  good  fire, 
cooked  and  ate  seemingly  all  night. 
The  offal  had  all  disappeared  except 
the  horns  and  bones  of  the  head.  The 
Indians  had  quite  a  bloated  appear- 
ance the  next  morning.  If  I  had  not 
seen  it  with  my  own  eyes,  I  could 
scarcely  have  believed  what  I  here 
saw  for  a  fact. 

The  next  day  we  reached  the 
Sierra  Nevada  Mountains.  We  spent 
three  days  there  exploring  the  moun- 
tains to  find  a  pass  where  we 
might  make  a  crossing.  A  party 
of  us  took  our  horses  and  went  to  the 
summit,  and  traced  it  both  ways  and 
finally  decided  on  the  place  to  make 
the  crossing.  It  was  quite  an  under- 
taking to  get  our  wagons  up.  We 
put  about  five  yoke  on  a  wagon,  and 
had  as  many  men  with  it  as  was  nec- 
essary to  keep  it  from  sliding  side- 
ways. Then  with  five  yoke  on  the 
summit  letting  down  our  long  one 
hundred  and  fifty  feet  rope,  and 
hitched  it  with  the  leaders  that  were 
on  the  wagon,  by  this  process,  we 
succeeded  in  getting  all  the  wagons 
up  safely,  and  was  soon  ready  to  push 
ahead  on  our  journey.  Here  we  re- 
ceived the  first  intelligence  of  the 
Mexican  War,  by  two  young  men  that 
had  been  as  far  as  Sutter's  Fort.  We 
then  pushed  on  as  fast  as  possible  for 
the  Sacramento  valley. 

Just  before  we  reached  the  Yuba 
river  the  mountains  became  very 
steep,  so  much  so  that  in  one  instance 
we  were  obliged  to  lower  the  wagons 
down  by  locking  all  four  wheels  and 
taking  a  turn  around  a  tree  with  the 
rope,  we  were  able  to  keep  the  wagons 
from  ending  over  on  the  oxen,  but  we 

618 


nf   (Eapiaht 


Aram 


succeeded  in  getting  down  safely. 
The  next  night  the  Indians  stole  an  ox 
from  the  company.  Some  of  the  men 
followed  by  the  aid  of  old  Truckee, 
but  when  found  the  Indians  had  the 
ox  killed  already,  and  being  discov- 
ered they  fled  in  all  directions.  The 
next  day  brought  us  to  the  Yuba 
river.  There  being  plenty  of  grass 
we  concluded  to  remain  a  day  for  the 
teams  to  rest.  While  there  we  found 
much  bear  signs,  so  we  concluded  to 
take  a  hunt.  Captain  Imus,  Dr.  Isbel 
and  myself  formed  one  of  the  hunting 
parties.  In  passing  along  the  ridge 
of  the  mountain  through  the  brush,  a 
large  bear  charge  on  us.  We  set  the 
dogs  after  him.  Dr.  Isbel  discharged 
his  rifle  at  him  which  seemed  to  make 
him  run  the  faster.  He  soon  disap- 
peared in  the  brush.  Not  long  after 
our  dogs  found  two  half  grown  bears, 
they  seemed  inclined  to  stay  together. 
When  they  would  run  our  little  cur 
dogs  would  nip  their  heels  as  they 
ran.  they  would  turn  on  the  dogs  bel- 
le-wing like  a  bull.  Eventually  they 
separated,  then  the  dogs  had  only  one 
to  attend  to.  They  kept  him  at  bav 
until  I  got  up  with  him.  My  mastiff 
seeing  me  so  close  seemed  to  give  him 
courage.  He  seized  the  bear  by  the 
throat,  he  would  have  been  crushed 
very  soon  by  the  grip  of  the  bear.  I 
hurried  up  and  placed  the  gun  so  close 
that  the  powder  burned  his  hair.  The 
next  thing  was  what  to  do  with  our 
game.  We  concluded  to  make  him  as 
little  as  possible.  We  took  out  his  en- 
trails, and  succeeded  in  hauling  him 
to  the  foot  of  the  mountain.  We  left 
him,  marking  the  place  well,  and  went 
to  our  camp,  got  several  young  men 
with  poles  and  rones  to  go  and  bring 
him  to  camp.  We  dressed  and  divided 
the  meat  with  every  mess  in  camp.  It 
was  fat  and  most  delicious.  It  was 
relished  by  all  of  the  company. 

While  staying  in  camp  our  women 
went  to  the  river  to  do  a  little  wash- 
ing, while  there  my  wife  picked  up  a 
piece  of  gold  about  the  size  of  a  ten 
cent  piece  of  silver.  [This  was  a  dis- 
covery of  gold  ante-dating  that  of 

6*9 


Marshall's.  But  nothing  was  said 
about  it,  though  the  specimen  was 
thoroughly  tested  at  the  time. — ED.] 

We  then  proceeded  on  our  journey. 
In  about  two  days  we  reached  John- 
son's ranch  on  Bear  creek.  Just  be- 
fore entering  the  valley,  John  Kear- 
ney and  myself  took  our  horses  and 
rode  ahead  of  the  company,  to  engaere 
beef  and  have  it  ready  by  the  time  the 
company  arrived,  just  before  get- 
ting into  the  plains  we  discovered 
some  hogs,  which  to  us  looked  more 
like  civilization  than  anything  we  had 
seen  for  five  months  past.  We  arrived 
at  that  point  on  the  first  day  of  Octo- 
ber. After  resting  two  days  we  pro- 
ceeded to  Suiter's  Fort.  We  received 
a  very  warm  reception  from  Captain 
Sutter.  He  inquired  if  he  could  do 
anything  for  us.  "Should  you  need 
any  beef,  just  go  and  help  yourselves 
to  as  much  you  want,  and  anything 
else  that  I  have  is  at  your  service." 
We  next  found  Fremont  camped  on 
the  American  river.  He  informed  us 
of  the  state  of  affairs  that  then  existed 
in  California.  He  told  us  that  we  had 
better  push  forward  as  fast  as  possi- 
ble, as  the  Spaniards  were  unfriendly 
toward  the  Americans.  He  advised 
us  to  go  to  Santa  Clara  and  take  pos- 
session of  the  mission  buildings.  And 
as  soon  as  a  sufficient  number  of  men 
arrived  to  organize  a  company  for  our 
own  protection,  elect  officers  to  whom 
he  would  give  commissions,  and  for 
us  to  appoint  a  suitable  person  as  com- 
missary and  he  would  give  him  a  let- 
ter of  credit  that  would  enable  him  to 
obtain  such  groceries  as  we  would 
need  from  the  government  stores  in 
San  Francisco. 

We  then  pushed  on  towards  San 
Jose,  but  before  we  had  got  half  way 
there,  we  met  a  courier  from  San 
Jose,  advising  us  to  make  all  possi- 
ble haste,  fearing  the  Mexicans  would 
give  us  trouble,  but  we  arrived  there 
without  molestation.  As  we  arrived 
in  San  Jose  the  people  looked  upon  us 
with  as  much  surprise  as  if  we  had 
dropped  from  the  moon.  After  rest- 
ing for  a  time,  Mrs.  Captain  Hanks 


Arraaa  itf*  Ammran  Qlnntin^nt  in  a  Qlarauatt 


presented  each  family  with  a  loaf  of 
bread.  We  then  proceeded  to  Santa 
Clara,  where  we  found  the  mission 
buildings  in  a  very  dilapidated  condi- 
tion as  well  as  filthy.  Seeing  no  other 
alternative,  we  set  ourselves  to  work 
cleaning  the  buildings,  in  order  to 
make  them  as  comfortable  as  possible 
for  our  families.  The  rooms  having 
nothing  but  earth  floors  and  no  chim- 
neys, we  generally  built  the  fire  in  one 
corner  of  the  room,  and  let  the  smoke 
find  its  way  up  and  through  the  tile 
roof  as  best  it  could.  In  consequence 
of  the  heavy  fall  of  rain  that  winter, 
the  buildings  became  quite  damp 
causing  much  sickness  to  the  families 
and  many  deaths.  The  commissary 
was  only  able  to  obtain  a  scant  supply 
of  groceries,  flour  or  bread  was  almost 
out  of  the  question.  But  there  was 
plenty  of  wheat  in  the  country.  A 
Spaniard  by  the  name  of  Alviso,  liv- 
ing in  Santa  Clara,  who  was  friendly 
to  the  Americans,  and  really  rejoiced 
in  the  prospect  of  California  becom- 
ing a  part  of  the  American  Govern- 
ment, came  nobly  forward  and  fur- 
nished wheat  for  the  benefit  of  the 
families.  They  procured  a  large  steel 
coffee  mill  to  grind  the  wheat  with. 
The  sound  of  the  mill  could  be  heard 
almost  all  day  and  night,  as  there  was 
over  thirty  families  dependent  upon 
the  use  of  the  mill  for  their  bread, 
unbolted  as  it  was  but  they  were  but 
thankful  to  get  even  such. 

After  the  menacing  of  the  Span- 
iards became  alarming,  the  men  held 
a  meeting  for  the  purpose  of  organiz- 
ing a  company  for  mutual  protection. 
There  were  about  thirty-three  men 
signed  the  roll.  The  next  thing  was 
to  elect  officers.  The  result  was  as 
follows:  Joseph  Aram,  Captain; 
Steven  A.  Wright,  First  Lieutenant; 
G.  D.  Dickenson,  Second  Lieutenant; 
N.  B.  Smith,  First  Sergeant.  As 
soon  as  the  organization  was  com- 
plete, it  soon  became  evident  that 
some  kind  of  barricade  was  necessary 
to  prevent  the  enemy  from  charging 
immediately  on  the  mission  buildings. 
Being  in  full  command  of  the  place,  I 


set  the  men  immediately  at  work. to 
fortify  the  place,  by  cutting  and  haul- 
ing logs  about  ten  feet  in  length. 
They  were  placed  in  a  ditch  about 
three  feet  deep,  forming  a  breast  work 
seven  feet  high.  We  felt  that  such  a 
fence  was  sufficient  to  prevent  the 
ingress  of  the  enemy.  The  very  wet 
winter  was  hard  on  many  of  the  fam- 
ilies. There  was  over  thirty  of  them 
crowded  into  too  close  quarters  for 
comfort.  The  next  thing  was  to  get 
meat  for  such  a  number  of  people. 
The  Spaniards  taking  good  care  to 
keep  their  cattle  out  of  our  way.  I 
had  offered  to  buy  beef  of  them  but 
to  no  avail,  I  offered  to  pay  the  usual 
price  in  money  but  yet  they  refused  to 
sell  me  anything.  They  seemed  to 
think  the  easiest  way  to  get  rid  of  us, 
was  by  stopping  or  cutting  off  our 
supplies  and  starving  us  out.  But 
men  who  had  just  crossed  the  plains 
could  not  be  bluffed  off  so  easy.  I 
immediately  resolved  on  a  more 
effective  expedient  to  procure  beef. 
I  gave  orders  to  the  sergeant  to  take 
ten  men  with  a  wagon  and  go  to  the 
timber  south  of  Santa  Clara,  where 
he  would  find  plenty  of  cattle,  to 
shoot  down  one  of  the  fattest  animals 
that  he  could  find,  dress  it  and  bring 
it  in.  The  men  returned  with  a  lot 
of  fine  fat  beef.  The  next  day  the 
Spaniards  came  to  make  a  complaint 
that  my  men  had  killed  one  of  their 
best  tame  cows.  I  told  them  that  we 
must  have  meat  and  as  they  refused 
to  sell,  that  I  had  ordered  my  men  to 
go  and  bring  in  beef,  that  the  families 
could  have  something  to  eat.  The 
only  way  to  avoid  a  similar  occur- 
rence, would  be  for  them  to  agree  to 
deliver  to  us  a  certain  amount  of  cat- 
tle on  certain  days  in  each  week. 
Hereafter  the  Spaniard  agreed  to  my 
proposition  and  filled  his  part  of  the 
contract  faithfully,  by  delivering  to 
us  two  good  beeves  per  week  during 
that  dreary  and  wet  winter  of  1846 
and  7. 

Captain  Sanchez  had  an  organized 
company  of  about  one  hundred  and 
fifty  men  and  was  generally  hovering 

630 


2UmitttBmtr?H    nf   (Eaptatn 


Aram 


about  Santa  Clara  and  San  Jose. 
Provender  for  our  horses  was  not  to 
be  had.  We  were  obliged  to  picket 
our  horses  out  in  the  mustard  to  get 
a  little  grass.  There  was  scarcely  a 
day  but  a  horse  would  be  stolen,  which 
crippled  our  company  very  much. 
Captain  Sanchez  having  a  superior 
force  as  to  number,  kept  my  force  of 
thirty-five  men  and  Captain  Weber 
with  his  twenty  men  continually  on 
the  alert.  Many  attempts  were  made 
by  the  Spaniards  to  force  a  way  into 
the  mission,  but  they  were  foiled  in 
every  attempt.  About  the  sixth  of 
January,  1847,  Captain  Marsten  of 
the  United  States  Navy  with  a  com- 
pany of  marines  and  a  small  cannon, 
came  in  order  to  assist  the  small 
forces  of  San  Jose  and  Santa  Clara. 
Sanchez  had  taken  several  prisoners. 
Whenever  he  found  a  small  party  of 
Americans  he  would  make  prisoners 
of  them.  Lieutenant  Bartlett,  Martin 
Corcoran  and  several  others  were  in 
his  possession  when  the  battle  of 
Santa  Clara  took  place.  As  Captain 
Marsten  approached  within  a  few 
miles  of  Santa  Clara,  Sanchez  made 
an  attempt  to  dispute  his  advance,  fir- 
ing commenced  about  9  o'clock  A.  M. 
and  lasted  until  near  night.  The 
Spaniards  having  superior  horses 
were  enabled  to  hover  about  the 
Americans  at  their  will,  but  were 
very  careful  to  keep  well  deployed  as 
they  soon  discovered  that  the  Amer- 
icans did  not  fire  at  random,  while  the 
fire  of  the  Spaniards  was  always  very 
high  and  had  but  little  effect.  The 
tendency  of  both  parties  was  to  beat 
towards  Santa  Clara,  which  enabled 
my  men  to  participate  in  the  fight. 
But  as  our  horses  had  already  been 
stolen,  we  had  to  take  the  field  on  foot, 
and  as  we  advanced  towards  the  en- 
emy one  division  of  them  was  ordered 
to  charge  on  us,  they  came  at  full 
speed  as  if  they  intended  to  ride  over 
us.  Our  men  stood  their  ground  not 
daunted,  were  prepared  to  give  them 
a  warm  reception.  A  volley  from  our 
rifles  caused  a  sudden  change  in  their 
movements,  a  hasty  retreat  was  the 

63« 


result.  They  rallied  again  for  another 
charge,  which  was  not  as  fearless  as 
the  first  charge.  As  soon  as  near 
enough  we  gave  them  another  volley, 
they  beat  a  hasty  retreat  and  we  saw 
nothing  more  of  them. 

During  the  battle  the  main  force 
of  the  enemy  was  contending  with 
the  forces  commanded  by  Captain 
Marsten  and  Captain  Charles  Weber. 
But  at  no  time  during  the  battle  could 
the  Spaniards  be  drawn  into  a  close 
engagement.  They  preferred  to  fight 
at  a  good  distance  from  our  lines, 
they  seemed  to  dread  the  whizzing  of 
our  bullets.  The  Americans  were 
cool  and  determined  and  anxious  to 
get  as  near  the  enemy  as  possible  for 
they  always  fired  over  our  heads.  As 
night  drew  near  the  firing  ceased. 
The  Americans  withdrew  from  the 
field  and  camped  at  Santa  Clara,  while 
the  enemy  retired  to  the  timber  south 
of  town.  Early  the  next  morning  a 
flag  of  truce  was  sent  from  Captain 
Sanchez  asking  for  an  armistice.  He 
was  told  that  the  only  condition  that 
would  be  granted,  would  be  a  surren- 
der of  all  their  arms.  Captain  San- 
chez replied  that  he  would  rather  die 
than  submit  to  such  dishonorable 
terms,  but  said  he,  "if  Captain  Hull  of 
Yerba  Buena  says  so,  I  will  submit." 
An  armistice  of  three  days  was  grant- 
ed on  condition  that  they  should  not 
leave  their  camp  during  that  time. 
A  courier  was  dispatched  to  Captain 
Hull  for  his  decision,  he  being  the 
Military  Governor  of  Upper  Califor- 
nia at  the  time,  but  he  was  inexorable. 
His  reply  was  that  they  must  submit 
to  the  terms  exacted  or  fight  on. 

On  the  arrival  of  the  courier  the 
officers  were  notified  to  meet  the 
American  officers  at  a  certain  hour  at 
the  place  appointed  to  hear  the  de- 
cision. As  soon  as  the  meeting  was 
arranged,  the  decision  was  read  and 
interpreted  to  them  by  Alexander 
Forbes.  The  Spaniards  reluctantly 
agreed  to  the  conditions,  which  were 
as  above  stated,  an  entire  surrender  of 
all  their  arms.  The  next  day  at  nine 
o'clock  A.  M.  was  the  hour  appointed 


ilj?  Ammran  {Eanttttfttt  in  a  (Eanroatt 


for  receiving  them  on  the  same 
ground  then  occupied  by  the  officers. 
At  the  hour  appointed  the  entire 
American  force  was  there  and  formed 
a  double  line.  The  Spaniards  march- 
ing in  single  file  between  them  and 
deposited  their  arms  as  they  passed. 
It  was  certainly  a  very  humiliating 
sight  to  see  one  hundred  and  fifty 
well  mounted  men  surrender  their 
arms  to  less  than  one  hundred  Amer- 
icans, that  were  very  poorly  mounted 
and  many  of  them  on  foot.  I  made 
a  demand  on  Captain  Sanchez  for  the 
return  of  our  horses  which  had  been 
stolen  from  us.  His  men  cheerfully 
assisted  in  lassoing  the  horses.  We 
got  nearly  all  of  them  back.  From 
this  time  forward  the  Spaniards 
seemed  anxious  to  cultivate  a  friendly 
feeling  with  the  Americans.  Receiv- 
ing advice  from  Colonel  Fremont,  I 
was  advised  to  disband  my  company 
as  their  services  were  not  needed  any 
longer,  and  on  the  first  of  March, 
1847,  I  gave  them  their  discharge 
from  further  service  and  shortly 
afterwards  took  my  family  to  Mon- 
terey, with  several  others  proceeded 
to  Santa  Cruz,  stopped  on  the  way  at 
Sequel.  While  there  overnight,  my- 
self and  family  made  our  beds  and 
slept  in  a  large,  hollow  red-wood  tree 
that  we  found  at  that  place.  There 
was  an  abundance  of  room  for  us, 
and  fortunately  for  us  there  was  quite 
a  drizzling  rain  that  night  and  those 
that  slept  on  the  ground  found  their 
bed  coverings  were  covered  with  frost 
the  next  morning.  We  remained  at 
Santa  Cruz  about  one  month.  Being 
very  dull  there,  we  concluded  to  go 
to  Monterey  as  business  seemed  to 
be  more  lively  in  that  place,  it  being 
the  headquarters  for  both  the  army 
and  navy.  I  helped  to  build  the  fort 
which  afforded  considerable  business 
for  all  there  that  wished  to  work. 

I  remained  in  Monterey  about  two 
years.  The  gold  mines  of  California 
was  discovered  in  the  year  1848. 
Like  many  others,  as  soon  as  I  dis- 
covered that  the  mines  were  a  reality, 


I  joined  a  company  of  men  and  went 
to  the  reported  gold  fields.  We  took 
with  us  a  quantity  of  goods  and  gro- 
ceries, which  we  found  a  ready  sale 
for.  We  also  worked  in  the  mines 
with  tolerably  good  success.  Our  op- 
eration that  year  was  mostly  at  a  place 
now  called  Placerville.  I  also  spent 
the  summer  of  1849  m  Tuolumne 
mines.  In  the  fall  of  that  year  I  re- 
turned to  San  Jose  where  I  was  mak- 
ing my  home  with  my  family.  On 
my  return  I  was  solicited  by  friends 
to  allow  my  name  to  be  put  on  a  ticket 
as  a  candidate  for  delegate  to  the  Con- 
stitutional Convention  to  be  held  in 
Monterey  in  September  of  that  year. 
I  was  one  of  the  successful  candidates 
for  that  position.  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  assisting  in  forming  the  first  con- 
stitution of  the  State  of  California. 

After  the  Convention  adjourned  I 
returned  to  San  Jose,  where  I  was 
immediately  solicited  to  run  as  a  can- 
didate for  the  legislature  to  be  held 
under  the  new  constitution  and  was 
elected  to  fill  that  position,  wherein 
an  entire  code  of  laws  had  to  be 
formed  for  the  State  of  California. 
Was  elected  to  a  seat  in  the  City 
Council  of  San  Jose  in  1850.  And 
was  elected  to  that  office  for  the  next 
three  succeeding  years.  Was  elected 
as  trustee  of  the  University  of  the 
Pacific  at  its  first  organization  and  re- 
mained as  a  member  of  that  body  un- 
til 1873.  My  wife  died  on  the  first 
of  March  of  that  year.  I  visited  the 
Atlantic  States,  that  I  might  once 
more  see  the  land  of  my  early  boyhood 
associations.  In  1876  I  again  vis- 
ited the  Eastern  States,  and  while 
there  married  my  present  wife  and 
companion  of  my  old  age,  and  while 
there  we  both  visited  the  Centennial 
Exposition  at  Philadelphia  and  now 
in  the  year  1896  having  passed  my 
86th  birthday  at  the  time  of  the  writ- 
ing of  this  narrative,  am  now  resting 
with  my  abiding  hope  of  a  future  im- 
mortality beyond  this  life. 

JOSEPH  ARAM. 


Jfatur 


?ara  nf   anama  total 


Wljttr  J8an 

to  (£rmi8  Ihr  3lathmua  from 
tn.r  Atlantic  to   thr   Pacific   J*   JFuttlr 
Attrmuta  to  JFtnfc  a  Natural  18atm»ag  Connecting 
tlir  (Emu  (Srrat  OOcrana  J*  3Firat  Jllatta  Hurr  fflafcr  to  &rurr  the 
Amrricaa  witty  an  Artificial    fctratt    bg    <Bort*5   tn    1523    ^ 

BT 

DR.  WILLIS  FLETCHER  JOHNSON 

Or  THM  "N«w  YORK  TRIBUNB" 

RESUME'  FBOK  His  RESEARCHED  RECENTLY  PRESENTED  AFTER  MORE  THAW  Twwrrr-FiY»  TEARS'  STTOT  or 

BOOTH  AMERICAN  AFFAIRS  AND  ISTHMIAN  CANAL  TRANSIT  IN   His   BOOK   "FOUR   HUNDRED 

YEARS  OF  PANAMA,    PUBLISHED  BT  HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY  OF  NEW  YORK 

Bastidas,  who  came,  to  what  is  now 
known  as  Panama,  two  years  before 
Columbus.  He  likewise  was  in  search 
of  the  fabled  strait.  The  reason  these 
mighty  men  pursued  this  myth  so 
strenuously  was  because  there  were 
innumerable  legends  among  the  na- 
tives concerning  a  strait  which  con- 
nected the  two  great  oceans.  For 
that  matter  I  have  myself  heard 
among  the  ferocious  Indians  of  San 
Bias,  who  are  natives  in  the  Isthmian 
valley  of  Atrato,  very  confident  re- 
ports of  the  existence  of  this  mythical 
strait.  Is  it,  then,  surprising  that 
these  early  Spanish  pioneers  should 
have  prosecuted  the  search  so  long? 
It  was  Balboa,  another  of  the  great 
explorers,  who,  on  September  29, 
1513,  first  crossed  the  isthmus,  luckily 
at  its  narrowest  part.  He  is  the  first 
white  man  who  saw  the  American 
shores  lapped  by  the  waves  of  the 
Pacific,  and  the  place  where  he  strode 
into  the  water  to  take  possession  of  it 
in  the  name  of  the  king  of  Spain  is 
still  called  by  the  appellation  he  gave 
it:  Golfo  de  San  Miguel.  There  are 
many  illustrious  names  mentioned  in 
the  quest  of  the  mysterious  strait, 
among  them  De  Soto,  the  discoverer 
of  the  Mississippi  ;  indeed,  had  it  not 
been  for  the  search,  there  might  have 
been  no  French  colony  planted  in  Can- 
ada. It  was  with  instructions  to  find 
the  shortest  route  to  Cathay  that 
France  sent  its  pioneers.  Cartier  and 
Verrazzano.  In  1529,  Cortez,  having 
lost  faith  in  the  existence  of  the  strait, 


3T  is  singular  that  people 
generally  believe  the  ca- 
nal project  was  conceived 
only  shortly  before  the 
time  of  de  Lesseps.  The 
first  record  that  I  can  find 
of  the  proposal  to  build 
a  canal  was  made  by  Hernando  Cor- 
tez, the  great  Spanish  Conqueror, 
early  in  the  sixteenth  century.  This 
restless  genius,  an  impoverished  no- 
bleman, after  conquering  Mexico  and 
Central  America,  was  directed  by 
Charles  V  to  find  "the  strait."  This 
strait,  you  know,  was  supposed  to  be 
a  stream  of  water  bisecting  the  isth- 
mus somewhere  which  would  enable 
the  voyagers  to  find  that  route  to  the 
Indies  in  quest  of  which  Columbus 
came  when  he  unwittingly  stumbled 
upon  the  new  continent.  It  is  famil- 
iar history  that  for  many,  many  years 
the  explorers,  after  Columbus,  sup- 
posed that  if  they  could  discover  the 
strait  they  would  be  able  to  find  the 
main  coast  of  India  right  on  the  other 
side.  The  lands  upon  which  they  car- 
ried on  their  operations  were  for  years 
supposed  to  be  nothing  but  islands. 
These  delusions  were  augmented  by 
willing  misapprehension  of  the  infor- 
mation given  by  the  natives.  Colum- 
bus supposed  that  if  he  could  find  the 
strait  he  would  be  able  to  pass  through 
it,  reach  the  Pacific  ocean  and  thus 
eventually  circumnavigate  the  earth 
when  he  returned  home.  The  real 
pioneer  of  Isthmian  exploration  was 
a  conquistador  named  Rodrigo  de 

«33 


?arjs  nf  tip  Jlattama  (Eattal 


prepared  the  first  plans  ever  made  to 
cut  through  the  isthmus  with  an  artifi- 
cial strait  and  was  about  to  lay  them 
before  the  king,  when  he  died.  After 
this,  four  different  routes  for  the  pro- 
posed canal  were  planned  and  perma- 
nent overland  transportation  was  es- 
tablished by  a  tyrant  who  decimated 
the  native  population  of  South  Amer- 
ica from  2,000,000  to  200,000.  But 
the  canal  theory  was  temporarily 
abandoned  in  the  reign  of  Phillip  I, 
about  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
because  the  king  was  convinced  by  a 
Jesuit  historian  that  it  was  contrary 
to  the  Divine  will  to  unite  two  oceans 
which  the  Creator  has  separated. 
Not  only  did  he  abandon  the  project, 
but  he  imposed  the  penalty  of  death 
on  all  who  attempted  to  project  such 
plans  or  should  attempt  to  seek  a  bet- 
ter route  across  the  isthmus.  Here- 
upon follows  that  period  of  those  des- 
perate English  buccaneers  like  the 
Welshman  Sir  Henry  Morgan,  who 
ravaged  the  Spanish  cities  upon  the 
isthmus  and  the  adjoining  territory 
with  unparalleled  ferocity.  He  sacked 
Porto  Bello  and  did  his  infernal  work 
at  the  old  city  of  Panama  so  effectively 
that  it  never  was  rebuilt.  The  only 
thing  now  standing  is  an  old  tower, 
the  ruins  of  perhaps  a  mission. 

The  English  likewise  had  realized 
the  importance  of  this  artificial  water- 
way if  it  could  be  constructed  and 
made  desperate  efforts  to  gain  a  firm 
foothold  in  Nicaragua.  In  a  few 
years  they  practically  laid  waste  to  all 
the  civilization  in  Central  America  and 
utterly  destroyed  its  commerce.  With 
one  of  these  dastardly  crews  came  a 
man  named  Lionel  Wafer  who  pro- 
claimed that  it  would  be  the  easiest 
thing  in  the  world  to  make  the  canal. 
This  assertion  was  used  as  a  basis  for 
an  ambitious  scheme  by  the  founder 
of  the  Bank  of  England,  William  Pat- 
terson, of  Scotland.  He  attempted  to 
found  a  colony  on  the  isthmus,  but  it 
failed.  England  and  Scotland  had 
not  at  that  time  united.  It  is  prob- 
able if  they  had,  that  a  canal  would 
have  been  dug  under  English  direction 


generations  ago.  After  this  there  was 
a  lapse  of  a  century  during  which 
nothing  worthy  of  comment  was  done. 
With  the  coming  of  that  great  scien- 
tific genius,  Alexander  von  Humboldt, 
in  the  early  years  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  a  new  era  in  canal  schemes 
dawned.  He  considered  no  fewer 
than  nine  distinct  routes.  Practical 
steps  were  taken  when  the  South 
American  people  themselves  felt  the 
quickening  influences  of  the  early  part 
of  the  nineteenth  century  which  were 
changing  the  destinies  of  nations. 
Under  the  leadership  of  Miranda  and 
Bolivar  in  1811,  the  various  Central 
and  South  American  provinces  of 
Spain  shook  off  the  frayed  strings  that 
bound  them,  and  in  1821  their  efforts 
were  completely  crowned  with  suc- 
cess. In  1825,  these  confederacies  in- 
vited the  United  States  to  participate 
in  the  building  of  a  canal.  Our  gov- 
ernment feared  to  commit  itself,  being 
occupied  with  many  troubles  of  its 
own  and  even  declined  to  be  specially 
represented  at  the  first  Pan-American 
Congress  which  occurred  at  Panama 
in  1826.  It  was  believed  that  the 
question  of  human  slavery  might  be 
considered  and  resolutions  of  emanci- 
pation might  be  adopted.  As  a  result 
of  this  conference  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States  of  Central  America  or- 
dered the  construction  of  a  canal  at 
Nicaragua,  for  which  a  concession 
eventually  passed  into  the  hands  of  an 
American  company  in  which  partici- 
pated DeWitt  Clinton,  builder  of  the 
Erie  canal,  and  other  very  notable 
men.  After  this  followed  numerous 
schemes,  all  of  which  were  widely  dis- 
cussed at  the  time,  and  are  interest- 
ing for  the  additional  light  they  throw 
on  the  development  of  the  idea,  but 
which  came  to  naught.  One  of  the 
curious  features  of  early  canal  history 
is  that  the  United  States,  though  pal- 
pably most  vitally  concerned,  repeat- 
edly withdrew  from  some  definite  con- 
tract at  the  critical  moment.  Emi- 
nent engineers  were  sent  by  the  gov- 
ernment to  survey  the  territory  and 
made  favorable  reports,  but  capital 

634 


JirHt  Attempt  tn  8>?tiFr  tlj*  Ammraa 


seems  to  have  been  frightened  off  by 
the  savage  and  unsettled  condition  of 
the  country.  The  South  Americans 
themselves  even  tried  to  interest  the 
pope  at  Rome  in  their  scheme.  Ef- 
forts were  made  to  interest  foreign 
countries  and  some  South  Americans 
even  went  so  far  as  to  ask  France  to 
establish  a  protectorate  over  the  cha- 
otic confederacy  so  that  the  canal 
might  be  dug.  In  1844,  the  third  Na- 
poleon then  languishing  in  jail  took 
such  an  interest  in  the  scheme  that  he 
promised  to  leave  France  forever,  if 
the  government  would  release  him,  in 
order  that  he  might  go  to  South 
America.  Possibly  he  might  have 
prosecuted  his  purpose  after  his  es- 
cape if  the  Revolution  had  not  put  him 
on  the  throne. 

In  order  to  thoroughly  understand 
the  subsequent  history  of  the  efforts 
to  dig  the  canal,  it  is  necessary  that 
you  understand  the  circumstances  and 
main  features  of  that  contract  known 
as  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty.  And 
in  order  to  understand  that,  you  must 
know  some  of  the  very  early  history 
of  British  land-grabbing  on  the  Cen- 
tral and  South  American  continent. 
You  will  recall  that  I  spoke  of  the 
English  freebooters  who  left  a  high- 
water  mark  for  all  time  in  the  name- 
less atrocity  of  their  performances  on 
the  isthmus.  Later  they  sailed  down 
at  Nicaragua  and  Honduras  and  in 
order  to  gain  the  protection  of  their 
government  became  bona  fide  colo- 
nists. They  developed  an  admirable 
trade  in  the  splendid  lumbers  that 
abound  and  dye  woods.  In  the  course 
of  time,  England  gained  a  more  or 
less  valid  title  to  the  territory  it  had 
occupied,  though  the  Spanish  declined 
to  admit  that  England  was  entitled  to 
anything  on  the  mainland. 

Early  in  the  seventeenth  century 
there  had  formed  in  a  locality  on  the 
Nicaraguan  coast  a  hybrid  race  com- 
posed largely  of  Indians  known  as 
Moscoes,  some  English  pirates  and  a 
strain  of  negro  blood  from  the  refu- 
gees of  a  Dutch  slave-ship  which  was 
wrecked  off  the  coast.  In  the  course 

635 


of  time,  this  race  was  known  as  the 
Mosquito  Indians  with  whom  we  are 
more  or  less  familiar  in  these  days. 
English  settlers  came  to  their  country 
and  were  welcomed ;  urged  by  the  ties 
of  blood,  they  begged  for  the  protec- 
tion of  England.  In  short,  for  all 
these  various  reasons  the  British  gov- 
ernment felt  that  it  had  a  claim  on 
that  part  of  Nicaragua  and  Honduras 
originally  settled  by  its  sparse  groups 
of  pirates,  and  in  1835  called  it  "Brit- 
ish Honduras,"  taking  advantage  of 
the  internecine  strife  among  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Central  and  South  Ameri- 
can federation.  It  also  demanded 
that  Mosquitia,  as  it  was  then  known, 
should  be  recognized  as  a  natives' 
kingdom  under  British  protection. 
With  the  seizure  of  Tigre  Island  off 
the  Pacific  coast,  British  domination 
and  control  of  the  Nicaragua  isthmus 
was  complete.  The  United  States 
had  its  own  little  game  to  play  in  the 
spoliation  of  Mexico,  so  that  it  did  not 
apparently  notice  the  action  of  the 
English  government  to  the  South. 
What  you  must  particularly  remem- 
ber is  that  England  controlled  the 
Nicaragua  isthmus,  one  of  the  future 
territories  for  the  canal.  What  scared 
America  was  its  awakening  conscious- 
ness that  it  needed  a  line  of  communi- 
cation across  the  isthmus  of  Panama 
for  intercourse  with  the  Pacific  coast 
territories  it  had  wrested  from  Mex- 
ico. 

In  1846,  our  government  made  a 
treaty  with  the  republic  of  New  Gran- 
ada (now  known  as  Colombia)  in 
which  it  secured  the  exclusive  line  of 
transit  across  the  isthmus  of  Panama 
including  quite  a  stretch  of  country. 
In  return  it  undertook  to  maintain  the 
neutrality  of  such  territory  and  any 
lines  of  traffic  that  might  be  estab- 
lished, and  guaranteed  the  sovereignty 
of  the  Isthmian  territory  against  any 
attack  by  alien  powers.  In  anticipa- 
tion of  the  tremendous  traffic  which 
developed  after  the  discovery  of  gold 
in  California,  American  capitalists 
built  the  Panama  railroad  which  was 
finished  in  1855,  operating  from  Colon 


Jfaur  ijmtinrrin  f?ara  nf 


ttama  Glanal 


(then  known  as  Aspinwall)  to  Pan- 
ama, the  present  capital  of  the  repub- 
lic of  that  name.  Other  Americans 
attempted  to  build  a  canal  in  the  Nica- 
ragua territory  and  a  company,  of 
which  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  was  the 
head,  built  a  transit  route  across  this 
path,  utilizing  steamboats  on  rivers 
and  lakes  and  coaches  and  trucks  for 
the  remainder  of  the  way.  This  con- 
tinued to  be  a  very  popular  means  of 
travel  until  the  superior  facilities  of 
the  Panama  Railroad  utterly  destroyed 
it.  Naturally  the  domination  of  Brit- 
ish sovereignty  was  regarded  as  a 
very  menacing  situation,  and  popular 
indignation  in  this  country  was  great. 

After  a  twiddling-twaddling  period 
of  negotiations  in  which  the  envoys  of 
the  United  States  gained  laurels,  but 
the  home  government  made  a  record 
for  pusillanimity,  there  was  concluded 
one  of  the  most  famous  and  most  crit- 
icised treaties  in  our  history.  Secre- 
tary of  State  John  M.  Clayton  and  Sir 
Henry  Bulwer  (of  the  Bulwer-Lytton 
family)  agreed  that  neither  the  United 
States  nor  Great  Britain  should  exclu- 
sively control  the  Nicaragua  canal  nor 
build  any  fortifications  along  it;  in 
short,  they  agreed  on  absolute  neutral- 
ity regarding  all  matters  concerning 
any  means  of  transportation  over  any 
route  on  the  isthmus.  This  would 
have  been  very  fair  except  that  Eng- 
land insisted  this  agreement  did  not 
apply  to  any  territory  it  claimed  in 
Central  or  South  America,  which 
made  matters  a  little  worse  than  they 
were  before.  In  this  Clayton  acqui- 
esced and  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty 
became  the  law  of  the  land  on  July  5, 
1850.  Then  followed  many  schemes 
for  the  building  of  canals  over  the 
various  routes,  accompanied  by  much 
wrangling  with  England ;  almost,  at 
various  times,  precipitating  war  over 
interpretations  of  the  Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty;  for  obvious  reasons  the  vari- 
ous administrations  never  had  suffi- 
cient courage  to  abrogate  this  treaty 
which  was  so  very  irksome  and  ob- 
structive. When  Walker  the  filibus- 
ter was  at  his  nefarious  work,  affairs 


in  South  America  became  chaotic  and 
England  seized  the  opportunity  to 
arouse  prejudice  against  the  United 
States  and  to  do  much  intriguing.  In 
the  end  she  gained  practically  what 
she  wanted,  which  was  an  acknowl- 
edgment from  the  South  American 
confederacies  concerning  the  validity 
of  her  claim  to  the  entire  Mosquito 
coast. 

In  1868  the  United  States  made  a 
treaty  with  Nicaragua  securing  the 
right  of  way  for  a  canal  across  that 
country.  This  is  known  as  the  Dick- 
inson-Ayon  Treaty  and  will  recur 
during  the  Roosevelt  negotiations. 
There  had  been  much  indefinite  talk 
and  abortive  efforts  by  American  and 
foreign  promoters  and  capitalists  to 
commence  the  building  of  a  canal  at 
various  places;  but  finally  the  true 
and  ultimate  American  doctrine  was 
enunciated  by  President  Grant:  "I 
commend  an  American  canal,  on 
American  soil,  to  the  American  peo- 
ple." But  after  ineffectual  attempts 
to  secure  an  abrogation  of  the  Clay- 
ton-Bulwer treaty  all  American  pro- 
jects were  permitted  to  lapse,  and — 
then  came  de  Lesseps! 

An  adventurer  named  Gorgoza  se- 
cured a  concession  for  a  canal  over 
Panama  which,  in  1876,  he  took  to 
Paris.  He  interested  the  "Old  Im- 
perialists'" party,  including  Ferdi- 
nand de  Lesseps,  a  nobleman  just 
fresh  from  his  splendid  triumph  over 
almost  incredible  obstacles  in  the 
building  of  the  canal  at  Suez.  After 
the  meeting  of  the  International  En- 
gineering or  Scientific  Congress 
which  was  called  at  Paris  on  May  15, 
1879,  presided  over  by  de  Lesseps 
himself,  it  was  decided  to  build  a 
canal  in  the  Panama  territory.  It 
has  since  developed  that  this  "Con- 
gress" was  nothing  but  a  speculative 
scheme  and  was  "packed"  by  the  de 
Lesseps  faction  for  the  purpose  of 
giving  the  project  grand  eclat.  The 
foreigners,  invited  to  attend  the  con- 
ference under  the  impression  that  it 
was  called  for  scientific  purposes, 
left  in  disgust,  and  the  bankers,  pro- 

636 


Attempt  10 


Ammraa 


moters  and  stock-jobbers  controlled 
the  meetings.  The  Universal  Inter- 
oceanic  Canal  Company  was  the  re- 
sult, organized  and  incorporated  by 
de  Lesseps.  As  American  apprehen- 
sion and  resentment  was  aroused  by 
this  apparent  infringement  of  the 
Monroe  Doctrine,  President  Ruther- 
ford B.  Hayes  sent  an  admirable  mes- 
sage to  Congress  proposing  a  canal 
under  sole  and  exclusive  American 
control,  no  European  power  to  be  ad- 
mitted to  even  the  smallest  share. 
Any  money  invested  by  European 
capitalists  must  look  to  the  United 
States  alone  for  protection.  De  Les- 
seps tried  to  induce  Colombia  to  abro- 
gate the  treaty  of  '46  with  the  United 
States,  but  the  South  American  coun- 
try was  informed  very  emphatically 
that  she  would  not  be  permitted  to 
exercise  her  sovereignty  in  any  way 
displeasing  to  this  government. 
Thereupon  de  Lesseps  established  an 
American  committee  composed  of 
men  conspicuous  in  many  important 
affairs  and  embarked  in  a  most 
astounding  and  preposterously  im- 
pertinent attempt  to  -  bribe  national 
legislators,  newspapers  and  every  tool 
that  might  be  of  assistance  in  mold- 
ing public  opinion  to  a  favorable  view 
of  the  abrogation  of  our  treaty  with 
Colombia.  There  were  also  legions 
of  lobbyists  at  work  all  over  the  land 
to  defeat  a  counter-proposition  to 
build  a  canal  under  American  domin- 
ion by  the  way  of  the  Nicaragua 
route. 

In  1880,  Captain  James  B.  Eads, 
the  great  engineer  who  built  the  won- 
derful steel  bridge  over  the  Missis- 
sippi and  the  system  of  jetties  at  the 
mouth  of  the  same  stream,  tried  to  in- 
duce the  government  to  guarantee 
him  financial  aid  in  his  scheme  to 
build  a  ship  railroad  over  the  Mexi- 
can isthmus  known  as  the  Tehuante- 
pec  route.  It  was  his  purpose,  at  a 
cost  of  $18,750,000,  to  build  a  road 
by  the  means  of  which  the  largest 
ship  afloat  could  be  loaded  upon  a 
monster  train  of  cars  at  the  Atlantic 
terminal  and  with  its  complete  cargo 

637 


conveyed  into  the  ocean  at  the  Pacific 
terminal.  In  a  lesser  degree  this 
idea  has  been  developed  by  Sir  Weet- 
man  Pearson,  whose  railroad  across 
this  route  bids  fair  to  be  no  mean 
rival  to  our  great  canal. 

In  1 88 1,  de  Lesseps  began  actual 
work  upon  his  undertaking,  the  issue 
of  an  American  canal  by  American 
people  having  been  hopelessly  be- 
fogged by  a  series  of  inept  attempts 
by  Secretary  Elaine  and  others  to 
abrogate  the  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty. 
The  work  was  begun  with  a  perform- 
ance by  Sarah  Bernhardt  in  the 
wretched  little  Panama  theater. 
While  $60,000,000  subscriptions  had 
been  asked  for,  almost  $121,000,000 
were  promptly  offered.  The  French 
people,  tens  of  thousands,  no,  even 
perhaps  hundreds  of  thousands,  were 
women  who  held  the  stock  in  small 
lots.  The  total  amount  of  money 
subscribed  at  various  times  was 
$393,505,100.  Consider  these  figures 
that  follow,  which  you  will  find  ana- 
lyzed more  thoroughly  in  my  book 
and  you  will  understand  why  the 
French  failed  to  build  that  canal. 
The  Director-General's  palace  cost 
more  than  $100,000.  His  summer 
house  at  La  Boca  cost  $150,000.  His 
salary  was  $50,000  a  year.  And  they 
gave  him  fifty  dollars  extra  for  every 
day  or  fraction  of  a  day  that  he  trav- 
eled along  the  line  in  the  sumptuous 
private  car  that  had  been  provided  at 
a  cost  of  $42,000.  The  stables  cost 
$600,000;  the  hospitals  at  Ancon 
$5,600.000  and  at  Colon  $1400,000. 
All  these  things  were  needed,  truly, 
but  the  trouble  was  that  where  a 
$50,000  building  was  needed  a  $100,- 
ooo  building  was  put  up  and  when  it 
was  finished  the  "rake-offs"  brought 
it  to  $200,000.  In  one  place  I  saw 
where  there  had  been  stored  thou- 
sands of  snow-shovels — in  Panama! 
In  another  there  were  stored  15,000 
torches  to  use  in  the  grand  celebra- 
tion to  occur  when  the  canal  was  fin- 
ished! It  is  impossible  to  cite  all 
the  evidences  of  the  extravagant  folly 
of  the  French.  As  someone  said  to 


Jnur  ifuttfcrefc 


nf 


anama  Qlanal 


me  recently:  "It  was  forty-seven 
miles  of  graft."  Also  the  Colom- 
bians simply  plundered  the  Canal 
Company  right  and  left ;  and  the  com- 
pany was  unfortunate  in  not  having 
begun  in  the  time  when  such  progress 
in  matters  of  hygiene  had  been  made 
as  at  the  present.  Their  faults  were 
as  grave  as  their  misfortunes.  They 
entirely  neglected  to  renovate  the 
isthmus  and  were  content  to  go  on 
with  the  unspeakably  vile  conditions 
then  prevailing. 

It  is  futile  in  a  small  way  to  say 
more.  I  have  gone  into  this  pretty 
thoroughly  in  my  book.  The  conse- 
quence of  delirious,  extravagant  folly 
must  be  ruin.  This  is  what  happened 
to  the  French  enterprise.  The  stretch 
of  time  between  the  occasion  when 
Gambetta  hailed  de  Lesseps  as  "The 
Grand  Frenchman"  with  the  assist- 
ance of  Victor  Hugo  and  Ernest 
Renan  to  the  moment  when  the 
wretched  man  sat  in  the  prisoner's 
dock  and  heard  a  sentence  of  five 
years'  imprisonment  pronounced  over 
him,  was  only  nine  years.  He  never 
served  the  sentence  as  he  was  men- 
tally and  physically  a  wreck.  This 
great  man,  whose  name  will  live  for 
all  time  by  his  achievement  at  Suez, 
probably  never  fully  realized  what 
had  happened. 

After  the  de  Lesseps  smash  the 
French  company  reorganized  in  order 
to  save  what  was  of  value  in  the 
wreck.  Another  concession  was  ob- 
tained from  the  Colombian  govern- 
ment for  a  substantial  consideration. 
In  the  meantime,  work  actually  had 
begun  at  Grey  town  on  a  Nicaraguan 
canal  to  be  constructed  under  Amer- 
ican auspices.  It  would  possibly 
have  been  finished  but  the  financial 
stringency  and  the  consequent  depres- 
sion of  1893  caused  the  company  to 
go  into  the  hands  of  a  receiver.  The 
great  voyage  of  the  battleship  "Ore- 
gon" during  the  Spanish-American 
War  gave  an  impetus  to  canal  matters 
in  the  United  States  in  1898.  It  was 
determined  that  if  this  government 
could  prevent  it  there  should  never 


again  be  occasion  for  our  battleships 
to  make  that  long  and  perilous  jour- 
ney around  by  the  straits  of  Magellan 
in  order  to  reach  the  other  side  of  our 
coast  in  the  time  of  need.  Therefore, 
after  one  fruitless  attempt  at  treaty- 
making,  the  old  Clayton-Bulwer  treaty 
was  finally  superseded  in  1901  by  the 
second  Hay-Pauncefote  treaty  which 
practically  gives  the  United  States  a 
free-hand  over  the  canal  and  all  the 
adjacent  territory  at  all  times. 

Then  followed  that  exciting  duel 
between  the  United  States  and  the 
government  of  Colombia,  in  the 
course  of  which  the  "graft"  govern- 
ment tried  to  prolong  the  negotiations 
by  very  obvious  means  so  as  to  nul- 
lify its  concession  to  the  French  com- 
pany, which  expired  the  next  year, 
1904.  The  object,  of  course,  was  to 
get  the  $40,000,000  which  the  United 
States  had  agreed  to  pay  the  French 
company  for  its  concession  and  all 
the  debris  on  the  isthmus.  The  gov- 
ernment of  Colombia  at  Bogota  was 
a  pure  and  simple  graft  proposition. 
The  men  who  guided  its  destinies  ex- 
ploited it  for  the  fattening  of  their 
own  pocketbooks.  Under  the  terms 
offered  by  our  government,  Colombia 
was  to  receive  only  $10,000,000  and 
an  annuity  of  $100,000  a  year  after 
nine  years.  This  was  definitely  re- 
refused  by  the  Colombians  after  they 
had  made  every  effort  to  induce  our 
Commission  to  select  the  Panama 
route.  The  United  States,  under  the 
option  of  the  so-called  Spooner  act 
which  directed  the  president  to  build 
the  canal,  was  about  to  open  negotia- 
tions with  Nicaragua  when  the  com- 
plexion of  affairs  was  changed  by  the 
revolution  of  Panama.  It  is  a  mis- 
take to  believe  that  our  government 
festered  and  brought  about  the  revo- 
lution. It  was  fostered  by  the  Co- 
lumbian government  and  brought 
about  by  the  Panamans  themselves. 
Until  the  regimen  of  the  highly  dic- 
tatorial governments  of  the  last  few 
years,  Panama  had  been  a  self-re- 
specting state  in  the  Colombian  fed- 
eration. It  had,  in  fact,  been  the 

638 


Jtrat  Attempt  tn 


tlj?  Ammraa 


most  prosperous  and  desirable  divi- 
sion of  the  group.  It  had  the  most 
to  gain  and  the  most  to  lose  by  the 
failure  of  the  negotiations  with  the 
United  States.  In  political  vernacu- 
lar the  government  at  Bogota  was 
trying  to  use  the  free  state  of  Panama 
to  make  money  for  what  we  could 
call  the  Ring.  Panama  remonstrated 
without  avail. 

The  revolution  was  organized,  and 
with  the  assistance  of  Bunau-Varrilla, 
a  wealthy  French  engineer,  was  con- 
summated. The  manner  of  its  devel- 
opment is  highly  interesting.  You 
will  find  the  exact  facts  concerning 
the  so-called  interference  of  Mr. 
Roosevelt  in  my  book.  There  was 
absolutely  no  interference.  In  1903 
the  Hay-Bunau-Varilla  treaty  was 
consummated.  For  the  sum  origi- 
nally offered  to  the  government  of 
Colombia,  Panama  gave  to  the  United 
States  in  perpetuity  the  use,  occupa- 
tion and  control  of  a  strip  ten  miles 
wide  and  extending  three  nautical 
miles  into  the  sea  at  either  terminus. 
The  United  States  assumes  the  sani- 
tation of  the  cities  of  Panama  and 
Colon  and  the  maintenance  of  order 
if  need  be. 

The  Republic  of  Panama  has  now 
been  recognized  by  all  the  nations  of 
the  earth.  It  is  about  the  same  size 
as  the  state  of  Maine.  It  has  a  splen- 
did administration,  a  really  fine  con- 
stitution and  is  a  beautiful  country. 
The  stuff  that  you  may  have  read 
about  its  swampy  jungles  and  its  mal- 
adorous  condition  is  generally  the  re- 
sult either  of  malice  or  misinforma- 
tion. It  is  not  affected  by  earth- 
quakes, has  an  average  temperature 
of  seventy-nine  degrees  Fahrenheit 
and  never  goes  to  100  degrees  Fah- 


renheit, which  is  common  in  New 
York  and  other  parts  of  the  Temper- 
ate zone.  The  humidity  is  very 
great.  The  winds  of  course  are 
steady,  being  in  the  range  of  the  trade 
current,  and  the  rainfall  is  heavy  in 
season.  October  is  the  rainiest 
month.  Panama  is  the  capital  city. 
To  me  it  is  by  far  more  cosmopolitan 
than  any  city  except,  perhaps,  two  we 
have  in  the  United  States — and  I 
don't  include  New  York  among  the 
two.  I  am  sorry  I  can't  tell  you  more 
about  the  city  and  the  people  and  the 
country.  It  is  all  exceedingly  worth 
while.  The  canal  itself  is  being  dug 
through  a  route  on  which  at  no  point 
the  mountains  are  three  hundred  feet 
above  sea  level.  This  mountain  is 
where  the  famous  Culebra  cut  is  be- 
ing scooped  out.  This  is  the  crux  of 
the  work.  The  earth  taken  out  here 
is  conveyed  to  Colon  which  needs 
building  up  and  is  being  used  to  ele- 
vate that  city.  After  the  various 
confusing  episodes  that  have  occurred 
since  we  have  undertaken  the  canal, 
I  think  we  are  getting  along  splen- 
didly. The  matter  of  sea-level  and 
lock  canal  has  not  been  definitely  set- 
tled for  all  time  and  many  authori- 
ties think  that  we  will  have  to  adopt 
the  sea-level  because  of  the  geological 
constitution  of  the  soil.  You  know 
there  is  no  rocky  mountain  where  we 
are  building  the  canal.  The  hills  are 
practically  nothing  but  a  friable  earth. 
The  so-called  backbone  of  North  and 
South  America  does  not  extend 
across  the  isthmus.  The  rock  in  the 
soil  at  the  cut  at  Culebra  has  been 
found  at  a  depth  of  two  hundred  and 
fifty  feet.  This  is  the  plain  record  of 
the  principal  facts  regarding  the  con- 
struction of  the  Panama  Canal. 


"God  to  the  human  soul, 

And  all  the  spheres  that  roll 
Wrapped  by  her  spirit  in  their  robes  of  light, 

Hath  said:  'The  primal  plan 

Of  all  the  world  and  man 
Is  Forward!     Progress  is  your  law,  your  right!"' 


639 


fnr  (Eontrfll  nf  Ammnt 


Ambition  of 

tlir  turnurau  fhunrra 

to  Aoo  Ihr  ttlfiiimt  (Continent  to 

QUjrir  Eraairra  &  Amrrtra'a  3Fat*  in  ttjp  Balanr* 

During  ilir  (6rrat  Battlra  on  lljr   Spanish   iHatu   ^  Baring 

Aavrntnrra    of   tn.r    (Srrat    Aomirala    of   Ihr    (Caribbean    g>ra 


FRANCIS  RUSSELL  HART,  F.  R.  Q.  S. 

MEMBER  or    MANY   LEARNED    AMERICAN    SOCIETIES   AND   FELLOW   OF   THE   ROYAL   GEOGRAPHICAL  SOCIETY 
OF  GREAT  BRITAIN— COPYRIGHT  ASSIGNED  TO  THE  AUTHOR 


Ere  men  the  virtue  of  the  magnet  found, 
The  ocean  scarcely  heard  a  human  sound, 
For  western  suns  were  deemed  to  shine  in 

vain, 

Or  only  light  the  monsters  of  the  main. 
The  seas  were  narrow  which  the  boldest 

crost, 
And  numbers  trembled  if  the  shore  were 

lost. 

Now  a  far  world  incites  the  liquid  race, 
And  oceans  vast  our  intercourse  increase. 
The  use  we  know,  but  haply  ne'er  shall  find 
Whence  to  the  pole  the  magnet  is  inclined; 
How  a  dark,  heavy  stone  the  earth  supplies, 


great  story  of  the  Car- 
ibbean  Sea  has  as  yet 
been  only  half  written. 
il  The  story  of  discovery, 
of  conquest,  of  struggle 
over  the  keeping, — a 
story  in  which  kings  be- 
came pirates  and  in  which  pirates  be- 
came almost  kings,  and  in  which  the 
destinies  of  the  countries  of  the  Old 
World  became  singularly  entwined 
with  the  destinies  of  those  of  the  New. 
The  motive  of  the  struggles  was  gold, 
not  lands  nor  men. 

The  country  of  the  North  had  later 
its  wars  of  conquest  and  of  settlement, 
but  the  plunder  was  land  and  great 
rivers  and  not  the  storehouses  of  other 
men.  In  a  fragmentary  way  this 
great  romantic  story  has  been  written, 
partly  in  the  books  of  students  of 
history  and  part  remaining  in  the 
archives  of  the  descendants  of  the 
conquistadores.  Some  day  the  great 
historian  must  come  who  will  do  for 
the  waters  and  shores  of  the  great 
Caribbean  what  Prescott  and  Park- 
man  have  done  for  the  North.  The 


Maintains  a  correspondence  with  the  skies; 
How  it  imparts  to  steel  the  art  it  knows, 
Yet  keeps  entire  the  virtue  it  bestows: 
Long  may  the  needle  feel  the  art  divine, 
To  show  the  pathless  way  and  wat'ry  line; 
Pointing  the  steersman   straight  o'er  con- 
vex seas, 
Whose   mere   extent  were   else   a   clueless 

maze; 
For,  foam  the  ship  tow'rds  tropic,  line  or 

pole, 

The  compass  seems  her  brain,  tho'  art's  her 
soul. 

— J.  KlRKPATRICK  IN   1750. 


preparation  of  these  few  monographs 
has  been  due  to  a  desire  on  the  part  of 
the  author  to  put  in  convenient  form 
for  the  future  historian  the  story  of 
certain  great  battles  and  events  in  a 
part  of  the  Spanish  Main  with  which 
the  author  through  several  years'  resi- 
dence is  most  familiar. 

For  the  most  part  the  original  rec- 
ords and  reports  of  those  engaged  in 
the  expeditions  have  been  the  sources 
of  information,  the  stories  of  both  the 
attacked  and  attacker  being  carefully 
compared  and  each  interpreted  with 
proper  regard  to  local,  physical  and 
other  conditions  personally  observed 
by  the  author. 

By  themselves  these  accounts 
show  a  few  characteristic  events  out 
of  the  three  centuries  of  struggles 
during  which  Spain  both  reached  and 
fell  from  the  zenith  of  her  power  in 
both  the  Old  and  New  Worlds. 

This  first  monograph,  with  its  rare 
prints,  tells  the  fascinating  story  of 
that  great -admiral,  Drake,  and  his  ad- 
ventures on  the  Spanish  Main  from 
1567  to  1596. 

640 


(great  £>inrg  nf  tlf*  (Caribbean 


URING  the  last  quarter  of 
the  sixteenth  century 
Spain  was  the  strongest 
of  European  powers,  and 
Philip  the  most  powerful 
of  monarchs.  In  the  New 
World,  Spanish  rule  was 
absolute  from  Florida  to  the  Rio  de  la 
Plata  on  the  Atlantic  coast,  and  from 
the  Isthmus  south  on  the  Western 
coast  of  South  America;  in  fact,  a 
papal  grant  had  conveyed  the  whole 
of  America  to  the  Spanish  Crown. 
A  small  French  settlement  on  the  St. 
Lawrence  in  the  North,  and  an  expe- 
dition to  Labrador  by  Frobisher,  un- 
der the  patronage  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
showed  that  the  somewhat  arrogant 
claim  of  Spain  to  the  whole  of  Amer- 
ica was  not  uncontested. 

Protestant  England  under  Eliza- 
beth longed  not  only  for  a  share  of  the 
rich  plunder  which  the  exploitation  of 
the  New  World  was  gaining  for 
Spain,  but  also  for  an  opportunity  to 
cross  swords  with  Catholicism.  On 
both  sides  the  adventurous  spirit  was 
strangely  mixed  with  religious  enthu- 
siasm. Prayers  and.  piracy  were 
closely,  and  often  with  sincerity, 
blended.  The  fact  that  no  commerce 
except  with  Spain  was  permitted  in 
the  New  World  made  trade  by  English 
ships  and  men  possible  only  when  car- 
ried on  by  privateers  or  armed  vessels. 
The  inevitable  result  of  these  condi- 
tions was  that  English  ships  ostensibly 
fitted  for  trade  turned  to  plundering 
the  rich  galleons  of  Spain,  giving  rise 
to  reprisals  with  terrible  excesses  on 
both  sides. 

The  story  of  the  great  seamen  of 
Elizabeth's  reign  — Drake,  Hawkins 
and  Frobisher,  is  almost  the  history  of 
the  England  of  their  day;  a  story  re- 
plete with  the  romance  of  dangerous 
adventure,  reckless  courage,  cruelty 
and  craft,  but  none  the  less  the  story 
of  brave  and  gallant  men  who  fought 
battles  not  only  for  their  own  but  for 
succeeding  generations. 

Upon  Drake's  return  from  his  great 
voyage  around  the  world,  begun  in 
1577  and  ended  in  1580,  he  was  re- 


ceived  with  great  enthusiasm  by  both 
queen  and  country.  On  this  voyage 
he  had  sacked  the  unguarded  coast 
towns  of  Peru  and  Chili,  and  it  is  said 
returned  with  over  half  a  million  ster- 
ling of  treasure  taken  chiefly  from  the 
Spanish  possessions.  That  Drake 
himself  was  knighted  and  his  com- 
pany feted  by  all  England,  was  not  un- 
naturally received  as  an  insult  by 
Philip,  and  added  fuel  to  the  flames 
of  war  already  kindled.  There  could 
be  now  no  further  question  of  concili- 
ating Spain,  and  every  effort  was 
made  by  Elizabeth  and  her  sailor  coun- 
sellors to  build  up  a  naval  establish- 
ment of  a  strength  equal  to  that  of 
Philip,  his  naval  power  having  been 
almost  doubled  through  the  acquisi- 
tion of  Portugal  by  the  failure  of  its 
royal  line.  To  make  havoc  with  the 
Spanish  possessions  in  the  New  World 
appealed  to  both  the  political  sagacity 
of  the  queen  and  to  the  business-like 
judgment  of  those  imbued  with  the 
buccaneer  spirit  of  the  age. 

It  has  been  necessary  to  touch  thus 
briefly  on  the  general  conditions 
affecting  Eneland  and  Spain  at  the 
time  of  the  expedition  against  Carta- 
gena and  other  towns  of  the  Spanish 
Main,  in  order  to  more  justly  con- 
ceive the  true  value  and  motives  of  an 
attack  which  has  been  variously  de- 
scribed as  a  great  legitimate  naval  ex- 
pedition and  as  a  series  of  wanton 
piratical  seizures.  To  more  ade- 
quately gain  a  proper  perspective  it 
will  be  necessary  to  also  touch  briefly 
on  the  earlier  history  of  Drake. 

Few  men  whose  deeds  have  played 
such  an  important  and  forceful  part  in 
actual  events,  have  had  associated  with 
their  names  so  much  of  almost  legend- 
ary romanticism  as  has  that  of  Fran- 
cis Drake.  Knighted  and  made  an 
admiral  by  Elizabeth,  and  dubbed  a 
pirate  by  the  Spaniards,  he  was  in 
truth  a  mixture  of  the  great  soldier- 
admiral  and  the  adventurous  bucca- 
neer. His  father,  Edmund  Drake,  is 
said  to  have  been  at  one  time  a  sailor, 
but  be  this  as  it  may,  he  had  become 
vicar  of  Upchurch,  living  near  Tavis- 


nf  tlj? 


tock,  under  the  patronage  of  the  Earl 
of  Bedford.  It  was  the  earl's  son, 
Francis  Russell,  who  endowed  the  son 
born  to  Edmund  Drake  with  his  own 
name. 

Francis  Drake  was  born  about  1545. 
His  early  associations  were  strongly 
anti-Catholic.  As  a  boy  he  was  ap- 
prenticed to  the  master  and  owner  of 
a  small  channel  coasting  vessel,  and 
appears  to  have  been  treated  as  a  son 
by  the  master,  who  upon  his  death  not 
very  long  after  left  the  vessel  to  him. 

Sir  John  Hawkins,  said  by  some  to 
have  been  a  kinsman  of  Drake,  had 
been  early  engaged  in  the  slave-trade 
and  in  trading  expeditions  to  the  West 
Indies  and  Spanish  Main.  In  1567 
he  visited  the  Spanish  Main,  and  only 
succeeded  in  landing  and  selling  his 
negroes  at  Rio  de  la  Hacha  after  over- 
coming armed  resistance.  He  finally 
at  Cartagena  abandoned  this  com- 
merce. This  voyage  was  in  many  re- 
spects unfortunate,  and  it  was  also 
alleged  that  many  acts  of  bad  faith  on 
the  part  of  the  Spaniards  brought 
great  hardships,  sufferings  and  death 
to  many  of  Hawkins'  unhappy  com- 
panions. Hawkins  himself  says  in  his 
account  of  the  expedition :  "If  all  the 
miseries  and  troublesome  affairs  of 
this  sorrowful  voyage  should  be  per- 
fectly and  thoroughly  written,  there 
should  need  a  painful  man  with  his 
pen,  and  as  great  a  time  as  he  had  that 
wrote  the  lives  and  deaths  of  the  mar- 
tyrs." 

Great  indignation  was  felt  in  Eng- 
land over  the  mishaps  of  this  voyage 
and  the  treatment  of  the  voyagers  by 
the  Spaniards.  Drake  had  taken  part 
in  this  expedition  in  command  of  the 
"Judith,"  having  previously  sold  his 
own  little  coaster  and  used  the  pro- 
ceeds, with  his  other  earnings,  for  the 
proper  outfitting  for  this  voyage  with 
Hawkins.  Having  lost  everything  in 
this  unhappy  venture,  from  which  he 
barely  escaped  with  his  life,  Drake  be- 
came an  ardent  supporter  of  the  doc- 
trine, soon  popular  in  England,  that 
it  was  lawful  to  recover  from  the 
Spaniards  that  which  their  treachery 


had  taken  from  the  English  traders. 
In  1570  Drake  again  went  to  the 
West  Indies,  this  time  with  two  ships, 
the  "Dragon"  and  the  "Swan,"  and 
again  in  1571  with  the  "Swan"  alone. 
These  voyages  appear  to  have  been 
mainly  for  acquiring  information,  or 
at  least,  that  appears  to  have  been  their 
chief  result.  With  the  experience 
gained  by  these  two  voyages  and  the 
previous  one  with  Hawkins,  he  sailed 
from  Plymouth  in  May,  1572,  with  the 
"Pacha"  of  seventy  tons,  and  "Swan" 
of  twenty-five  tons,  with  total  crews  of 
seventy-three  men  and  boys.  By  the 
end  of  July  he  reached  Nombre  de 
Dios,  and  after  a  sharp  but  brief  en- 
gagement, in  which  he  himself  was 
wounded,  captured  the  town.  From 
Nombre  de  Dios  he  sailed  along  the 
coast  towards  Cartagena,  capturing 
several  well-laden  vessels  on  the  way, 
but  making  no  stop  of  consequence  un- 
til arriving  at  the  Isthmus  of  Darien. 
There  he  found  settlements  of  the 
Cimarrones  (or  Maroons),  negroes 
who  had  escaped  from  slavery,  with 
whom  he  entered  into  intercourse  and 
by  the  chief  of  whom  he  was  shown 
from  a  "goodly  and  great  high  tree" 
on  a  commanding  height  a  sight  of  the 
Pacific  ocean.  Drake  is  reported  to 
have  "besought  Almighty  God  of  his 
goodness  to  give  him  life  and  leave  to 
sail  in  an  English  ship  on  that  sea." 
This  same  chief  guided  and  helped  in 
an  expedition  overland  to  intercept  the 
trains  of  mules  which  brought  treas- 
ure from  Panama  to  Nombre  de  Dios. 
Beyond  taking  possession  of  a  small 
town  on  the  road  and  destroying  some 
property  the  expedition  appears  to 
have  been  fruitless,  and  it  was  only 
after  great  hardships  and  dangers  that 
Drake  and  his  men  regained  their 
ships.  He  returned  to  Plymouth 
from  this  voyage  on  August  9,  1573, 
somewhat  enriched,  but  with  his  am- 
bition in  no  way  satisfied.  A  val- 
orous and  venturesome  seaman 
named  John  Oxenham,  whose  name 
is  closely  associated  with  the  stir- 
ring events  of  that  day  in  the  Carib- 
bean littoral,  had  served  under  Drake 

642 


&truggl?  far  ttft  (Enntrnl  of  Ammra 


in  this  expedition.  About  two  years 
later  Oxenham,  with  one  ship  and  sev- 
enty men,  retraced  the  course  of  Drake 
to  Darien  with  the  object  of  inter- 
cepting one  of  the  richly  laden  mule 
trains  from  Panama.  Being  informed 
by  the  Cimarrones  that  the  trains  were 
now  accompanied  by  a  strong  guard, 
he  abandoned  this  plan  and,  helped  by 
a  few  of  the  Cimarrones,  marched  to 
the  Pacific  side,  built  himself  a  small 
pinnace,  and  gained  the  distinction 
of  being  the  first  Englishman  to  sail 
upon  the  Pacific  ocean.  In  December, 
1577,  Drake  started  on  his  great  trip 
of  circumnavigation,  already  referred 
to,  with  a  fleet  consisting  of  the  "Peli- 
can" and  four  smaller  vessels,  having 
a  total  complement  of  one  hundred  and 
sixty-four  men.  That  the  plans  for 
this  voyage  had  the  full,  if  secret,  con- 
currence of  the  queen  there  seems  little 
doubt,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that 
one  of  its  real  if  not  avowed  ob- 
jects was  to  prey  upon  the  colonies  of 
a  nation  with  which  technical  peace 
existed.  The  story  of  this  voyage  has 
no  place  here,  but  its  great  success 
from  both  a  naval  and  "profit-sharing" 
standpoint,  and  the  enthusiasm  with 
which  the  voyagers  were  received  on 
their  return  in  September,  1580, 
"richly  fraught  with  gold,  silver,  silk, 
pearls  and  precious  stones,"  added 
greatly  to  the  prestige  of  Drake. 

For  the  next  four  years  Drake  re- 
mained in  England,  becoming  mayor 
of  Plymouth  for  a  brief  period  and 
then  entering  Parliament  as  member 
for  Bossiney. 

Early  in  1585,  Elizabeth  could  no 
longer  blind  herself  to  the  certainty 
of  the  intention  of  Spain  to  attack 
England.  A  fleet  of  English  ships 
laden  with  corn  had  been  unfairly 
seized,  and  swift  retribution  was 
planned.  Under  letters  of  marque 
Drake  gathered  about  him  at  Ply- 
mouth the  most  formidable  squadron 
of  privateers  ever  gotten  together, 
consisting  of  twenty-five  ships  with  a 
total  of  twenty-three  hundred  sailors 
and  soldiers.  His  vice-admiral  was 
the  doughty  Martin  Frobisher;  his 

643 


rear-admiral,  Francis  Knollys,  and 
Lieutenant-General  Christopher  Car- 
leill  was  in  command  of  the  ten  com- 
panies of  land  troops  included  in  the 
complement. 

The  fleet  sailed  from  Plymouth  on 
the  twelfth  of  September,  1585.  After 
threatening  Bayona  and  Vigo,  and  by 
his  promptness  and  courage  doing 
much  to  injure  the  morale  of  the 
Spanish  naval  defences,  Drake  pro- 
ceeded to  the  Cape  de  Verde  Islands, 
taking  almost  unopposed  possession 
of  the  chief  town,  Santiago,  and  plun- 
dering the  islands  for  provisions  and 
anything  of  value.  From  there  he 
began  his  voyage  towards  the  West 
Indies  with  the  greatest  armament 
which  had  ever  crossed  the  Atlantic. 
His  plan  was  to  weaken  Spain  by  cut- 
ting off  the  chief  sources  of  her 
wealth  in  the  New  World  and  to 
strengthen  England  by  obtaining  the 
mastery  of  the  rich  Caribbean  ports 
from  which  it  seemed  a  limitless 
stream  of  gold  could  be  made  to  flow 
into  the  Old  World. 

During  the  voyage  to  the  West  In- 
dies the  men  suffered  severe  losses 
from  deaths  due  to  an  infectious  sick- 
ness, and  the  squadron  arrived  some- 
what weakened  in  consequence  at  the 
Island  of  Dominica.  This  island  is 
described  by  Thomas  Gates,  one  of 
the  company  officers  who  wrote  a 
complete  account  in  Hakluyt's  Voy- 
ages, as  inhabited  by  "savage  people, 
which  goe  all  naked,  their  skinne  col- 
oured with  some  painting  of  a  reddish 
tawny,  very  personable  and  handsome 
strong  men."  From  thence  the 
squadron  proceeded  towards  Hispani- 
ola  (San  Domingo),  spending  Christ- 
mas (1585)  at  anchor  at  the  Island 
of  St.  Christopher  (St.  Kitts)  where 
no  people  were  found. 

The  city  of  San  Domingo  in  His- 
paniola  was  one  of  the  chief  strong- 
holds of  the  Spaniards  in  the  West 
Indies,  and  so  strongly  built  and  for- 
tified that  no  serious  attack  had  previ- 
ously been  attempted  upon  it.  It  was 
surrounded  by  walls  and  batteries  of 
some  strength  and  reputed  to  be  gar- 


Extract  from  account  published  by  M.  Thomas  Gates  (V.  Hakluyt's  Voyages),  entitled: 

"A     sr\IM  \UM:     AND     TRUK     DISCOURSE     OF     SIR     FRANCIS     DRAKE'S 

WEST   INDIAN   VOYAGE.   BEGUN   IN   THE   TEERE 


This  worthy  knight  for  the  service  of  his  Prince  and  countrey  having  prepared 
his  whole  fleete,  and  gotten  them  down  to  Plimmouth  in  Devonshire,  to  the  number 
of  five  and  twenty  saile  of  ships  and  pinnesses,  and  having  assembled  of  souldiers 
and  mariners,  to  the  number  of  2300  in  the  whole,  embarked  them  and  himself  e  at 
Plimmouth  aforesaid,  the  12  day  of  September  1585,  being  accompanied  with  these 
men  of  name  and  charge,  which  hereafter  follow  : 

Master  Christopher  Carleil  Lieutenant  General,  a  man  of  long  experience  in  the 
warres  as  well  by  sea  as  land,  who  had  formerly  carried  high  offices  in  both  kindes  in 
many  fights,  which  he  discharged  alwaies  very  happily,  and  with  great  good  reputation. 

Anthonie  Powel  Sergeant  Major. 

Captaine  Matthew  Morgan,  and  Captaine  John  Sampson,  Corporals  of  the  field. 

These  officers  had  commandement  over  the  rest  of  the  land-Captaines,  whose 
names  hereafter  follow  : 

Captaine  Anthony  Plat,  Captaine  John  Merchant, 

Captaine  Edward  Winter,  Captaine  William  Cecill, 

Captaine  John  Goring,  Captaine  Walter  Bigs, 

Captaine  Robert  Pew,  Captaine  John  Hannam, 

Captaine  George  Barton,  Captaine  Richard  Stanton. 

Captaine  Martine  Frobisher  Viceadmirall,  a  man  of  great  experience  in  sea-faring 
actions,  who  had  carried  the  chiefe  charge  of  many  ships  himselfe,  in  sundry  voyages 
before,  being  now  shipped  in  the  Primrose. 

Captaine  Francis  Knolles,  Reereadmirall  in  the  Galeon  Leicester. 

Master  Thomas  Vennor,  Captaine  in  the  Elizabeth  Bonadventure  under  the 
Generall. 

Master  Edward  Winter,  Captaine  in  the  Aide. 

Master  Christopher  Carleil  the  Lieutenant  generall,  Captaine  of  the  Tygar. 

Henry  White,  Captaine  of  the  sea  Dragon. 

Thomas  Drake,  Captaine  of  the  Thomas. 

Thomas  Seelie,  Captaine  of  the  Minion. 

Baily,  Captaine  of  the  Barke  Talbot. 

Robert  Crosse,  Captaine  of  the  Bark  Bond. 

George  Fortescue,  Captaine  of  the  Barke  Bonner. 

Edward  Carelesse,  Captaine  of  the  Hope. 

James  Erizo,  Captaine  of  the  White  Lyon. 

Thomas  Moone,  Captaine  of  the  Vantage. 

John  Vaughan,  Captaine  of  the  Drake. 

John  Varney,  Captaine  of  the  George. 

John  Martin,  Captaine  of  the  Benjamin. 

Edward  Gilman,  Captaine  of  the  Skout. 

Richard  Hawkins,  Captaine  of  the  Galiot  called  the  Ducke. 

Bitfield,  Captaine  of  the  Swallow. 


risoned  by  a  powerful  force,  although 
the  Spanish  accounts  state  that  about 
2,000  only  of  the  8,000  inhabitants 
were  capable  only  of  bearing  arms 
and  that  in  the  actual  defense  of  the 
city  a  few  hundred  only  participated. 
Gates  refers  to  the  "glorious  fame 
of  the  citie  of  S.  Domingo,  be- 
ing the  ancientest  and  chiefe  inhab- 
ited place  in  all  the  tract  of  country 
thereabouts." 

The  squadron  arrived  at  a  safe 
landing-place  about  ten  miles  from 
the  city,  on  New  Year's  day, 
1586,  and  notwithstanding  the  com- 
motion created  in  the  city  by 
the  approach  of  the  large  flotilla, 


the  troops  were  secretly  landed  with- 
out molestation  under  cover  of  the 
night.  In  the  morning  following, 
Drake  made  a  feint  at  landing  on  the 
opposite  side  towards  which  Carleill 
with  the  men  already  landed  was  ap- 
proaching. The  advantage  gained  by 
this  manoeuvre  was  pushed  home,  and 
after  a  short  engagement  in  the  streets 
and  market-place  the  victory  was 
won. 

The  town  being  rather  large  for 
complete  occupancy  by  the  small  num- 
ber of  troops  under  Carleill,  he  was 
directed  by  Drake  to  intrench  himself 
in  the  most  important  part  of  the  town, 
the  Spanish  troops  being  then  divided 

644 


t  RAN  CIS 


Q 


CA?c/tt/V    rvaj  taken   from  an 
bu  tht   Hon 


Original 
Sr  Phillin  SudcnJiam  Bast  Kn?  of  y  /Jure  for 


Struggle  fnr  tlj?  (Ennirnl  0f  Am^rira 


into  two  divisions,  one  which  had  fled 
to  safety  well  outside  of  the  city,  and 
the  other  remaining  in  that  part  not 
invested  by  the  English  forces. 

Drake  now  demanded  a  large  ran- 
som for  the  release  of  the  town. 
During  the  negotiations  he  sent  a 
negro  boy  with  a  flag  of  truce  to  the 
Spanish  camp;  the  boy  being  met  by 
a  few  Spanish  officers  was  so  wound- 
ed by  one  of  them  that  he  could  barely 
crawl  back  within  his  own  lines  to 
die.  This  so  inflamed  the  natural 
anger  of  Drake  that  in  the  first  burst 
of  his  fury  he  had  hanged,  on  the  spot 
of  the  boy's  death,  two  friars  who 
were  among  the  prisoners,  and  de- 
clared that  until  the  cowardly  Span- 
iard who  killed  the  boy  was  publicly 
executed  two  more  prisoners  would 
be  hanged  daily.  This  demand  was 
quickly  met.  The  amount  of  the  ran- 
som which  the  city,  even  with  diffi- 
culty, could  pay,  was  not  so  great  as 
Drake  had  expected,  and  he  had  to  be 
contented  with  twenty-five  thousand 
ducats,  probably  equivalent  to  about 
sixty  thousand  dollars  of  American 
money.  In  addition,  all  valuable 
property  of  a  shape  to  permit  of  re- 
moval was  taken  aboard  the  ships,  in- 
cluding from  two  to  three  hundred 
guns  and  ample  stores  of  provisions. 
A  few  of  the  better  vessels  in  the  har- 
bor were  taken  and  the  remainder  de- 
stroyed. 

Exhilarated  by  victory,  and  with  his 
squadron  in  reinforced  condition, 
Drake  sailed  the  middle  of  February 
for  Cartagena  on  the  Spanish  Main. 
It  was  now  that  the  experience  which 
lit  had  gained  in  his  earlier  voyages 
stood  him  in  good  stead,  for  he  could 
approach  this  difficult  shore  and  har- 
bor with  the  confidence  of  an  experi- 
enced pilot. 

The  town  of  Cartagena  had  been 
founded  a  little  more  than  fifty  years 
before  Drake's  attack,  and  was 
already  well  fortified,  although  its  sys- 
tem of  walls  and  fortifications  which 
were  afterwards  intended  to  make  it 
impregnable,  were  not  then  wholly 
completed.  The  town  is  situated  at 


the  eastern  extremity  of  the  harbor  or 
Bay  of  Cartagena,  on  low  level  land 
While  its  southwestern  side  faces  the 
harbor,  its  northwestern  face  is  actu- 
ally on  the  open  sea  itself  and  the 
surf  breaks  near  the  base  of  strong 
walls  on  that  side.  The  remaining 
boundary  is  largely  made  up  of  a 
great  shallow  lagoon  almost  connect- 
ing with  the  sea  on  the  one  side,  and 
connecting  with  the  harbor  on  the 
other.  The  harbor  itself  is  made 
nearly  a  closed  basin  by  the  Island  of 
Tierra  Bomba,  at  each  end  of  which 
in  Drake's  time  was  an  entrance  for 
ships,  the  larger  called  Boca  Grande 
being  nearer  the  city,  and  the  smaller 
and  more  difficult  called  Boca  Chica 
being  near  the  western  end  of  the  bay. 

The  Boca  Grande  entrance  was 
subsequently  closed  by  artificial 
means,  which,  when  once  effected, 
was  greatly  helped  by  the  natural 
drift  of  the  sands.  It  has  now  been 
closed  for  all  but  the  smallest  boats 
for  over  two  centuries. 

Cartagena,  by  reason  of  its  magnifi- 
cent harbor  and  its  nearness  to  the 
great  river  Magdalena,  which  led 
down  from  the  rich  country  in  the  in- 
terior, had  become  the  storehouse 
of  Spain  in  the  New  World,  and  the 
headquarters  of  all  Spanish  com- 
merce. Relying  upon  the  reputation 
of  Cartagena  for  strength  to  keep  it- 
self from  being  attacked  and  having 
no  conception  that  such  an  audacious 
attack  upon  his  American  possessions 
would  be  made,  Philip  had  not  had 
time  to  send  out  in  advance  of  Drake's 
arrival  any  reinforcements.  So  that, 
although  warned  in  advance  of  the 
impending  visit  of  Drake  with  his 
formidable  squadron,  the  governor  of 
Cartagena,  Pedro  Yique.  could  not 
depend  on  more  than  eleven  or  twelve 
hundred  men  all  told  for  the  defence 
of  his  city.  This  force  was  made  up 
of  fifty  lancers,  four  hundred  and  fifty 
harquebussiers,  one  hundred  pikemen, 
twenty  negro  musketeers,  four  hun- 
dred India  bowmen  and  one  hundred 
and  fiftv  harquebussiers  who  manned 
two  galleys  in  the  harbor. 

646 


tlf? 


The  entrance  to  the  inner  harbor 
was  defended  by  a  fort  at  the  place 
now  called  Pastelillo,  but  otherwise 
there  were  no  fortifications  except 
those  surrounding  the  city  itself. 
The  approach  to  the  inner  harbor  was 
further  protected  by  chains,  and  the 
narrow  neck  of  land  reaching  from 
the  city  to  Boca  Grande  was  defended 
by  a  stone  breastwork  armed  with  a 
few  guns  and  several  hundred  men. 

Drake  entered  through  Boca 
Grande  between  three  and  four  in  the 
afternoon  without  resistance.  At 
nightfall  he  landed  the  troops  under 
the  command  of  Carleill  close  to  Boca 
Grande.  About  midnight,  having 
failed  to  find  paths  through  the  thick 
growth  which  covered  the  neck  of 
land,  they  marched  along  the  beach 
on  the  side  towards  the  sea,  meeting 
only  the  slight  resistance  offered  by  a 
small  body  of  horsemen  who  retired 
at  the  first  volley. 

The  sound  of  this  slight  engage- 
ment was  a  signal  to  Drake  to  order 
the  carrying  out  of  a  pre-arranged 
plan,  by  which  the  ships  attacked  the 
fort  at  the  entrance  te  the  inner  har- 
bor. This  attack  was  a  diversion  and 
was  not  pressed  to  a  successful  con- 
clusion, as  indeed  would  have  been 
difficult  in  view  of  the  narrowness  of 
channel,  the  chains,  and  the  well-sus- 
tained gun  fire  from  the  fort. 

During  this  attack  by  the  ships  the 
troops  pressed  forward  against  the 
breastworks,  which  consisted  of  a 
well-built  stone  wall  with  a  ditch  with- 
out and  Bankings  covering  every  part. 
A  small  passing  space  was  protected 
by  wine-butts  filled  with  earth,  the 
whole  mounted  with  six  guns  and  fur- 
ther protected  by  drawing  into  the 
harbor  shore  the  two  large  galleys. 

Carleill  forced  the  attack  on  the 
space  protected  bv  the  wine-butts,  and 
largely  through  the  superiority  of  the 
English  pikes  and  armour  a  breach 
\\a^  made  and  quickly  carried  by 
storm.  The  defenders  were  forced 
into  the  city,  where  the  streets  were 
strongly  barricaded.  The  Indians 
rendered  active  help  to  the  Spaniards. 

647 


fighting  with  poisoned  arrows  and 
with  small  sharp  poisoned  sticks  about 
eighteen  inches  long,  and  so  placed  in 
the  ground  that  contact  with  the  poi- 
soned ends  was  difficult  to  avoid. 
Many  of  the  Spanish  leaders  were 
killed  and  Drake  was  soon  in  posses- 
sion of  the  city.  While  Drake's  idea 
had  been  to  permanently  hold  Carta- 
gena and  use  it  for  a  base  from  which 
to  attack  the  other-Spanish  settlements, 
the  reduction  which  he  had  already 
suffered  in  his  forces  and  the  persist- 
ence of  yellow  fever  among  his  men. 
changed  his  plans  and  he  determined 
to  exact  the  largest  possible  ransom 
and  leave  the  place.  At  a  general 
council  of  land  captains  held  at  Car- 
tagena on  the  twenty-seventh  of  Feb- 
ruary, it  was  resolved  that  it  was  in- 
expedient to  proceed  with  the  intended 
capture  of  Panama  and  it  was  re- 
solved to  proceed  home  by  the  way  of 
Florida. 

Drake  demanded  a  ransom  of  £100,- 
ooo,  but  this  sum  was  declared  by  the 
Spaniards  impossible  to  be  gotten  to- 
gether and  paid,  and  an  amount  equiv- 
alent to  about  £28.000  was  tendered. 
In  the  meantime,  notwithstanding  va- 
rious courtesies  exchanged  between 
the  higher  officers  on  each  side, 
much  irritation  appears  to  have 
arisen  over  the  matter  of  the  ransom, 
and  a  considerable  part  of  the  city 
was  burned.  Finally  a  ransom  stated 
by  Cates  to  have  been  110,000  ducats, 
and  by  Spanish  authorities  to  have 
been  $400.000.  was  paid  and  the  Eng- 
lish troops  evacuated.  Drake,  how- 
ever, after  leaving  the  city,  insisted 
that  an  abbey  or  priory  just  outside 
had  not  been  included  in  the  terms  of 
settlement,  and  continued  to  hold  it 
until  an  additional  sum  of  i.ooo 
crowns  was  paid. 

Altogether  the  fleet  had  remained 
at  Cartagena  six  weeks  when  it  finally 
set  sail  the  last  of  March,  and  was 
even  then  delayed  by  leaky  vessels 
and  did  not  arrive  off  Cape  Anthony 
on  the  eastern  end  of  Cuba  until  the 
twenty-seventh  of  April.  Here  the 
fleet  took  water  and  proceeded  to  the 


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X 


Struggle  for  th?  (Huntrnl  nf  Ammra 


coast  of  Florida,  where  St.  Augustine 
and  various  smaller  and  less  impor- 
tant places  were  captured.  The  fleet 
then  sailed  for  Plymouth  and  arrived 
there  the  twenty-eighth  of  July,  1586. 

There  were  on  this  voyage  a  total 
of  seven  hundred  and  fifty  men  lost 
from  all  causes,  the  greater  number 
being  from  disease. 

The  total  value  of  the  booty  gained 
was  about  £60,000,  not  counting  some 
two  hundred  and  forty  pieces  of  ord- 
nance, of  which  about  two  hundred 
pieces  were  of  brass,  including  sixty- 
three  from  Cartagena. 

Drake  had  ably  and  bravely  exe- 
cuted the  task  which  had  been  given 
him  and  returned  home  with  increased 
popularity  and  prestige.  The  actual 
injury  to  the  king  of  Spain  by  the  ex- 
pedition was  less  than  the  harm  done 
to  individuals  in  the  Spanish  posses- 
sions, a  fact  which  served  to  create  a 
hatred  of  the  English  which  survived 
for  generations. 

In  the  following  year,  1587,  when 
an  invasion  of  England  was  agiin 
feared  by  Elizabeth,  Drake  was  ap- 


pointed to  command  the  English  fleet 
which  was  immediately  formed  to  pre- 
vent the  "joining  together  of  the  king 
of  Spain's  fleet  out  of  their  several 
ports."  He  attacked  Cadiz,  where  he 
destroyed  thirty-three  vessels  and  car- 
ried away  others.  After  several  other 
captures  he  returned  to  England,  to 
be  sent  out  again  in  July,  1588,  as 
vice-admiral,  under  Lord  Howard,  of 
the  fleet  sent  to  intercept  the  "Spanish 
Armada,"  the  history  of  which  is  too 
well-known  to  need  repetition  here. 
The  next  year  Drake  was  in  com- 
mand of  an  expedition  to  invade  Spain 
and  Portugal.  After  his  return  from 
this  service  he  again  served  in  Parlia- 
ment, but  the  sea  once  more  claimed 
him  in  August,  1595,  when  he  sailed, 
on  what  was  to  be  his  last  voyage,  for 
the  West  Indies  with  Sir  John  Hawk- 
ins as  his  vice-admiral.  Hawkins  died 
off  Puerto  Rico  in  November,  and  on 
the  twenty-eighth  of  January,  1596, 
Drake  himself  died  on  board  of  his 
ship  when  off  Nombre  de  Dios  after  a 
fortnight's  illness  in  his  cabin. 


"TRVALL  OF  OUR  FORTUNE"  IN  AMERICA  IN  1585 

Accurate   Transcript  from  "a  resolution  of  the  Land-captaines,  what  course  they  think  most  expedi- 
ent to  bee  taken.    Given  at   Cartagena  the  xxvij. 
of  Februarie,  1585" 

Whereas  it  hath  pleased  the  Generall  to  demaund  the  opinions  of  his  Captaines 
what  course  they  thinke  most  expedient  to  be  now  undertaken,  the  Land-captaines 
being  asembled  by  themselves  together,  and  having  advised  hereupon,  doe  in  three 
points  deliver  the  same. 

The  first,  touching  the  keeping  of  the  towne  against  the  force  of  the  enemie,  either 
that  which  is  present,  or  that  which  may  come  out  of  Spaine,  is  answered  thus : 

We  holder  opinion,  that  which  this  troope  of  men  which  we  have  presently  with 
us  in  land-service,  being  victualled  and  munitioned,  wee  may  well  keepe  the  towne. 
albeit  that  of  men  able  to  answere  present  service,  we  have  not  above  700.  The 
residue  being  some  150  men  by  reason  of  their  hurts  and  sicknesse  are  altogether 
unable  to  stand  us  in  anystead ;  wherefore  hereupon  the  Sea-captaines  are  likewise  to 
give  their  resolution,  how  they  will  undertake  the  safetie  and  service  of  the  Shippes 
upon  the  arrival!  of  any  Spanish  Fleete. 

The  second  poynt  we  make  to  be  this,  whether  it  bee  meete  to  goe  presently  home- 
ward, or  els  to  continue  further  tryall  of  our  fortune  in  undertaking  such  like  enter- 
prises as  we  have  done  already,  and  thereby  to  seeke  after  that  bountifull  masse  of 
treasure  for  recompence  of  our  travailes,  which  was  generally  expected  at  our  comming 
forth  of  England  :  wherein  we  answere : 

That  it  is  well  knowen  how  both  we  and  the  souldiers  are  entred  into  this  action 
as  voluntarie  men,  without  any  imprest  or  gage  from  her  Majestic  or  any  body  els. 
and  forasmuch  as  we  have  hitherto  discharged  the  parts  of  honest  men.  so  that  now 


650 


(Srrat  £>tnrij  nf  tlj?  (Earibbrau 


by  the  great  blessing  and  favour  of  our  good  God  there  have  bin  taken  three  such 
notable  townes,  wherein  by  the  estimation  of  all  men  would  have  been  found  some 
very  great  treasures,  knowing  that  S.  lapo  was  the  chiefe  citie  of  all  the 
Islands  and  traffiques  thereabouts.  S.  Domingo  the  chiefe  citie  of  Hispaniola.  and  the 
head  government  not  only  of  that  Hand,  but  also  of  Cuba,  and  of  all  the  Hands  about 
it.  as  also  of  such  inhabitations  of  the  tirme  land,  as  were  next  unto  it.  &  a  place  that 
is  both  magnificently  builded,  and  interteineth  great  trades  of  merchandise;  and  now 
lastly  the  citie  of  Cartagena,  which  cannot  be  denied  to  be  one  of  the  chiefe  places  of 
most  especiall  importance  to  the  Spaniard  of  all  the  cities  which  be  on  this  side  of  the 
West  India;  we  doe  therefore  consider,  that  since  all  these  cities,  with  their  goods  and 
prisoners  taken  in  them,  and  the  ransoms  of  the  said  cities  being  all  put  together,  are 
found  farre  short  to  satisfic  that  expectation  which  by  the  generality  of  the  enterprisers 
was  first  conceived :  And  being  further  advised  of  the  slendernesse  of  our  strengthe. 
whereunto  we  be  now  reduced,  as  well  in  respect  of  the  small  number  of  able  bodies, 
as  also  not  a  little  in  regard  of  the  slacke  disposition  of  the  greater  part  of  those  which 
remaine.  very  many  of  the  better  mindes  and  men  being  either  consumed  by  death,  or 
weakened  by  sicknes  and  hurts :  And  lastly,  since  that  as  yet  there  is  not  laid  downe 
to  our  knowledge  any  such  enterprise  as  may  seeme  convenient  to  be  undertaken  with 
such  few  as  we  are  presently  able  to  make,  and  withall  of  such  certaine  likelihoode.  as 
with  Gods  good  successe  which  it  may  please  him  to  bestow  upon  us.  the  same  may 
promise  to  yeeld  us  any  sufficient  contentment :  We  doe  therefore  conclude  hereupon, 
that  it  is  better  to  hold  sure  as  we  may  the  honour  already  gotten,  and  with  the  same 
to  returne  towards  our  gracious  Soveraigne  and  Countrey,  from  whenece  if  it  shall 
please  her  Majestic  to  set  us  foorth  againe  with  her  orderly  meanes  and  intertainment. 
we  are  most  ready  and  willing  to  goe  through  with  anything  that  the  uttermost  of  our 
strength  and  indevour  shall  be  able  to  reach  unto;  but  therewithal  we  doc  advise,  and 
protest  that  it  is  farre  from  our  thoughts,  either  to  refuse,  or  so  much  as  to  seeme 
to  be  wearie  of  any  thing,  which  for  the  present  shalbe  further  required  or  directed 
to  be  done  by  us  from  our  Generall. 

The  third  and  last  poynt  is  concerning  the  ransome  of  this  citie  of  Cartagena,  for 
the  which,  before  it  was  touched  with  any  fire,  there  was  made  an  offer  of  some  xxviij. 
thousand  pounds  sterling. 

Thus  much  we  utter  herein  as  our  opinions  agreeing  (so  it  be  done  in  good  sort) 
to  accept  this  offer  aforesayde^  rather  then  to  break  off  by  standing  still  upon  our 
demaunds  of  one  hundred  thousand  poundes,  which  seemes  a  matter  impossible  to  bee 
performed  for  the  present  by  them,  and  to  say  trueth.  wee  may  now  with  much  honour 
and  reputation  better  be  satisfied  with  that  summe  offered  by  them  at  the  first  (if  they 
will  now  bee  contented  to  give  it)  then  we  might  at  that  time  with  a  great  deale  more, 
inasmuch  as  we  have  taken  our  full  pleasure  both  in  the  uttermost  sacking  and  spoyling 
of  all  their  householde  goods  and  merchandize,  as  also  in  that  we  have  consumed  and 
ruined  a  great  part  of  their  Tpwne  with  fire.  And  thus  much  further  is  considered 
herein  by  us,  that  as  there  bee  in  the  Voyage  a  great  many  poore  men.  who  have  will- 
ingly adventured  their  lives  and  travailes,  and  divers  amongst  them  having  spent  their 
apparell  and  such  other  little  provisions  as  their  small  meanes  might  have  given  them 
leave  to  prepare,  which  being  done  upon  such  good  and  allowable  intention  as  this 
action  hath  alwayes  caried  with  it.  meaning,  against  the  Spanyard  our  greatest  and 
most  dangerous  enemie :  so  surely  we  cannot  but  have  an  inward  regardes  so  farre  as 
may  lye  in  us,  to  helpe  either  in  all  good  sort  towards  the  satisfaction  of  this  their 
expectation,  and  by  procuring  them  some  little  benefite  to  incourage  them  and  to  nour- 
ish this  readie  and  willing  disposition  of  theirs  both  in  them  and  in  others  by  their 
example  against  any  other  time  of  like  occasion.  But  because  it  may  bee  supposed 
that  herein  wee  fprgette  not  the  private  benefite  of  our  selves,  and  are  thereby  the 
rather  mooved  to  incline  our  selves  to  this  composition,  wee  doe  therefore  thinke  good 
for  the  clearing  of  ourselves  of  all  such  suspition.  to  declare  heereby,  that  what  part 
oi  portion  soever  it  bee  of  this  ransome  or  composition  for  Cartagena,  which  should 
come  unto  us,  wee  doe  freely  give  and  bestowe  the  same  wholy  upon  the  poore  men. 
who  have  remayned  with  us  in  the  Voyage,  meaning  as  well  the  Sayler  as  the  Souldier. 
wishing  with  all  our  hearts  it  were  such  or  MI  much  as  might  seeme  a  sufficient 
rewarde  fcr  their  painefull  indevour.  And  for  the  tirme  confirmation  thereof,  we  have 
thought  nu-ete  to  sul  signe  these  presents  with  our  owne  hands  in  the  p!:u-e  and  time 
aforesayd.  Captaine  Christopher  Carleill  Lieutenant  Generall. 

Captaine  Goring. 
Captaine  Sampson.  Captaine  Powell  &c. 


AN  EARLY  AMERICAN   FINANCIER 

General  Robert  Patterson  of  Philadelphia— Born  in  irga—  He  was  prominent  in 
the  Development  of  the  Sugar  Industry  of  Louisiana  and  the  Cotton 
Mills  of  the  South— An  Organizer  of  Railroad  Communica- 
tion with  Baltimore,  a  Financier  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania   Railroad,  and    Steamship 
Transportation   with  the 
Southern     ports 
and  Europe 


Portrait  in  Possession  of  His  Grand  Daughter 


(§b0prtratt0tt0  nf  an  iEarln.  Anwriran 
(EapitaltHt-"tSf?  uia0  Unrn  a  King" 


of 


}.KiUri  -.mi  ••* 
Sorn  in  1T92  >    An    Jniimatr  Jfrtrnh  nf 
All  tiff  ilrraiarnta  from  irffrraan  ta  (Sarfirlu.  ana 
(Dnp  of  th.r  (Srratfat  fflmljant  fHagnatra  of  ilia  (Srurralton  j* 
tmtnrnt  Amrrirana  anb  Europrana  (fcafyrrrfc  at  Ijia  fflanaUm  in 

ORIUINAL     DIARY     IX     POSSKSH1ON     OK 

MRS.  LINDSAY  PATTERSON 

WIXSTOS-SALKJI,  NORTH  CAROLINA 
GKAXIJ  DACUHTEK  or  GENEIIAL  KIIHEKT  I'ATTEIHON 


manuscript  is  from  a 
diary    kept     by     General 
•  Robert  Patterson  of  Phil- 

^  adelphia  when  on  a  jour- 

ney  in  1835  from  that 
town  to  the  upper  Mis- 
sissippi. In  two  volumes 
he  described  minutely  the  people,  cus- 
toms, towns,  hotels,  crops,  politics, 
and  more  especially,. the  early  history 
of  each  section  visited.  Written  in  his 
illegible  chirography.  it  was  copied  by 
his  son,  the  late  Colonel  William 
Houston  Patterson,  who  added  many 
explanatory  notes,  as  at  the  age  of 
eleven  he  was  taken  by  his  father  over 
the  same  route.  After  Colonel  Pat- 
terson's death,  the  diary  came  into 
the  possession  of  his  daughter.  Mrs. 
Lindsay  Patterson  of  North  Carolina. 
General  Patterson's  route  lay 
through  Virginia,  following  the  old 
Wilderness  Road  through  East  Ten- 
nessee into  Kentucky,  down  the  Ohio 
and  up  the  Mississippi,  through  Iowa, 
thence  returning  by  the  Great  Lakes, 
New  York  State,  Hudson  river,  and 
home  again.  He  traveled  by  "rail- 
car,"  stage,  canal-boat,  steam-boat 
and  horseback. 

General  Patterson  was  a  man  of 
whom  his  contemporaries  spoke  in 
terms  of  greatest  praise. 

The  statesman.  John  Sherman,  in 
speaking  of  him.  once  remarked :  "He 

653 


was  a  born  king  and  the  only  man  I 
ever  knew  who  would  have  graced 
any  throne  in  Europe." 

General  W  infield  Scott  Hancock 
said:  "Having  served  through  three 
wars,  that  of  1812,  the  Mexican  and 
Civil  War,  General  Paterson  has  had 
a  wider  experience  with  men  and 
events  than  usually  falls  to  the  life  of 
one  man,  for  in  his  time  he  has  been 
a  successful  planter,  merchant  and 
manufacturer  on  grand  scales,  as  well 
as  a  distinguished  soldier.  Even  at 
this  day.  in  his  eighty-eighth  year,  he 
controls  the  details  of  great  manu- 
factories, employing  five  thousand 
operators." 

General  Joseph  Eggleston  John- 
ston, the  Confederate  warrior,  once 
exclaimed:  "For  thirty  years  I  have 
admired  General  Patterson  as  a  sol- 
dier, patriot  and  gentleman." 

General  William  Tecumseh  Sher- 
man, the  Federal  warrior,  once  paid 
this  tribute :  "He  is  in  history  a  strong 
link  between  the  men  who  built  up 
this  government  and  those  who  saved 
it,  in  the  cruel  Civil  \Var.  He  does 
possess  and  enjoy  at  this  moment 
more  of  the  respect  and  affection  of 
his  fellow-citizens  than  any  living 
n:an." 

General  Towne  spoke  of  General 
Patterson  as  the  merchant  magnate 
of  Philadelphia,  and  added:  "His  life 


nf  (ffottmil  Sobrrt  JJattrrann— Unrtt  1T92 


is  an  illustration  of  eminent  citizen- 
ship in  peace  and  honored  soldiership 
in  war." 

The  beautiful  Elizabeth  Patterson, 
of  Baltimore,  who  married  Jerome 
Bonaparte,  king  of  Westphalia,  and 
youngest  brother  of  Napoleon,  was  a 
cousin  of  General  Patterson,  the 
writer  of  the  diary  here  recorded. 
The  general  always  visited  her  once 
a  year.  Just  before  her  death  she 
sent  for  him  in  great  haste.  They 
were  closeted  together  for  hours,  but 
he  could  never  be  induced  to  tell 
what  the  conversation  was  about,  and 
many  were  the  family  speculations  on 
the  subject. 

Elizabeth  Patterson  was  considered 
the  "handsomest  woman  in  America." 
Her  romance  with  the  brother  of  the 
emperor  has  become  history.  They 
were  married  with  all  the  requisite 
legal  formalities,  in  1803,  by  Arch- 
bishop Carroll.  She  sailed  for  Eu- 
rope in  1805  to  meet  the  royal  family 
but  the  opposition  of  Napoleon  pre- 
vented her  from  landing  and  she  fled 
to  England  for  refuge.  The  emperor 
declared  her  marriage  with  his 
brother  annulled,  through  his  council 
of  state,  and,  in  1807,  just  one  hun- 
dred years  ago,  her  former  husband 
was  made  king  of  Westphalia,  and 
commanded  a  division  at  Waterloo, 
only  to  be  finally  exiled  with  the 
downfall  of  his  brother. 

A  brother-in-law  of  Elizabeth  Pat- 
terson, through  her  royal  marriage, 
was  Joseph  Bonaparte,  the  elder 
brother  of  Napoleon,  who  was  made 
king  of  Spain,  in  1808,  just  one  hun- 
dred years  ago  next  year.  After  the 
defeat  at  Waterloo,  he  fled  to  America 
and  lived  at  Bordentown,  New  Jersey, 
where  he  became  intimate  with  the 
Pattersons  of  Baltimore  and  Philadel- 
phia. While  the  former  king  of 
Spain  was  living  at  Bordentown,  he 
was  a  frequent  visitor  at  General  Pat- 
terson's home  in  Philadelphia.  The 
tall  candelabra  now  in  the  Blue  Room 
of  the  White  House  were  originally 
presented  by  Napoleon  to  Joseph 
when  he  was  made  king  of  Spain. 


When  he  fled  to  this  country,  he  gave 
them  to  General  Patterson,  who,  feel- 
ing that  such  historic  treasures  should 
belong  to  the  nation,  gave  them  to  the 
White  House  when  his  friend,  Gen- 
eral Jackson,  was  made  president. 
The  smaller  candelabra  to  match  are 
still  in  the  family.  At  the  sale  of  the 
Bonaparte  effects,  General  Patterson 
bought  the  dinner  service  of  royal 
Sevres.  Each  plate  is  decorated  with 
scenes  from  Napoleon's  battles.  They 
are  now  on  exhibition  at  the  Exposi- 
tion in  Virginia,  under  the  loan  of 
General  Patterson's  granddaughter, 
Mrs.  Lindsay  Patterson,  who  is  chair- 
man of  the  North  Carolina  historical 
commission,  and  who  transcribes  the 
portions  of  her  distinguished  grand- 
father's diary  for  these  pages. 

William  Perrine,  in  relating  the 
lives  of  distinguished  Americans  in 
"Old  Philadelphia"  gives  this  emi- 
nence to  General  Patterson :  He  was 
a  Philadelphia!!  whom  few  men 
equalled  in  the  impress  he  made  upon 
that  city  throughout  an  unusually 
long  life.  As  a  merchant,  a  man  of 
affairs,  a  millionaire  capitalist,  a  club- 
man, a  promoter,  a  veteran  of  the 
War  of  1812,  the  Mexican  and  Civil 
War ;  a  host  under  whose  roof-tree 
gathered  the  army,  the  navy,  the  vol- 
unteer service,  the  political,  scientific, 
pioneer  and  social  life  not  only  of 
this  country  but  of  Europe,  there  was 
no  phase  in  Philadelphia  activity  in 
which  he  did  not  play  a  part.  From 
youth  to  old  age  there  were  few  civic 
occasions  of  note,  and  certainly  no 
military  ones,  in  which  he  was  not 
foremost  among  the  leaders.  In  his 
strong  face,  his  keen  eyes,  his  pene- 
trating voice,  his  firm  mouth  and 
erect  figure  there  was  the  manner  of 
natural  leadership  and  command 
Long  after  he  was  past  eighty  years 
of  age  he  might  be  seen  every  morn- 
ing in  his  little  counting-room  on 
Chestnut  street,  the  busiest  man  in  the 
establishment,  often  before  his  clerks 
had  rubbed  the  sleep  out  of  their  eyes. 
Then  it  was  that  the  venerable  gen- 
tleman received  his  visitors  in  a  dress- 

654 


ODbBmtatuntB  nf  an  Early  Ammratt  (Eapttaltfit 


ing  gown,  and  on  his  head  a  Scotch 
cap — you  imagined  a  cross  between  a 
Carlyle  and  a  von  Moltke — but  with 
all  that  Kent  read  in  the  eyes  of  old 
Lear,  authority  and  distinction.  At 
one  moment  he  might  burst  forth  with 
a  torrent  of  irascible  eloquence,  such 
a.",  Kent's  royal  master  could  hardly 
have  exceeded  in  its  majestic  rage ; 
and  when  it  was  all  over,  he  might  be 
seen  shaking  the  contents  of  the  coal 
scuttle  into  the  office  stove  and  then 
turning  to  transactions  involving  mil- 
lions of  dollars. 

His  hard-headed  common-sense,  his 
incisivcness  of  speech,  his  well-disci- 
plined methods  in  the  mastery  of  de- 
tails, his  tremendous  capacity  for 
work,  first  exhibited  in  the  drudgery 
of  the  counting-rooms  in  his  China 
and  East  India  trade  early  in  the  cen- 
tury, his  indomitable  civic  spirit  and 
the  social  quality  in  his  virile  fibre 
brought  him  success  as  a  man  of 
affairs  in  Philadelphia  before  he  was 
hardly  more  than  thirty  years  of  age. 
A  captain  in  the  War  of  1812,  he 
there  acquired  the  lifelong  friendship 
of  such  subsequently  distinguished 
soldiers  as  Scott,  (Saines,  Zachary 
Taylor,  Leaven  worth,  Dearborn, 
Riley,  Croghan  and  others.  Resign- 
ing from  the  army  in  1815,  he  wrent  in- 
to business  on  High  street,  and  this 
business  afterwards  developed  into 
many  ramifications.  The  wholesale 
purchase  of  sugar  led  him  into  the 
sugar-growing  districts  of  the  South, 
first  as  a  buyer  and  then  as  a  planter 
on  his  own  account.  Pattersonville, 
Louisiana,  where  he  owned  large  es- 
tates, was  named  for  him.  In  time 
his  attention  was  directed  to  the  cot- 
ton trade  in  which  he  became  a 
grower  in  the  South  and  a  manufac- 
turer in  the  North.  During  one 
period  of  his  life  he  was  the  owner 
or  the  operator  of  not  fewer  than 
thirty  cotton  mills.  Time  and  again 
he  was  called  upon  to  give  his  aid  to 
the  big  enterprises  that  developed 
Philadelphia  from  1825  to  1860. 
Sixty  years  ago  he  was  at  the  head  of 
the  company  which  opened  railroad 

«ss 


COLONEL  WILLIAM  HOUSTON  PATTERSON 
—Son  of  the  Philadelphia  Financier  who  tran- 
scribed His  Father's  Journal,  and  from  whose 
collection  of  rare  prints,  letters,  photographs  and 
memoirs,  this  sketch  is  compiled  by  his  daughter 

communications  with  Baltimore ;  one 
of  his  chief  functions  was  as  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Board  of  Canal  Commis- 
sioners ;  much  of  his  money,  together 
with  that  of  his  younger  brother,  Wil- 
liam C.  Patterson,  who  was  president 
of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad  Com- 
pany, in  its  infancy,  went  into  the 
construction  of  that  road,  and  he  was 
one  of  the  first  to  take  part  in  intro- 
ducing steamships  into  our  commerce 
with  the  South  and  with  Europe.  Eor 
many  years  he  was  at  the  head  of  the 
cotton  mill  industry. 

General  Patterson  had  the  unique 
experience  of  having  been  twice  ap- 
pointed president  of  the  board  of  visi- 
tors to  West  Point,  being  appointed 
the  first  time  by  General  Jackson  in 
1835,  and  again  by  President  Hayes 
after  an  interval  of  fifty  years.  The 
ovation  given  him  on  the  latter  occa- 
sion by  the  enthusiastic  corps  of 
cadets  is  said  to  have  been  unequalled 
in  the  history  of  the  Academy. 

The  civic  honor  that  he  most  appre- 
ciated was  upon  the  critical  political 
occasion  of  the  contested  electoral 


iiary  nf  (irneral  Sober!  $IatterHrm— Snrn  1T92 


vote  which  was  decided  in  favor  of 
Hayes.  President  Grant  called  Gen- 
eral Patterson  to  Washington  to  medi- 
ate with  the  Southern  members  of 
Congress.  During  his  stay  in  Wash- 
ington he  was  introduced  to  the  Sen- 
ate, upon  the  floor  of  the  Senate 
Chamber,  by  John  Sherman,  and  the 
Senate  rose  as  one  man  to  receive 
him. 

The  "little  white  marble  palace,"  as 
the  Patterson  mansion  at  Thirteenth 
and  Locust  streets  was  called,  has 
been  torn  down  to  make  room  for 
"modern  improvements."  There  prob- 
ably is  not  another  house  in  Phil- 
adelphia in  which  so  many  distin- 
guished Americans  of  the  last  three 
generations  have  been  gathered  as 
within  the  walls  of  this  mansion. 
General  Patterson  knew  all,  and  cer- 
tainly entertained  most  of,  the  presi- 
dents of  the  United  States,  from  Jef- 
ferson to  Garfield.  He  was  still  a 
ycung  man  when  he  took  part  here  in 
receiving  Lafayette,  and  later  Mon- 
roe, on  that  famous  journey  which  be- 
gan the  short-lived  era  of  good  feel- 
ing. Indeed,  the  soundness  of  the 
general's  intellect  in  his  advancing 
years  caused  him  to  be  called  the 
"evergreen  of  the  old  men  of  Phila- 
delphia"— paralleled  by  only  a  fe\v 
such  instances  as  Horace  Binney, 
Francis  Gurney  Smith.  Thomas 
Sully,  William  Henry  Furness  and 
Frederick  Fraley.  In  the  prime 
of  his  life  he  stood  by  the  side 
of  Andrew  Jackson  on  the  day 
when  the  Philadelphia  democracy 
threw  open  the  town  to  "Old  Hick- 
ory ;"  and  when  James  K.  Polk 
came  to  the  city,  while  president, 
the  dinner  and  great  ball  at  the 
Patterson  mansion  closed  the  festal 
tributes  to  the  Tennessee  statesman. 

In  the  conversations  of  his  daugh- 
ter, Mrs.  Louise  H.  Lynde,  and  in  the 
memoirs  of  his  son,  Colonel  William 
Houston  Patterson,  both  of  whom 
have  since  "fallen  asleep,"  frequent 
allusions  were  made  to  the  most  inter- 
esting of  the  many  visitors  who  were 
entertained  by  General  Patterson: 


Lafayette,  the  Duke  of  Saxe-Weimar, 
Keokuk  and  Black  Hawk,  chiefs  of 
the  Sac  and  Fox  nations,  and  fifty  of 
their  warriors ;  Joseph  Bonaparte, 
Captain  Francis  Marryatt,  G.  P.  R. 
James.  Cass,  Marcy,  Gaines,  Breck- 
in ridge,  Stockton.  Charles  Dickens, 
Sam  Houston,  Henry  Schoolcraft 
and  his  gentle  Indian  wife,  Major 
Croghan,  the  hero  of  Fort  Sandusky ; 
Thomas  H.  Benton,  du  Chaillu ;  \Veb- 
ster,  Henry  Clay,  Tupper,  Lord 
Houghton,  General  Sir  Charles 
Wyndham,  the  hero  of  the  Crimea ; 
Mrs.  Chase,  the  heroine  of  Tampico; 
Generals  Scott  and  Taylor,  Jesse  D. 
Elliott,  "that  human  naval  cyclone 
whose  controversy  with  Captain 
Perry  shook  the  navy  department  to 
its  center;"  Seth  Williams,  "Prince 
John"  Magruder,  "Gettysburg"  Pick- 
et!, Grant,  Fitz  John  Porter,  "the 
martyr  of  the  Civil  War ;"  John 
Mercer  Brooke,  the  planner  of  the 
Confederate  ram,  "Merrimac."  The 
list  is  almost  endless. 

Robert  Patterson  was  born  in  the 
town  of  Strabane,  County  Tyrone, 
Ireland,  on  the  twelfth  day  of  Janu- 
ary, 1792,  and  passed  away  at  his 
home  in  Philadelphia  on  the  eleventh 
of  August,  1 88 1,  in  the  ninetieth  year 
of  his  age.  He  was  the  eldest  son  of 
Francis  Patterson  and  Ann  Graham. 
His  paternal  grandparents  were  Rob- 
ert Patterson  and  Ann  Fullerton ; 
(maternal)  Thomas  Graham  and 
Jean  McBeth.  Of  the  family  history 
in  Ireland  little  has  been  retained, 
save  the  tombs  in  the  Strabane 
church-yard,  which  testify,  in  their 
inscriptions  and  surmounting  repro- 
ductions of  family  coats  of  arms,  that 
Robert  Patterson  was  of  gentle  blood. 
Francis  Patterson  with  his  bosom 
friends,  Wolfe  Tone  and  Robert 
Emmett,  had  plunged,  as  an  "United 
Man,"  into  the  Irish  troubles  of  1798,. 
had  become  seriously  involved  there- 
in ;  was  arrested  by  the  English  gov- 
ernment, tried  after  the  peculiar 
methods  of  the  period,  and  sentenced 
to  be  hanged.  The  loyalty  of  the 
Grahams  to  the  Crown  and  the  influ- 

656 


ODbsrruatiuns  0f  an  Uarlg  Amrrtrau  fflapttaltat 


GENERAL  PATTERSON  EN.TERTAINING  DISTINGUISHED  AMERICANS  AT  HIS  PHILADEL- 
PHIA MANSION— Members  and  Guests  of  the  Aztec  Club  at  an  anniversary  dinner  given  by  General 
Robert  Patterson,  president  of  the  club— This  rare  photograph  was  taken  as  the  celebrities  were  gathered  on 
the  veranda  overlooking  the  flower  garden— At  the  left  of  General  Patterson  is  General  Grant— The  other 
guests  are  General  George  A.  H.  Blake.  General  Z.  B.  Town,  General  J.  J.  Abercrombie,  General  C.  E.  Bab- 
cock,  General  William  F.  Barry,  General  Cadmus  M.  Wilcox,  General  Fitzjohn  Porter,  General  I.  G.  Barnard, 
General  O.  L.  Shepherd,  General  William  H.  French,  Governor  M.  L.  Gonham,  Colonel  Charles  I.  Biddle,  Sur- 
geon John  M.  Cuyler,  Major-General  T.  L.  Alexander,  Lieutenant-Colonel  Fred  D.  Grant,  Captain  E.  L.  F. 
Hardcastle,  Captain  Henry  Coppee— Richar  1  Harding  Davis  in  his  novel.  "Captain  Macklln,"  describes  this 
dinner,  usinur  this  photograph  for  the  basis  of  his  description  of  the  men  there  gathered— The  original  is  in  the 
collection  of  the  late  Colonel  William  Houston  Patterson,  and  is  loaned  for  this  reproduction  by  his  daughter 


ence  of  the  Marquis  of  Abercorn 
(whose  sister  had  married  one  of  the 
Grahams),  induced  the  British  gov- 
ernment to  commute  the  death  sen- 
tence of  Francis  Patterson  and  re- 
mould his  punishment  to  perpetual 
banishment  from  his  native  land. 
With  his  family  he  reached  America 
in  the  autumn  of  1798,  settling  in  Del- 
aware County,  Pennsylvania.  His 
son,  Robert,  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  en- 
tered the  counting-room  of  a  Mr. 
Thompson,  in  the  East  India  trade, 
retiring  at  the  age  of  eighteen  to  take 
part  in  the  \\  ;ir  of  1812. 

In   1817.  he  married   Sarah    Fugle, 
of     Germantown.      Pennsylvania,      a 

65? 


Quaker  beauty,  a  gifted  musician,  a 
brilliantly  intellectual  woman,  whose 
love  for  society  and  gracious  charm 
of  manner  rendered  her  a  fit  help- 
meet for  her  distinguished  husband. 
She  was  very  fond  of  Scott's  poems, 
and  when  bed-time  came,  put  her 
children  to  sleep  reciting  cantos  of 
"Lady  of  the  Lake."  Just  before  her 
death,  when  both  paralyzed  and  blind, 
a  loved  one  was  grieving  over  her 
condition.  Her  answer  was  never 
forgotten  : 

The  soul's  dark  cottage,  battered  and  de- 
cayed. 

I.rt-  in  new  light  through  chinks  that  time 
has 


An  Early  3Jiwrnnj  in  ttt? 


Arruratr  Qlranarript  from    liarg  of  (irnrral  Sobrrt  iluttrnum   nf 
JJltilabrliJlna.   fcrarrihing   Ma   QJn«r    ttfnmgtf    Hirciima. 

iKniturlqi.  Uu%  oMun  anb  iHiaaiaBtppi  Hinrra  and  ihr  (irrat 


mo. 


J**,.  • 


<a*re/,a»ci*C  4^  &J^  I  *4  &*rJrraAr    SacsJ,  cml/  jte 


Jr.pJ.  i-S 


a 


Transcribed  by  his  son,  the  late  Colonel  William  Houston  Patterson,  of  Philadelphia 


63» 


QDhamiati0nH  0f  an  lEarlg  Ammran  (Hapttaltst 


"OLD  WILDERNESS  ROAD"  AT  CUMBERLAND  GAP  IN  EAST  TENNESSEE 
It  was  through  this  Gap  that  Daniel  Boone  passed  on  his  first  journey  to  Kentucky  in  i76g— General  Patterson 
passed  through  it  in  his  early  journeys  described  in  his  diary— This  rare  photograph  is  loaned  from  the 
collection  of  the  late  Colonel  William  Houston  Patterson,  of  Philadelphia,  son  of  General  Patterson 


AY  23.  Left  Philadel- 
phia in  the  six  o'clock 
boat.  The  morning1 
was  clear  and  brac- 
ing but  very  cold  for 
the  season.  The 
steamboat  was  crowd- 
ed, having  on  board  the  cabin  passen- 
gers of  the  Packet  ship  "Susquehan- 
nah"  about  to  sail  for  England,  and 
from  the  period  of  leaving  the  wharf 
at  Chestnut  street  until  we  arrived 
at  Newcastle,  there  was  a  continuous 
•M-c'iie  of  shaking  hands,  bidding  fare- 
well, wishing  a  pleasant  voyage,  etc.. 
etc.,  with  here  and  there  a  sprinkling 
of  tears  and  red  eyes.  Quite  a  num- 
ber of  the  mourners  supposed  that  \\  <.• 
;il>o  were  going  to  England,  and 
\\hen  told  our  destination  was  the 
West  and  Falls  of  St.  Anthony,  were 
surprised  at  our  hardihood  and  want 
of  taste.  Arrived  at  Newcastle.  We 
took  the  cars  over  the  Newcastle  and 

659 


Frenchtown  R.  Road,  a  single  track, 
seventeen  miles  in  length  and  nearly 
parallel  with  the  Delaware  and  Chesa- 
peake Canal  to  Frenchtown.  At  the 
latter  place  again  took  the  steamboat 
and  passed  down  the  Elk  river  and 


GATHERING  PLACE  OP  MANY  NOTABLES 
Old  Patterson  Mansion  in  Philadelphia-  The  mirrors 
in  the  drawing  room  once  belonged  to  Washington 
—The  marble  mantles  were  once  owned  by  Joseph 
Bonaparte,  the  brother  of  the  Emperor  Napoleon 


HIEROGLYPHIC  NARRATIVE  OF  CAREER  OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  PATTERSON 
Reproduction  trom  Original  made  by  his  son,  Colonel  William  Houston  Patterson,  in  imitation  of  the  character 
writing  of  the  American  aborigines -Interpretation:  the  shamrock  and  thistle  denote  Scotch-Irish  ancestry; 
pelican  and  scallop  shell  represent  Patterson  and  Graham  coats-of-arm;  buffalo,  deer  and  wild  fowl  signify 
his  love  of  hunting;  the  scalps,  his  prowess  as  a  warrior — Beginning  in  the  lower  left  corner  these  events  are 
typified:  General  Patterson  capturing  British  in  War  of  i8ia;  his  reception  to  Lafayette;  trip  west  in  a  canal 
boat;  reception  to  Keokuk,  Black  Hawk  and  the  Indian  warriors;  camping  in  Iowa  in  the  early  part  of  last 
century;  the  ''Buckshot  War:"  reception  to  President  Polk;  dinner  to  officers  of  the  Coldstream  Guards; 
"native  American  riots"  and  burning  of  Catholic  churches  In  Philadelphia;  experiences  in  Mexican  War  and 
peace  treaty;  development  of  sugar  and  cotton  trade  in  the  South;  Civil  War  in  the  United  States;  his  closing 
career  as  financier  in  industry,  transportation  and  commerce  in  first  days  of  the  American  Nation 

660 


QDbamratumH  nf  an  lEarlg  Am*riran  (Capitalist 


Chesapeake  bay  and  up  the  Patapsco 
river  to  Baltimore,  sixty  miles,  where 
we  arrived  about  3  o'clock. 

May  24th.  Left  Baltimore  at  9 
o'clock  for  Washington,  where  we 
arrived  a  little  after  2  o'clock.  In  the 
afternoon  I  called  on  the  president 
(Gen.  Jackson)  and  had  a  long  con- 
versation with  him,  during  which  he 
evinced  his  usual  decision  and  judg- 
ment. He  invited  the  ladies  and  my- 
self to  dine  with  him  at  four  o'clock 
on  the  following  day. 

May  25th.  At  four  o'clock  we 
went  to  the  President's.  The  party 
was  small,  comprising  only  the  Gen- 
eral's family  and  ourselves.  The  din- 
ner was  very  neat  and  served  in  ex- 
cellent taste,  while  the  wines  were  of 
the  choicest  qualities.  The  President 
himself  dined  on  the  simplest  fare — 
bread  and  milk  and  a  few  vegetables. 
After  dinner  we  took  a  walk  through 
the  grounds  about  the  White  House, 
which  are  laid  out  with  much  neatness 
and  order  and  filled  with  shrubs  and 
flowers. 

The  President's  mansion  is  an  ele- 
gant but  not  imposing  edifice,  built  of 
freestone     painted     white.     .     .    . 
After  spending  some  time  in  conver- 
sation we  returned  to  our  hotel. 

The  president  is  one  of  the  most 
agreeable  and  polished  gentlemen  I 
ever  knew.  In  his  home  he  shows 
the  open-hearted  and  kind  friend, 
while  on  his  face  candor  and  decis- 
ion are  strongly  marked.  Locks  that 
are  becoming  silvery  with  age  give 
him  a  venerable  appearance,  while  the 
arm  once  so  nobly  wielded  in  defence 
of  his  country  is  reduced  to  a  mere 
shadow  and  his  bodily  strength  much 
enervated.  In  one  who  has  been 
taught  to  look  upon  the  hero  of  New 
Orleans  with  a  reverence  only 
equalled  by  that  entertained  for  the 
memory  of  the  Father  of  his  Country, 
these  mute  witnesses  of  advancing 
years  serve  but  to  make  the  sentiment 
tenfold  stronger.  (The  journal  does 
not  mention  the  incident,  but  this  was 
probably  the  time  when  General  Pat- 
terson presented  to  the  White  House 


the  gilded  bronze  candelabra,  now  in 
the  Blue  Room.  They  were  origi- 
nally given  by  Napoleon  to  his 
brother  Joseph,  and  by  him  to  Gen- 
eral Patterson,  who,  in  turn,  feeling 
that  such  historic  treasures  should 
belong  to  the  Nation,  presented  them 
to  the  White  House. 

May  26th.  Left  Washington  about 
daylight  on  the  steamboat  "Cham- 
pion," a  very  swift  boat,  for  Fred- 
ericksburg.  We  had  on  board  a  large 
number  of  the  Virginia  and  North 
Carolina  delegates  returning  from  the 
Baltimore  Convention  and  in  no  very 
good  humor  at  the  defeat  of  Rives 
who  appears  to  be  very  popular. 

Passed  Fort  Washington,  a  place 
that  appears  to  be  strongly  defended 
by  nature  and  art.  Nearly  opposite 
on  the  western  shore  is  Mt.  Vernon, 
sacred  as  the  home  and  tomb  of 
Washington.  It  is  now  owned  by 
Judge  Washington,  the  General's 
nephew.  .  .  . 

From  the  Potoma<.  landing  to  Fred- 
ericksburg,  we  passed  innumerable 
quantities  of  flowers.  It  was  in  the 
vicinity  of  Fredericksburg  that  Wash- 
ington was  born  and  here  he  passed 
his  early  years,  and  here,  too,  repose, 
beneath  an  unfinished  monument,  the 
remains  of  his  honored  mother.  The 
birthplace  of  the"  Father  of  his  Coun- 
try is  about  half  a  mile  from  the  junc- 
tion of  Pope's  Creek  with  the  Poto- 
mac in  Westmoreland  County.  It  is 
upon  the  Wakefield  estate. 

The  house  in  which  the  great 
patriot  was  born  was  destroyed  be- 
fore the  revolution.  It  was  a  plain 
Virginia  farmhouse  of  the  better 
class,  with  four  rooms  and  an  enor- 
mous chimney  on  the  outside,  at  each 
end.  The  spot  where  it  once  stood 
is  now  marked  by  a  slab  of  freestone, 
which  was  deposited  by  Geo.  W.  P. 
Curtis,  Esq.,  in  the  presence  of  other 
gentlemen  in  June  1815.  "Desirous" 
says  Mr.  Curtis,  in  a  letter  on  the  sub- 
ject to  Mr.  Lossing,  "of  making  the 
ceremonial  of  depositing  the  stone,  as 
imposing  as  circumstances  would  per- 
mit, we  enveloped  it  in  the  Star  Span- 


661 


Starg  nf 


Unhurt 


—  $nrn  1732 


gled  Banner  of  our  country  and  it 
was  borne  to  its  resting  place,  in  the 
arms  of  the  descendants  of  four  pa- 
triots and  soldiers.  We  gathered 
together  the  bricks  of  the  ancient 
chimney,  which  once  formed  the 
hearth  around  which  Washington  in 
his  infancy  had  played,  and  construct- 
ed a  rude  kind  of  pedestal,  on  which 
we  reverently  placed  the  first  stone, 
commending  it  to  the  respect  and  pro- 
tection of  the  American  people  in  gen- 
eral and  those  of  Westmoreland  in 
particular.  On  the  tallest  is  the  sim- 
plest inscription:  "Here  the  nth  of 
February  (O.  S.)  1732,  George 
Washington  was  born."  The  mother 
of  Washington  resided,  during  the 
latter  part  of  her  life,  in  Fredericks- 
burg  near  the  spot  where  she  now 
lies  buried,  and  which  she  herself, 
years  before  her  death,  selected  for 
her  grave,  and  to  which  she  was  wont 
to  retire  for  private  and  devotional 
thought.  It  is  marked  by  an  unfin- 
ished monument,  the  corner  stone  of 
which  was  laid  by  our  present  Chief 
Magistrate  on  the  7th  May,  1833,  m 
the  presence  of  a  great  concourse,  and 
with  most  solemn  ceremonial.  The 
house  of  her  abode  is  on  the  corner 
of  Charles  and  Lewis  Streets.  It  was 
here  that  her  last  interview  with  her 
illustrious  son  took  place  when  she 
was  bowed  down  with  age  and  dis- 
ease. 

Left  Fredericksburg  at  12  o'clock 
and  dined  at  the  first  change  of 
horses,  ten  miles  beyond.  Our  ride 
this  afternoon  was  through  an  unin- 
teresting country.  Five  miles  from 
Orange  C.  H.  were  detained  more 
than  an  hour  as  our  driver  was  igno- 
rant of  the  road  and  fearful  of  washes 
and  apprehensive  of  danger.  About 
9  o'clock  we  reached  Orange  C.  H. 
and  were  comfortably  accommodated 
for  the  night. 

May  27th.  Started  in  the  stage  be- 
fore day  and  rode  thirteen  miles  be- 
fore breakfast.  Our  meal  was  served 
in  a  room  used  in  winter  for  corn  and 
in  summer  for  an  eating  room. 
Breakfast  concluded,  we  moved  on. 


The  day  was  pleasant  and  we  had  a 
delightful  drive  through  a  rich  and 
highly  cultivated  country.  Passed 
Monticello,  the  late  residence  of  Mr. 
Jefferson,  also  the  seats  of  Mr.  Madi- 
son, P.  P.,  Mr.  James  Barbour,  Mr. 
Rives,  and  others. 

Monticello,  once  the  beautiful  home 
and  now  the  tomb  of  Jefferson,  is  sit- 
uated about  four  miles  east  of  Char- 
lottesville,  upon  an  eminence,  with 
many  aspen  trees  around  it,  and  com- 
mands a  view  of  the  Blue  Ridge  for 
one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  on  one 
side  and  on  the  other  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  extensive  landscapes  in 
the  world.  .  .  . 

Monticello  was  a  point  of  great 
attraction  to  the  learned  of  all  lands, 
when  traveling  in  this  country  while 
Jefferson  lived.  His  writings  made 
him  favorably  known  as  a  scholar  and 
his  public  position  made  him  honored 
by  the  nations.  Wirt,  writing  of  the 
interior  arrangements  of  the  house, 
during  Mr.  Jefferson's  life  time,  re- 
cords that  in  the  spacious  and  lofty 
hall  which  opens  to  the  visitors  in  en- 
tering, he  "marks  no  tawdy  and  un- 
meaning ornaments,  but  before,  on 
the  right,  on  the  left,  all  around,  the 
eye  is  struck  and  gratified  by  objects 
of  science  and  taste  so  classed  and 
arranged  as  to  produce  the  finest 
effect.  On  one  side  specimens  of 
sculpture,  set  out  in  such  order  as  to 
exhibit  at  a  coup  d'ceil,  the  historic 
progress  of  the  art,  from  the  first 
rude  attempt  of  the  aborigines  of  the 
country,  up  to  that  exquisite  and  fin- 
ished bust  of  the  great  patriot  himself 
from  the  master  hand  of  Carrachi. 

"On  the  other  side  the  visitor  sees 
displayed  a  vast  collection  of  the  spec- 
imens of  the  Indian  art,  their  paint- 
ings, weapons,  ornaments  and  manu- 
factures ;  on  another  an  array  of  fos- 
sils of  our  country,  mineral  and  ani- 
mal; the  petrified  remains  of  those 
colossal  monsters  which  once  trod  our 
forests  and  are  no  more ;  and  a  varie- 
gated display  of  the  branching  honors 
of  the  monarchs  of  the  waste  that  still 
people  the  wilds  of  the  American 

66* 


Oi)bB?nmti0ttH  of  an  Earlij  Amfriran  (EapitaltBt 


continent."  Wirt  tells  of  being  "in 
a  large  room,  with  exquisite  pro- 
ductions of  the  painted  art,  and 
from  its  windows  opened  a  view  of 
the  surrounding  country  that  no 
painting  could  imitate.  Here  too 
were  medallions  and  engravings  in 
great  profusion." 

Changed  stages  at  Charlottesville ; 
took  a  view  of  the  town  and  Univer- 
sity and  set  off  again  on  our  road 
toward  Lynchburg.  The  University 
of  Virginia  is  one  of  the  most  dis- 
tinguished of  the  colleges  of  the 
United  States.  ...  It  was  founded 
in  1819  by  Thomas  Jefferson  and  so 
great  was  his  interest  in  its  success 
and  his  estimate  of  its  importance, 
that  in  his  epitaph,  found  among  his 
papers,  he  ranked  his  share  in  its 
foundation,  third  among  the  achieve- 
ments and  honors  of  his  life — the 
authorship  of  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence being  the  first,  and  of  the 
Virginia  statute  for  Religious  Free- 
dom, the  second. 

The  University  is  controlled  and 
endowed  by  the  State. 

Crossed  in  our  afternoon  drive  the 
Rockfish  river  in  several  places.  The 
scenery  all  along  its  banks  is  wild  and 
very  beautiful.  The  ivy,  or  moun- 
tain laurel,  the  magnolia  and  fringe 
were  all  in  full  bloom.  The  mag- 
nolia clustered  all  along  the  banks, 
with  the  ivy  and  fringe  crowning  the 
magnolia,  and  the  whole  o'ershad- 
owed  by  the  forest  trees,  presented  a 
rich  effect.  Shortly  after  dark,  we 
arrived  at  Nelson  C.  H.  and  put  up  at 
an  excellent  tavern  for  the  night. 

May  28.  Left  Nelson  C.  H.  about 
2  o'clock  in  the  morning  and  rode  to 
New  Glasgow  to  breakfast  stopping 
at  a  mean  tavern  to  obtain  a  meaner 
meal.  I  omitted  yesterday  to  men- 
tion that  at  our  dining  place,  we  met 
Mr.  Rives  and  had  a  long  conversa- 
tion with  him,  the  driver  of  the  stage 
being  kind  enough  to  wait  until  it 
suited  our  convenience  to  go  on. 
Mr.  Rives  was  returning  from  an 
Episcopal  convention  at  Lynchburg 
and  learned  from  us  the  result  of  the 

663 


nomination  at  Baltimore.  I  was 
struck  with  his  temper  and  modera- 
tion. To  Lynchburg  to  dinner.  It  is 
not  a  handsome  town  but  does  a  con- 
siderable business,  being  the  center  of 
the  tobacco  trade  for  several  counties 
and  ought  to  do  a  large  forwarding 
business  for  western  Virginia.  We 
travelled  late  in  the  day  and  it  was  10 
o'clock  before  we  got  to  our  journey's 
end. 

May  29th.  Started  a  little  before 
dawn,  having  been  detained  some 
time  by  a  magpie  in  petticoats  who 
had  joined  us  at  Lynchburg  and  to 
our  great  annoyance  was  to  be  our 
travelling  companion  as  far  as  Chris- 
tianburg.  Rode  fourteen  miles  to 
breakfast.  Changed  stages  and  com- 
menced crossing  the  Blue  Ridge.  On 
the  Ridge  the  ivy  was  very  thick, 
both  slopes  were  covered,  forming  a 
beautiful  contrast  \vith  the  tulip  tree 
which  bears  a  deep  orange  and  yellow 
cup-shaped  flower. 

Passed  Big  Lick  and  dined  at  Sa- 
lem. .  .  .  Reached  the  latter  place 
in  time  to  connect  with  the  Lexington 
line  of  stages  and  were  fortunate 
enough  to  secure  good  seats.  The 
Lynchburg  route  is  pleasanter  than 
the  one  by  Lexington,  the  roads  being 
much  easier.  Left  Salem  at  12 
o'clock  for  Christianburg  where  we 
were  to  stay  all  night.  The  Alle- 
gheny is  full  of  the  locust  and  fringe 
trees,  and  close  to  them  grows  a  wild 
flock  and  a  small  shrub  of  a  different 
class,  the  flower  of  which  resembles 
that  of  the  geranium  in  form  and 
color,  while  the  leaf  is  very  different, 
being  sharp  and  pointed  and  growing 
in  a  single  stalk  a  foot  in  height. 
During  the  afternoon  crossed  the 
Roanoke  nine  times.  .  .  . 

May  31.  Left  at  daybreak,  and 
went  to  Lexington  C.  H.  to  breakfast. 

Crossed  and  forded  the  Holston 
several  times.  Along  its  bank  were 
clustered  the  black  haw  and  haw- 
thorne  in  great  abundance.  .  .  . 

At  the  ford  of  the  north  fork  of  the 
Holston,  a  main  tributary  of  the  Ten- 
nessee, there  is  a  fine  bottom  land 


Itarg  nf  (Sktwral  Soterl 


—  Inrn  1752 


which  is  very  productive,  yielding 
eighty  bushels  of  maize  to  the  acre. 
This  valuable  estate  belongs  to  Gen- 
eral Preston,  father  to  the  distin- 
guished senator  from  So.  Carolina, 
Col.  Preston.  Gen.  Preston  is  a  person 
of  the  highest  respectability  and  has 
always  been  distinguished  for  great 
energy  of  character,  without  which, 
no  man  under  the  circumstances  of 
the  period  when  he  first  came  here, 
would  have  advanced  into  so  unset- 
tled a  wilderness  as  this  was.  He  is 
now  a  very  opulent  land  holder  and 
can  count  one  hundred  and  sixty  two 
descendants. 

June  ist.  Having  disposed  of  our 
breakfast  we  left  Abingdon  about  9 
o'clock.  It  being  Sunday  morning, 
and  the  stage  going  but  half  the  dis- 
tance, we  did  not  start  as  early  as 
usual,  and  then  moved  leisurely  on  to 
Blountville.  .  .  . 

About  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon 
a  funeral  passed  through  the  town. 
The  corpse  was  in  a  wagon,  covered 
with  a  counterpane.  Part  of  the 
mourners  were  in  carriages,  the  re- 
mainder were  on  horseback.  There 
was  no  attempt  at  solemnity  in  the 
proceedings. 

June  2.  Started  at  I  o'clock  and 
went  eleven  miles  to  breakfast.  The 
roads  being  bad  made  slow  driving 
and  were  nearly  upsetting  several 
times.  Passed  Kingsport  (the  boat 
yard)  on  the  Holston.  The  river  at 
this  place  is  very  broad  and  deep. 
Although  a  number  of  boats  are  load- 
ed between  this  place  and  the  mouth 
of  the  Watauga,  yet  it  is  considered 
the  head  of  navigation.  .  .  . 

Dined  at  Rogersville,  the  seat  of 
justice  of  Hawkins  Co.  On  the  5th 
day  of  November  1791  a  printing 
press  was  established  at  this  place  by 
a  Mr.  Roulstone  and  a  paper  issued 
entitled  the  Knoxville  Gazette,  being 
the  first  paper  ever  printed  in  the  ter- 
ritory. In  1833,  Rogersville  con- 
tained 300  inhabitants,  four  lawyers, 
two  doctors,  one  academy,  seven 
stores,  three  taverns,  six  blacksmiths, 
three  bricklayers,  four  carpenters, 


four  cabinet  makers,  two  painters, 
two  hatters,  four  tailors,  four  shoe- 
makers, two  saddlers,  one  silver 
smith,  three  tanners,  one  tinker  and 
four  wagon  makers. 

Two  and  a  half  miles  east  of  North 
Rogersville  is  a  hill  composed  wholly 
of  marble,  white,  gray  and  some- 
times red.  There  is  a  similar  hill  on 
the  road  eight  miles  west  of  the  town. 
Reached  Bean's  station,  where  we 
staid  all  night. 

June  3rd.  Rose  at  3  o'clock  and 
riding  to  the  foot  of  Clinch  Mountain 
(about  a  mile)  commenced  the  ascent. 
As  the  baggage  was  heavy  the  gentle- 
men agreeed  to  walk  and  .  .  . 
Along  the  northern  slope  of  this 
mountain  a  vein  of  gray  and  varie- 
gated marble  extends  for  fifty  miles. 
About  a  mile  beyond  the  Clinch  ford 
my  brother  James  met  us  with  horses 
and  about  10  o'clock,  we  arrived  in 
Tazewell,  where  we  had  the  pleasure 
of  finding  our  friends  and  relatives  all 
in  good  health. 

June  nth.  Went  over  to  my  fath- 
er's place  on  Sycamore  and  had  the 
satisfaction  of  once  more  embracing 
my  good  and  venerable  parents.  .  .  . 

June  i /th.  Left  Tazewell ;  my 
father  and  Dr.  Fulkerson  accompa- 
nied me,  the  former  about  six  miles 
when  we  urged  him  to  return,  fear- 
ing the  long  ride  would  do  him  no 
service.  Our  emotions  at  parting 
were  most  painful.  My  father  was 
far  advanced  in  years,  becoming  fee- 
ble, and  could  not,  in  the  course  of 
nature,  last  much  longer,  while  I  was 
going  on  a  long  journey  in  search  of 
health  I  might  not  find.  Both  felt  as 
if  we  were  looking  on  the  other  for  the 
last  time,  and  as  we  embraced,  neither 
could  speak.  A  long  time  will  elapse 
ere  the  parting  scene  will  be  effaced 
from  my  memory.  After  we  had 
separated  I  could  observe  my  father 
looking  after  us  as  long  as  we  could 
be  seen.  Dr.  Fulkerson  continued 
with  me  until  we  reached  the  foot  of 
Cumberland  Mountain,  when  he  also 
took  leave  and  I  pursued  my  solitary 
way  across  the  mountains  into  Ken- 


nf  an  Earlg  Am^riran  (ttapitaltst 


tucky.     The   scenery   at   the   Gap   is 
magnificent.     On  the  one  side,  spread 
out  at  your  feet  is  the  rich  valley  of 
Kentucky,  stretching  away  as  far  as 
the  eye  will  reach,  while  on  the  other 
are  the  hills  and  valleys  of  East  Ten- 
nessee.    It  was  through  this  gap  that 
Daniel  Boone  passed  on  his,  first  visit 
to  Kentucky  and  one  can  but  echo  his 
expression  when  looking  for  the  first 
time  on  the  scene  of  his  triumph,  that 
it  was  a  country  worth  fighting  for. 
The  first  visit  of  Boone  to  the  wilder- 
ness of  Kentucky  was  about  the  year 
1769  at  which  period  he  and  his  hardy 
companions  made  the  earliest  settle- 
ment   at    Boonesborough.      In    1774 
Harrodsburg  was  begun  and  Lexing- 
ton a  year  or  two  afterwards.     .     .     . 
A  memorable  battle  was  fought  near 
the    Bluelick    Springs    August    iQth, 
1782,  between   the   Kentuckians   and 
the  Indians.     An  unequal  and  disas- 
trous conflict  in  which  the  colonists 
were  routed  with  a  loss  of  sixty  men, 
among   them    a    son    of    the    gallant 
Boone.     ...     In  the  Gap,  near  the 
point  where  the  road  dips  to  descend 
the  mountain,  and  on  the  verge  of  the 
road  itself,  is  a  huge  isolated  rock  to 
which  tradition  has  imparted  an  in- 
terest not   shared   by  its  larger  and 
smaller  brethren  in  the  neighborhood. 
\Yhen  this  entire  country  was  a  wil- 
derness of  forests  and  the  pioneers 
were  guided  in  their  movements  by 
their  knowledge  of  woodcraft  alone, 
with  not  even  a  sheep  track  to  guide 
their  steps,  this  rock  was  selected  by 
the  savages  as  a  favorite  position  to 
waylay   the   unsuspecting   woodsman 
on  his  journey  across  the  mountain. 
Many  are  said  to  have  fallen  victims 
by  that  fatal  rock  and  it  was  not  until 
the    country    became    cleared    and    a 
road    opened    exposing    the    ground 
around  this  death  pass,  that  the  spot 
ceased  to  be  an  object  of  dread.     Its 
singular  formation,  being  cleft  in  the 
center,    rendered    the    position    pecu- 
liarly  favorable   for  the  purpose  for 
which    the    natives    had    selected    it. 
Tradition  further  says  that  two  of  the 
victims  (white  men)  were  buried  be- 


neath  the  rock.  (One  was  Elkanah 
Bramlette,  from  Bedford  County, 
Virginia.)  .  .  .  Crossing  the 
Cumberland  river  at  a  point  some 
fifteen  miles  above  Barboursville, 
1  kept  along  its  margin  until  I 
reached  that  town.  It  had  not  been 
my  intention  to  travel  so  far  that  day 
but  being  mounted  on  Messenger,  a 
blooded  mare  of  my  brother's  that 
walked  faster  than  any  animal  I  had 
ever  ridden,  I  felt  some  curiosity  to 
try  her  power.  I  left  Tazewell  at  7 
o'clock  and  reached  Barboursville  at 
25  minutes  after  6  o'clock,  accom- 
plishing without  feeding  or  going  out 
of  a  walk,  44  miles  in  eleven  hours, 
less  five  minutes,  crossing  on  the 
route  Cumberland  Mountain  and 
some  difficult  hills.  .  .  .  There 
were  immense  cane  brakes  in  this  sec- 
tion in  former  times  but  they  have 
been  destroyed  by  the  cattle  of  the 
settlers.  In  places  inaccessible  to  cat- 
tle, the  cane  is  still  found.  This  is 
the  "old  wilderness  road"  the  country 
between  Cumberland  and  the  Crab 
Orchard  still  bearing  the  name,  being 
thickly  settled  and  abounding  in 
game.  It  is  said  that  there  are  more 
deer  in  this  region  than  in  any  section 
of  the  Union. 

June  i8th.  Left  Barboursville  for 
Williamsburg.  .  .  .  The  greater 
portion  of  the  road  was  nothing  but 
a  bridle  path.  Would  never  have 
found  my  way  but  for  the  guidance  of 
the  mail  carrier.  The  timber  through 
which  we  passed  was  very  heavy  and 
in  some  places  so  dense  as  to  exclude 
the  sun.  Had  again  to  ford  the  Cum- 
berland which  was  so  deep  as  to  wet 
our  saddle  bags.  Reached  Williams- 
burg  at  3  o'clock.  .  .  .  While 
there  I  received  some  singular  illus- 
trations of  the  ridiculous  extent  to 
which  so  called  mail  facilities  have 
been  carried  in  the  West. 

A  mail  from  Barboursville  to  Mon- 
ticello,  passes  through  Williamsburg 
twice  a  week — once  each  way.  The 
annual  carriage  amounts  to  about 
one  hundred  letters,  while  the  Gov- 
ernment pays  the  contractor  $600. 


iiarg  of  <$?ti?rgl  Unhurt 


—  Hunt  1?92 


There  is  also  a  cross  mail  running  to 
a  certain  Martin  Beatty's  (a  member 
of  Congress)  over  which  route  the 
mail-rider  told  me  a  letter  had  not 
passed  for  three  months.  He  also  in- 
formed me  that  there  was  not  a  house 
within  eleven  miles  of  the  office,  and 
to  the  best  of  his  knowledge  and  be- 
lief there  had  never  been  a  letter  or 
paper  taken  there  for  any  other  per- 
son than  Martin  Beatty  or  some  one 
in  his  employ,  so  that  it  would  ap- 
pear as  if  the  office  had  been  estab- 
lished and  the  contract  given  for  the 
exclusive  benefit  of  Mr.  Beatty,  who 
is  thus  paid  a  commission  for  receiv- 
ing his  own  letters. 

On  my  arrival  at  Williamsburg,  I 
sent  for  Judge  Eve  who  was  holding 
court  there.  He  came  immediately 
and  after  some  conversation,  agreed 
to  adjourn  court  and  go  with  me  next 
morning  to  the  mouth  of  Rock  Castle, 
where  at  the  coal  banks,  I  expected  to 

find  General  .     Our  road  today 

led  through  a  wilderness — we  saw 
but  one  house  in  35  miles.  .  .  . 
In  crossing  Laurel,  we  missed  the 
trail  and  had  to  break  our  way  over 
and  around  stumps  and  fallen  trees, 
scramble  up  one  ravine  and  down 
another,  climbing  up  and  sliding 
down  rocks  until  our  horses,  although 
first  rate  animals,  were  completely 
worn  out.  At  last  we  reached  the 
mouth  of  Rock  Castle.  Found  Gen- 
eral   at  a  saw  mill  he  had  erected 

some  miles  above  the  coal  banks. 
His  establishment  presented  an  odd 
mixture  of  pride  and  poverty,  extrav- 
agance and  meanness ;  himself  attired 
in  a  good  suit  of  blue  cloth,  his  wife 
in  a  handsome  chintz,  while  his  little 
son  was  dressed  in  a  full  city  suit  and 
sported  a  polished  leather  belt  with  a 
gilt  buckle,  while  the  trio  resided  in  a 
slab  cabin  with  a  superior  mud  floor. 
Two  negroes  waited  on  them.  At  the 
saw  mill  the  General  had  three  men 
to  help  him  do  work  that  in  Pennsyl- 
vania would  have  been  undertaken 
by  one  individual.  During  the  even- 
ing and  on  the  following  morning 
every  effort  was  made  by  Judge  Eve 


and  myself  to  produce  from  General 

—  money  or  property  for  the  debt 
he  owed  me,  but  in  vain.  All  we 
could  get  was  a  judgment.  During 
the  night  a  violent  storm  of  rain  and 
hail  arose,  the  rain  beat  in  through 
the  slabs,  the  atmosphere  changed 
from  extreme  heat  to  extreme  cold 
and  our  situation  became  anything 
but  a  comfortable  one. 

June  20.  After  breakfast  left  Rock 
Castle  to  return  to  Barboursville  fully 
impressed  with  the  conviction  that  in 
the  year  1835,  there  was  not  a  greater 
scoundrel  in  Kentucky  than  General 

.  After  riding  about  20  or  30 

miles  we  came  to  a  farm  house  and 
alighted  to  get  some  refreshment  for 
ourselves  and  horses.  I  was  amused 
with  the  judge's  dexterity  in  bed 
making;  a  bear  skin  spread  on  the 
floor  with  his  saddle  for  a  pillow  con- 
stituted a  pallet  on  which  we  took  a 
comfortable  rest,  while  the  good  lady 
of  the  house  broiled  some  chicken, 
with  ham  and  eggs  on  which  we  made 
a  comfortable  dinner,  closing  with  a 
dessert  of  cherry  pie,  honey  and 
sweet  milk,  after  which  we  mounted 
our  nags  and  resumed  our  journey 
towards  Barboursville,  where  we 
arrived  about  dark. 

Judge  Eve  insisted  that  during  my 
stay  I  should  consider  his  house  my 
home,  and  I  accepted  the  invitation. 
Mrs.  Eve  I  found  a  very  ladylike 
woman  and  a  good  housekeeper. 
Everything  was  done  to  render  my 
stay  agreeable,  and  while  in  Barbours- 
ville, I  was  the  recipient  of  the  most 
attentive  kindness  from  Judge  and 
Mrs.  Eve  and  from  every  member  of 
their  connection. 

June  2 1  st.  The  day  was  so  cold 
we  had  fires  and  wore  great  coats. 
There  was  no  church  and  the  day  was 
spent  as  most  Sundays  are  under  the 
circumstances — in  walking  about  and 
talking  politics.  There  was  service 
about  five  miles  off,  but  I  was  too 
much  fatigued  with  the  exertions  of 
the  previous  day  to  attend.  A  num- 
ber of  the  gentlemen  of  Barboursville 
called  and  invited  me  to  their  houses. 

666 


nf  an  lEarlg  Am*rtran  (SaptialtBt 


June  22nd.  Was  the  first  clay  of 
court-week,  and  as  customary  all  the 
surrounding  country  came  to  town. 
Most  of  the  lawyers  I  had  met  at  Wil- 
liamsburg.  As  I  had  nothing  to  do, 
the  Judge  invited  me  to  come  to  court 
and  take  a  seat  on  the  bench,  to  which 
I  acceded,  knowing  the  scene  in  the 
court  would  afford  me  both  amuse- 
ment and  instruction.  The  Bar  was 
composed  of  intelligent,  common- 
sense  men,  possessing  a  great  deal  of 
tact  and  judgment.  The  Judge  pre- 
sided with  ability  and  despatched  bus- 
iness promptly  and  correctly. 

June  23rd.  Following  yesterday's 
programme,  went  to  court.  While  in 
the  court  house  could  not  help  but 
recall  Mrs.  Trollope's  tirade  on  to- 
bacco chewing.  Here  every  one 
chews,  and  the  floor  was  reeking  with 
little  pools  of  tobacco  juice,  or  "am- 
beer"  as  the  natives  called  it.  While 
the  court  was  in  session  a  fight  was 
improvised  at  the  door.  I  was  desir- 
ous of  seeing  a  real  knock-down,  drag 
out,  bite  and  gouge  Kentucky  fight, 
but  the  Judge  was  not  disposed  to  en- 
courage such  "gentle  passages  of 
arms"  and  sent  some  officers  to  bring 
the  combatants  into  court.  When,  to 
his  astonishment,  he  learned  that  one 
of  them  was  his  particular  friend,  Col. 
Garrard,  who  had  dined  with  us  the 
day  before,  and  was  withal  the  favor- 
ite candidate  of  the  Judge  for  Con- 
gress. The  quarrel  originated  in  pol- 
itics. When  the  participants  were 
brought  in,  covered  with  dirt  and 
scratches  they  looked  somewhat  furi- 
ous, but  were  evidently  ashamed.  The 
Judge  reprimanded  them  and  charged 
each  ten  dollars  when  they  left  the 
court. 

In  the  afternoon  I  took  leave  of  my 
friends  and  after  tea,  conveyed  my 
baggage  and  myself  to  the  stage 
house.  The  stage  arrived  about  mid- 
night. .  .  .  Reached  Crab  Or- 
chard about  dusk  and  put  up  at  most 
excellent  house.  .  .  .  The  place 
derives  its  name  from  the  number  of 
wild  crab  apple  trees  that  were  found 
in  the  vicinity  at  the  period  of  its  first 


settlement.  Immense  thickets  are 
still  found  in  the  neighborhood.  .  .  . 
We  crossed  today  the  Rockcastle 
river,  the  shores  of  which  were  cov- 
ered with  water  laurel  and  wild  cu- 
cumber. The  latter  grows  to  a  tree 
of  considerable  size  bearing  a  very 
large  white  flower. 

June  25th.  .  .  .  Reached  Lan- 
caster about  12  o'clock.  The  macad- 
amized road  from  thence  to  Louis- 
ville may  revive  the  place.  This  road 
is  graded  as  far  as  Lancaster  but  the 
stone  has  not  been  laid. 

Rode  to  Smith's  beyond  Lancaster 
to  dinner,  the  only  one  that  reminded 
one  of  a  Pennsylvania  farmer.  The 
place  was  in  excellent  order,  and 
marked  by  a  neatness  entirely  differ- 
ent from  all  other  farms  I  had  seen. 

June  26th.  .  .  .  Left  Nicholas- 
ville  about  2  o'clock  and  arrived  at 
Lexington  about  5  o'clock.  The 
country  through  which  we  passed  was 
a  perfect  Paradise,  especially  as  we 
approached  Lexington,  everything  in- 
dicated fine  farms  and  fine  farmers. 
The  grass  fields  and  hemp  meadows 
were  luxuriant  while  the  woodlands 
were  free  from  undergrowth  and  be- 
neath was  a  rich  carpet  of  the  famed 
blue  grass,  the  whole  fenced  in  to  pre- 
serve the  pasture.  Here  and  there 
under  the  trees,  noble  cattle  were  lei- 
surely cropping  the  grass;  occasion- 
ally one  would  look  up  and  stupidly 
gaze  at  us  over  his  moist  nose,  as  we 
passed.  .  .  .  On  our  return  to 
the  hotel  about  dusk,  met  Gen.  Combs 
who  was  very  glad  to  see  me  and 
wished  me  to  stay  and  dine  with  him 
but  being  fearful  of  losing  the  boat 
for  the  upper  Mississippi,  I  was 
obliged  to  decline.  .  .  . 

June  27th.  Left  Lexington  about 
sunrise  by  rail-car  for  Frankfort 
where  we  arrived  about  8^2  o'clock, 
and  took  breakfast.  Would  have  pre- 
ferred the  stage  as  enabling  us  to  re- 
mark the  country  through  which  we 
passed,  more  at  leisure,  but  could  not 
have  reached  Frankfort  by  that  route 
in  time  to  connect  with  the  Louis- 
ville stage.  The  view  from  the  hills 


itarg  of 


Hntert 


—  Unrtt  1?92 


ere  you  enter  the  town  is  beautiful. 
.  .  .  At  Frankfort  we  resumed  the 
stage.  .  .  .  Our  road  towards 
Louisville  lay  through  a  beautiful 
country  over  a  good  macadamized 
turnpike.  .  .  .  Arrived  at  Louis- 
ville in  the  afternoon  sufficiently  early 
to  take  a  walk  through  the  town  and 
look  at  the  steamboats  which  lined  the 
river  front. 

It  is  a  well  laid  out  town  advanta- 
geously placed  on  the  south  bank  of 
the  Ohio  and  accessible  to  the  portly 
steamers  that  constantly  resort  to  it. 
.  .  .  The  channel  of  the  river 
where  the  water  is  low,  is  near  the 
north  bank,  on  the  shore  of  the  state 
of  Indiana  and  at  such  times  you  can 
walk  with  great  security  to  a  few 
islands  which  are  between  it  and  the 
city.  .  .  .  On  one  of  these  islands 
is  a  surprising  abundance  of  fossils, 
many  of  which  I  had  never  seen  be- 
fore, and  of  which  I  made  a  rich  col- 
lection. Most  of  the  beds  pf  lime- 
stone are  bituminous  and  the  smell  in 
some  of  them  amounts  to  fetor.  Pe- 
troleum is  found  in  many  cavities  and 
I  was  informed  that  where  they  were 
engaged  in  blasting  the  beds  for  con- 
structing the  canal,  they  came  to 
places  where  a  gallon  of  the  mineral 
oil  could  be  collected  during  the 
twenty-four  hours.  The  frequency 
of  this  phenomenon  has  led  some  per- 
sons to  suppose  that  all  the  deposits  of 
bituminous  coal  are  not  of  vegetable 
origin.  Upon  the  whole  Louisville 
is  a  prosperous  and  agreeable  place, 
and  appears  to  be  under  government 
of  judicious  magistrates.  It  was  laid 
off  by  Capt.  Thos.  Bullitt  of  Virginia, 
in  August  1773,  but  no  settlement  was 
made  until  1778  when  a  small  party 
arrived  here  with  George  Rogers 
Clark  and  settled  on  what  is  now 
known  as  Corn  Island,  close  to  the 
Kentucky  shore.  After  the  posts 
occupied  by  the  British  on  the 
Wabash  had  been  taken  by  General 
Clark,  they  removed  to  the  spot  on 
which  Louisville  now  stands,  in  the 
fall  of  the  same  year.  They  built  a 
block  house  here  which  was  subse- 


quently removed  and  a  large  fort 
erected  in  1782,  called  Fort  Nelson. 
In  1780,  the  town  was  established  by 
an  act  of  the  Legislature  of  Virginia 
under  whose  jurisdiction  Kentucky 
then  was.  At  this  time  the  popula- 
tion was  only  thirty.  The  Kentucki- 
ans  are  an  enterprising,  industrious 
and  united  people;  they  inhabit  a 
beautiful  country  and  cultivated  a 
generous  soil.  With  a  magnificent 
river  upon  their  frontier,  they  can 
convey  their  tobacco,  pork,  corn,  and 
their  other  various  productions  to 
every  part  of  the  earth.  They  seem 
to  have  all  the  elements  within  them- 
selves of  permanent  prosperity.  Their 
acknowledged  leader  is  Henry  Clay; 
his  name  which  is  so  well  known 
throughout  the  United  States  operates 
as  a  talisman  in  Kentucky.  He  is  the 
most  extensive  farmer,  the  most  spir- 
ited, improver  of  all  the  breeds  of  cat- 
tle, horses  and  mules ;  the  most  affable 
of  men  to  all  classes.  He  has  never 
been  known  to  do  a  mean  action  either 
in  his  public  or  private  capacity.  .  .  . 
June  28th.  Sunday.  After  break- 
fast got  a  carriage  and  rode  around 
town  and  down  to  Shippings  Port  to 
see  the  Louisville  and  Portland  Canal. 
This  canal  was  a  bold  undertaking,  in 
length  for  about  two  miles ;  the  exca- 
vation for  a  greater  portion  of  that 
distance  being  made  through  solid 
rock.  It  is  in  some  places  forty  feet 
deep  and  of  sufficient  width  to  pass 
steamboats  through.  The  canal  is 
owned  by  an  incorporated  company, 
the  General  Government  holding 
nearly  one  half  the  stock.  .  .  . 
Little  regard  seemed  to  be  paid  to  the 
day,  the  greater  portion  of  the  stores 
being  open  and  business  transacted  as 
on  week  days.  Engaged  a  passage 
on  the  "Velocipede"  for  St.  Louis 
and  was  fortunate  enough  to  secure  a 
passage  for  each  of  our  company. 

Here  the  old  journal  begins  its  in- 
teresting narrative  of  the  journey  on 
the  Mississippi  river,  in  which  is  re- 
lated many  incidents  of  life  along 
America's  great  way  in  last  century. 

668 


(Sty  Fatter  of  %  Ammran 


(Cnmmaubrr 
of  tyr  Jlrat  Braarl  to 
5finlit  Hnbrr  thr  Atnrriran  5fluu  ^  u/hr 
"  trxtngton."  natnri)  after  tl|r  ilrat  llattlr  tn  tJfr 
Amrrtran  Rrnolutton,  (Captnrrb  ty*  JirBt  *r«tBl|  &l|tp  tn  tljp 
&trugglr  for  Jnor^nornrr  >  Gty*  frtorg  of  dommooor?  Jolyn  Sarrg,  Som  tn  1 745 

BT 

RICHARD    M.    REILLT 

MXMBKK  Or  THB   PENNSYLVANIA   BAR 


3N  the  War  of  the  Revolu- 
tion    some     men     made 
reputations     over     night. 
Like   the    fabled   goddess 
who    sprang    full-fledged 
from  the  foam  of  the  sea, 
they    leaped    into    promi- 
nence by  a  single  act.      Others  did 
yeoman  service  throughout  that  mem- 
orable campaign,  but  lacked  the  trum- 
peter to  sound  their  praises,  and  were 
quite  content  to  play  their  brave  parts, 
rewarded    by    the    consciousness    of 
work  well  done,  and  little  recking  of 
the  verdict  of  posterity.     True  worth 
is    always   modest   and   self-effacing. 
Therefore   is   it   that   the   chronicler 
finds  his  task  a  pleasing  one  to  piece 
together    the    fragments    of    one    of 
these  noble  and  unassuming  lives  into 
a  mosaic  worthy  to  hold  an  honored 
place  in  a  picture  of  the  period. 

Of  this  type  of  modest  heroes  was 
the  subject  of  this  sketch,  John  Barry, 
born  in  Ballysampson,  County  Wex- 
ford,  Ireland,  in  1745.  His  family 
name,  de  Barry,  suggestive  of  Nor- 
mandy origin,  is  found  in  Wexford 
as  early  as  the  fourteenth  century. 
Brought  up  with  the  salt  air  in  his 
nostrils,  it  is  easy  to  understand  how, 
as  a  lad  of  fifteen  years,  he  found  a 
place  with  his  uncle,  master  of  a  ves- 
sel trading  out  of  Wexford.  His  sea 
journeys  brought  him  often  to  Phila- 
delphia, and  he  is  found  in  his  early 
years  in  the  employ  of  the  merchant 
princes  of  their  time,  the  Willings,  the 
Merediths  and  Cadwalladers,  sailing 
on  their  vessels  in  varied  capacities. 
The  first  record  of  him  as  a  sea  cap- 

669 


tain  occurs  on  October  2,  1766,  when 
he  became  at  twenty-one  master  of  a 
vessel  that  traded  with  the  Barbadoes 
Islands.  His  life  on  the  ocean  wave 
was  probably  uneventful  for  the  next 
eight  years  or  more,  but  when  he  ar- 
rived in  Philadelphia,  on  October  13, 
1775,  in  command  of  the  "Black 
Prince,"  much  history  had  been  made 
since  his  departure  the  year  before. 
"The  embattled  farmers  of  Lexing- 
ton" had  "fired  the  shot  heard  'round 
the  world."  Ticonderoga  had  fallen, 
Bunker  Hill  had  been  fought,  and 
Washington  had  assumed  the  com- 
mand of  the  Continental  Army  und-T 
the  shade  of  the  stately  elm  in  Cam- 
bridge. 

Barry's  arrival  in  Philadelphia  was 
opportune,  the  Continental  Congress 
having  authorized  the  purchase  and 
fitting  out  of  two  armed  cruisers  with 
authority  to  capture  vessels  bringing 
supplies  to  the  British  Army.  Cap- 
tain Barry  was  appointed  to  the  com- 
mand of  one  of  them,  the  "Lexing- 
ton," named  after  the  place  of  the  first 
land  battle.  His  commission  was  the 
first  issued  by  the  Marine  Committee 
of  Congress,  and  attests  the  high 
reputation  that  he  enjoyed  for  cour- 
age, skill  and  experience.  Much  is 
contained  in  the  simple  record  that 
he  was  the  first  officer  appointed  to 
the  first  vessel  purchased,  named  after 
the  place  of  the  first  battle.  He  was 
soon  to  add  again  to  his  record  of 
initiative  by  reporting  to  the  Marine 
Committee  of  Congress  the  first  cap- 
ture of  a  British  vessel.  This  was  on 
April  7,  1776,  when  off  the  Capes  of 


Ammran 


—  intjn  Harrg 


Virginia,  the  "Lexington,"  after  a 
fierce  engagement,  caused  the  "Ed- 
ward" to  strike  its  colors.  Philadel- 
phia acclaimed  the  Irish  sea-dog 
when  he  brought  his  prize  up  the  bay 
four  days  later.  John  Adams  wrote 
of  it :  "We  begin  to  make  some  figure 
here  in  the  navy  way."  And  Richard 
Henry  Lee,  in  a  letter  describing  the 
event,  narrated  that  the  enemy  did  not 
submit  until  he  was  near  sinking. 
Barry's  report  of  the  victory  is  em- 
braced in  a  few  lines  giving  the  bare 
details,  and  concluding,  "I  have  the 
happiness  to  acquaint  you  that  all  our 
people  behaved  with  much  courage." 

In  the  lower  Delaware,  Barry  hov- 
ered with  his  good  ship,  lending  his 
aid  to  protect  the  merchantmen  arriv- 
ing with  supplies  on  Congress' 
account  from  the  assaults  of  the  Brit- 
ish men-of-war.  When  this  work 
was  scarce,  he  kept  himself  and  crew 
from  stagnating  by  sallying  out  to  the 
capture  of  ocean  prizes.  In  August, 
1776,  the  "Lady  Susan"  and  the 
"Betsy,"  manned  by  the  loyalist  Good- 
riches,  of  Virginia,  fell  into  his  hands, 
and  the  proceedings  of  their  con- 
demnation as  prizes  may  be  read 
in  the  records  of  Congress  of 
November  7,  1776.  We  next  find 
our  hero  in  command  of  the  "Effing- 
ham,"  one  of  the  new  vessels  author- 
ized by  Congress.  On  the  day  that 
Captain  Barry  received  his  assign- 
ment, October  10,  1776,  the  rank 
of  the  officers  of  the  new  Continental 
Navy  was  fixed,  Barry  ranking  sev- 
enth. Captain  John  Paul  Jones  was 
eighteenth  on  the  list,  to  his  extreme 
chagrin.  But  Barry  and  Jones  were 
real  sea-fighters,  and  they  were  soon 
to  show  by  their  careers  of  successful 
daring  how  impotent  is  a  Congress 
committee  to  keep  down  men  of  na- 
tive force  and  genius. 

And  now  we  come  to  a  picturesque 
event  in  Barry's  career.  It  is  the 
winter  month  of  December,  1776, 
when  Washington,  having  been 
forced  out  of  New  York,  is  making 
his  weary  retreat  across  New  Jersey, 
seeking  to  put  the  Delaware  between 


himself  and  the  British  foe.  Sad- 
dened by  the  treachery  of  Lee,  who 
should  have  co-operated  with  him,  in- 
dignant at  the  Jerseymen,  who,  in- 
stead of  flying  to  his  standard,  were 
going  over  to  the  Crown,  his  soldiers, 
ragged  and  forlorn — at  no  time  dur- 
ing the  war  was  the  situation  so  des- 
perate for  the  American  cause.  The 
world  still  wonders  at  the  masterly 
way  in  which  Washington  retrieved 
the  situation,  crossing  the  Delaware 
on  Christmas  night  amid  the  floating 
ice  with  his  little  force  of  2,500  men, 
stealing  around  the  enemy's  outposts, 
and  in  quick  succession  winning  the 
battles  of  Trenton  and  Princeton. 
Thus  was  safety  plucked  from  the 
nettle  danger  in  the  most  critical  stage 
of  the  conflict.  The  English  his- 
torian, Trevelyan,  says  of  it:  "It  may 
be  doubted  whether  so  small  a  number 
of  men  ever  employed  so  short  a 
space  of  time  with  greater  or  more 
lasting  results  upon  the  history  of  the 
world."  In  this  momentous  struggle, 
Captain  Barry  bore  a  noble  part. 
Though  a  sailor  and  a  commissioned 
captain,  he  organized  a  company  of 
volunteers  and  aided  in  the  transport 
of  the  troops  across  the  icy  waters, 
and  was  in  the  thick  of  the  strife  at 
Trenton  and  Princeton.  Thus  ably 
did  he  sustain  the  Father  of  His 
Country  in  his  and  its  greatest  trial. 

We  next  find  Barry  after  the  Tren- 
ton campaign  engaged  in  protecting 
Philadelphia  by  defensive  naval  op- 
erations. When  in  September,  1777, 
the  British  army  entered  Philadelphia 
and  Congress  fled  to  Lancaster, 
Barry,  in  his  vessel,  the  "Effingham," 
went  down  the  Delaware  to  take 
charge  of  the  business  of  preventing 
British  vessels  from  coming  up  the 
river.  Fierce  river  fighting  followed 
for  the  next  two  months,  until  the 
position  growing  untenable,  the 
American  fleet  under  cover  of  night, 
passed  up  the  river  in  front  of  the 
city,  losing  several  of  their  vessels  in 
the  venture.  To  Barry,  who  was 
now  in  the  upper  Delaware,  is  given 
the  credit  of  projecting  the  plan  for 


(Enmmtmter  of  3FttBt 


in  JtrBt  Jffi 


destroying  the  enemy's  vessels  in  the 
river  by  floating  down  machines  re- 
sembling ship's  buoys  filled  with  pow- 
der. It  failed  of  its  purpose,  but  the 
consternation  of  the  British  and  the 
fierce  cannonading  to  which  the  pow- 
der kegs  were  exposed  gave  rise  to 
the  humorous  ditty,  "The  Battle  of 
the  Kegs."  There  was  a  good  laugh  at 
the  British  expense, as  will  be  seenbya 
sample  verse  from  the  satirical  story: 

"From  morn  to  night  these  men  of  might 

Displayed  amazing  courage; 
And  when  the  sun  was  fairly  down, 

Retired  to  eat  their  porridge." 

Barry's  restless  spirit  ill-brooked 
the  inaction  to  which  he  was  con- 
demned in  the  Upper  Delaware,  and 
he  is  found  in  the  early  part  of  1778 
inducing  the  Supreme  Executive 
Council  of  Pennsylvania,  then  in 
Lancaster,  to  aid  the  Continental  navy 
in  harassing  or  destroying  the  British 
supply  vessels  coming  up  the  Lower 
Delaware.  On  a  night  in  February, 
he  came  down  with  twenty-seven 
men,  in  four  row-boats,  passed  Phil- 
adelphia unobserved,  and  captured 
the  British  ten-gun  ship,  the  "Alert," 
with  two  supply  ships',  the  "Mer- 
maid" and  the  "Kitty."  The  daunt- 
less Barry,  with  only  a  few  more  than 
a  score  of  followers,  leaped  over  the 
rail  of  the  "Alert,"  cutlass  in  hand, 
and  succeeded  in  capturing  the  entire 
crew  of  one  hundred  and  sixteen  men. 
The  fame  of  this  exploit,  together 
with  the  masterly  style  in  which, 
against  great  odds,  he  avoided  the  re- 
capture of  the  "Alert"  by  a  British 
sloop-of-war,  added  new  laurels  to  the 
intrepid  sea  captain.  It  is  said  that 
as  a  result  of  it,  Sir  William  Howe, 
then  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Brit- 
ish forces  in  America,  offered  Barry 
20,000  guineas  and  the  command  of  a 
British  frigate,  if  he  would  go  over  to 
the  English  service.  Barry's  reply 
was  brief  and  patriotic:  "Not  the 
value  and  command  of  the  whole 
British  fleet  can  seduce  me  from  the 
cause  of  my  country."  Washington, 
at  Valley  Forge,  was  a  close  observer 
of  Barry's  work  at  this  time,  as  he 


received  much  forage  and  supplies 
from  him  for  his  army.  Under  date 
of  March  12,  1778,  he  thus  writes  our 
hero:  "I  ...  congratulate  you 
on  the  success  which  has  crowned 
your  gallantry  and  address  in  the  late 
attack  upon  the  enemy's  ships.  Al- 
though circumstances  have  prevented 
you  from  reaping  the  full  benefit  of 
your  conquests,  yet  there  is  ample 
consolation  in  the  degree  of  glory 
which  you  have  acquired." 

Barry's  next  adventure,  while  not 
successful,  showed  him  a  genuine 
specimen  of  the  fighting  race.  He 
had  been  appointed  to  the  command 
of  the  "Raleigh,"  of  thirty-two  guns, 
in  September,  1778,  and  within  a  few 
hours  after  sailing  was  in  a  fierce 
fight  with  two  English  ships,  one  be- 
ing of  sixty-four  guns.  The  conflict 
kept  up  until  midnight,  and  Barry 
was  compelled  to  set  fire  to  his  ship, 
himself  and  the  greater  part  of  his 
crew  escaping  to  an  island  of  the  Pcn- 
obscot.  It  was  a  brave  fight  against 
heavy  odds,  and  the  Marine  Commit- 
tee of  Congress  publicly  compliment- 
ed him  for  his  "great  gallantry." 

We  next  see  him  directed  by  Con- 
gress to  take  command  of  an  expedi- 
tion against  East  Florida,  where  dis- 
affection had  been  spreading.  But 
the  sailing  of  Sir  Henry  Clinton's  fleet 
southward  from  New  York,  with 
reinforcements,  caused  a  change  in 
the  plans,  and  the  proposed  expedi- 
tion was  abandoned.  For  the  greater 
part  of  the  year  1779,  he  commanded 
the  letter  of  marque  brig,  the  "Dela- 
ware," capturing  a  man-of-war  and 
several  merchantmen.  The  treaty  of 
alliance  with  France  in  February. 
1778,  gave  its  name  to  Barry's  next 
command,  the  "Alliance,"  which  was 
the  largest  and  best  of  the  vessels  of 
the  Continental  navy.  We  are  tempt- 
ed to  smile  just  a  little  at  this  eulogy 
of  her  by  Philip  Freneau,  the  poet  of 
the  Revolution: 

"See  how  she  mounts  the  foaming  wave. 
Where  other  ships  would  find  a  grave; 
Majestic,  awful  and  serene. 
She  walks  the  ocean  like  its  queen." 


nf  %  Ammratt  Naug  —  Slnlpt  Sarnj 


Barry's  command  of  the  "Alli- 
ance" continued  until  the  close  of  the 
war,  and  he  was  devotedly  attached  to 
her.  She  enjoyed  the  unusual  dis- 
tinction of  being  the  only  frigate  to 
escape  capture  or  destruction,  was  in 
many  important  engagements,  always 
coming  off  victorious,  and  was  the 
fastest  sailer  in  the  navy.  She  bore 
across  the  seas  Colonel  John  Laurens 
when  he  went  to  France  for  funds  to 
move  the  French  army  from  Rhode 
Island  to  Yorktown.  On  this  voyage 
Barry  gave  our  British  cousins  a  les- 
son in  international  law,  when,  in  the 
capture  of  a  privateer  of  the  enemy, 
he  at  once  released  a  Venetian  ship 
taken  by  the  privateer.  He  held  the 
capture  to  be  contrary  to  the  law  of 
nations,  which  respects  the  property 
of  neutrals.  For  this  he  was  thanked 
by  a  resolution  of  Congress.  Frank- 
lin wrote  of  it  in  a  letter  from  Paris 
on  November  5th,  1781,  to  the  Presi- 
dent of  Congress:  "The  Ambassador 
of  Venice  told  me  that  he  was  charged 
by  the  Senate  to  express  to  me  their 
grateful  sense  of  the  friendly  behav- 
ior of  Captain  Barry,  commander  of 
the  'Alliance,'  in  rescuing  one  of  the 
ships  of  their  state  from  an  English 
privateer  and  setting  her  at  liberty." 

The  next  brilliant  performance  of 
our  hero  was  the  capture,  in  April, 
1781,  of  two  English  brigs,  the 
"Mars"  and  "Minerva,"  after  subdu- 
ing a  mutiny  on  his  vessel  that  seri- 
ously impaired  his  fighting  force.  A 
month  later  he  fought  and  captured 
the  armed  ship,  the  "Atalanta,"  and 
the  brig  "Trepassy,"  in  a  memorable 
engagement.  Barry  was  wounded  in 
the  shoulder  by  a  grape-shot,  and 
from  loss  of  blood  was  compelled  to 
go  below.  The  colors  of  the  "Alli- 
ance" had  been  shot  away,  the  rig- 
ging was  badly  cut  and  the  ship  was 
greatly  damaged.  The  first  officer, 
feeling  that  all  was  lost,  went  to 
Barry  to  ask  leave  to  surrender. 
Barry's  answer  was  a  defiant  "No" 
and  an  order  to  be  brought  on  deck, 
where  he  soon  had  the  happy  satis- 
faction of  seeing  the  enemy  lower 


their  colors.  Frost's  "Naval  Biogra- 
phy" says  of  this  engagement:  "It 
was  considered  a  most  brilliant  ex- 
ploit and  an  unequivocal  evidence  of 
the  unconquerable  firmness  and  in- 
trepidity of  the  victor."  It  induced 
William  Collins  to  ride  his  Pegasus  in 
this  martial  fashion: 

"In  the  brave  old  ship  'Alliance,' 
We  sailed  from  sea  to  sea; 

Our  proud  flag  in  defiance 
Still  floating  fair  and  free; 

We  met  the  foe  and  beat  him, 
As  we  often  did  before; 

And  ne'er  afraid  to  meet  him 

Was  our  brave  old  Commodore." 
In  1781  the  entire  navy  of  the 
United  States  consisted  of  the  "Alli- 
ance" and  the  "Deane,"  and  Barry 
was  placed  in  command  of  this  squad- 
ron of  two  by  Robert  Morris,  Super- 
visor of  Finances,  the  Admiralty  and 
Naval  Boards  having  been  abolished. 
It  will  be  thus  seen  that  from  seventh 
in  rank  he  had  arrived  at  the  top  of 
the  list.  He  was  chosen  for  the  im- 
portant work  of  transporting  Lafay- 
ette to  France  after  the  battle  of 
Yorktown,  a  mission  to  which  Wash- 
ington attached  the  highest  impor- 
tance, and  out  of  which  came  influ- 
ences that  hastened  the  ending  of  the 
war.  A  warm  friendship  was  estab- 
lished between  Barry  and  Lafayette, 
as  may  be  seen  by  Barry's  letter  to  the 
great  Frenchman  on  November  17, 
1782,  wherein  he  writes:  "You  say 
you  are  going  to  America.  I  envy 
the  captain  who  is  to  take  you.  I 
wish  I  was  in  his  place,  but,  although 
I  am  deprived  of  that  happiness  at 
present,  I  hope  to  have  the  pleasure 
to  command  the  ship  that  conveys  you 
to  your  native  country." 

Peace  between  the  United  States 
and  England  was  agreed  upon  on 
February  3,  1783,  while  Barry  was  at 
sea  on  the  "Alliance."  He  had  sailed 
from  Havana  on  March  7,  accompa- 
nied by  the  Continental  ship  "Lu- 
zerne,"  the  two  vessels  having  on 
board  about  $200,000  of  specie  for 
Congress.  Three  days  later  they  fell 
in  with  three  British  frigates,  two  of 
which  Barry  engaged  and  beat  off. 


3i  tr0t  (Enmmanter  af  First 


in  Jffirat  3f  igljt 


One  of  these  was  the  "Sybille,"  which 
was  silenced  after  the  "Alliance"  lost 
eleven  men.  This  was  the  last  naval 
battle  of  the  war,  and  it  was  fitting 
that  it  should  be  fought  by  the  na- 
tion's greatest  sea  warrior.  Of  this 
battle,  a  good  story  is  extant,  which, 
however,  has  no  authority  to  support 
it.  It  was  said  that  Barry,  when 
hailed  on  this  occasion  by  the  enemy, 
answered:  "The  United  States  ship 
'Alliance,'  saucy  Jack  Barry — half 
Irishman,  half  Yankee — who  are 
you?"  From  what  we  know  of 
Barry's  modesty,  the  note  of  bombast 
in  this  greeting  is  somewhat  jarring. 
But  perhaps  it  is  not  well  to  examine 
historical  yarns  of  this  type  closely. 

When  the  war  was  ended,  Barry 
joined  the  merchant  service,  and  he 
does  not  again  become  a  national  fig- 
ure until  on  March  19,  1794,  we  find 
him  offering  his  services  to  President 
Washington  to  command  the  squad- 
ron against  the  Algerines,  those  Cor- 
sairs of  the  African  coast  having 
caused  much  havoc  to  the  commerce 
of  the  United  States.  From  this 
grew  the  present  American  Navy. 
The  records  of  the  War  Department 
of  June  5,  1794,  show  that  Washing- 
ton appointed  Barry  as  the  ranking 
commander  of  the  new  naval  arma- 
ment ordered  to  be  built  by  Congress. 
The  commission  was  signed  by  Wash- 
ington on  his  birthday,  on  February 
22,  1797,  and  is  marked  "No.  One." 
The  appointment  was  well  received 
in  the  country.  Cooper's  "History  of 
the  Navy"  says:  "Captain  Barry  was 
the  only  one  of  the  six  surviving  Cap- 
tains of  the  Revolutionary  War  who 
was  not  born  in  America,  but  he  had 
passed  nearly  all  his  life  in  it,  and  was 
thoroughly  identified  with  his  adopted 
countrymen  in  interest  and  feeling. 
He  had  often  distinguished  himself 
during  the  Revolution,  and,  perhaps, 
of  all  the  naval  captains  that  re- 
mained, he  was  the  one  who  pos- 
sessed a  greater  reputation  for  expe- 
rience, conduct  and  skill.  His  ap- 
pointment met  with  general  approba- 
tion, nor  did  anything  ever  occur  to 

673 


give  the  government  reason  to  regret 
its  selection." 

Barry's  first  task  at  the  head  of  the 
young  navy  was  the  superintending 
of  the  building  of  the  frigate,  the 
"United  States,"  the  first  vessel  of  the 
present  navy,  which  was  launched  in 
Philadelphia  on  May  10,  1797,  amid 
great  popular  rejoicing.  Miss  Eleanor 
Donnelly's  spirited  poem,  commemo- 
rative of  the  occasion,  thus  begins: 

"A  May-day  sun — a  noon-day  tide — 

And   a  warm  west  wind   for  the  ladies 

fair! 
A  hundred  craft  at  anchor  ride, 

Their   bright    flags    gemming   the    Dela- 
ware. 
"Ten  thousand  freemen  crowd  the  quay, 

The  housetops  other  thousands  hold; 
All  Philadelphia  throngs  to  see 

The  launch  of  Barry  s  frigate  bold. 
"The  gallant  ship,  'United  States.' 

First  of  our  navy's  valiant  fleet — 
A  nation's  fame  on  her  future  waits, 

A  nation's  hopes  in  her  present  meet" 

Two  noted  American  seamen  began 
their  careers  with  Barry  on  the 
"United  States:"  Stephen  Decatur, 
who  was  to  become  famous  in  the  War 
with  Tripoli  and  with  Great  Britain, 
and  Charles  Stewart,  the  grandfather 
of  Charles  Stewart  Parnell.  Service 
under  Barry  was  eagerly  sought,  as, 
while  a  strict  disciplinarian,  he  was 
eminently  just  and  considerate.  It 
was  Barry  who,  in  a  letter  of  January 
8,  1798,  suggested  the  creation  of  a 
navy  department,  and  also  that  navy 
yards  should  be  located  for  ships  and 
supplies.  The  organization  of  the 
navy  into  a  separate  department  fol- 
lowed three  months  later.  In  the  dif- 
ficulties that  arose  with  France,  and 
in  command  of  the  American  fleet  in 
the  West  Indies,  he  served  with  dis- 
tinction. When  peace  came  in  1801, 
Barry  was  retained  in  the  service. 
The  remainder  of  his  life-story  may 
be  briefly  summed  up.  His  health, 
broken  by  his  many  arduous  cam- 
paigns, began  to  fail,  and  at  his  coun- 
try seat,  at  Strawberry  Hill,  near 
Philadelphia,  he  gently  drifted  into 
the  Valley  of  the  Shadow.  He  died 
on  September  13,  1803.  In  its  notice 
of  his  death,  the  Pennsylvania  Ga- 


nf  ftj?  Ammran  Naug  — ilnltu  Sarrg 


zettc  thus  feelingly  refers  to  his  life 
and  services:  "His  naval  achieve- 
ments would  of  themselves  have  re- 
flected much  honor  on  his  memory, 
but  those  could  not  have  endeared  it 
to  his  fellow-citizens  had  he  wanted 
those  gentle  and  amiable  virtues 
which  embellish  the  gentlemen  and 
ennoble  the  soldier."  He  had  been 
twice  married,  but,  like  Washington, 
was  childless.  It  has  been  beautifully 
said  of  Washington  that  under  the 
Divine  plan  he  was  to  be  childless 
that  a  nation  might  call  him  Father. 
May  not  in  a  lesser  degree  the  same 
sentiment  hold  good  for  the  Father 
of  the  American  Navy? 

The  record  of  this  remarkable  man 
will  not  be  found  in  the  recognized 
histories  of  the  Revolutionary  period. 
The  friend  of  Washington  and  Lafay- 
ette, who  was  twice  thanked  by  Con- 
gress, who  was  in  command  of  the 
Continental  sea  forces  when  Corn- 
wallis  surrendered,  who  suggested 
the  creation  of  the  Navy  Department 
and  held  its  first  commission,  seems  to 
have  been  strangely  ignored.  Vainly 
is  Bancroft  and  McMaster  searched 
for  some  light  on  his  career.  The 
newer  histories  of  Higginson,  Wilson 
and  Garner  and  Lodge  make  no  allu- 
sion to  him.  Larned's  "History  for 
Ready  Reference"  omits  him.  Win- 
sor's  "Narrative  and  Critical  History 
of  America"  simply  alludes  to  Barry's 
loss  of  the  "Raleigh"  without  com- 
ment. It  remained  for  Martin  I.  J. 
Griffin,  of  Philadelphia,  a  painstaking 
and  faithful  historian,  to  dig  into  the 
records  of  a  century  or  more  ago  and 
bring  to  light  the  salient  facts  in  the 
life  of  this  great  sea  captain.  From 
his  book,  "Commodore  John  Barry," 
printed  by  subscription  a  few  years 
ago,  were  obtained  the  data  for  this 
paper.  The  book  is  a  valuable  con- 
tribution to  the  history  of  the  coun- 
try, which  has  so  long  permitted  one 
of  its  truest  heroes  to  remain  in  com- 
parative obscurity.  An  instalment  of 
justice  was  obtained  four  years  ago, 
when  the  torpedo  boat  destroyer 
"Barry"  was  launched,  and  the  wrong 


of  a  century  will  be  partially  righted 
if  Congress  passes  the  bill  now  pend- 
ing in  the  House  appropriating 
$25,000  to  erect  in  Washington  a 
monument  inscribed:  "John  Barry, 
the  Father  of  the  American  Navy." 

He  sleeps  the  dreamless  sleep  of  the 
dead  in  old  St.  Mary's  Cemetery,  on 
Fourth  street,  above  Spruce  street, 
Philadelphia,  near  to  the  lordly  waters 
of  the  Delaware  that  had  borne  him 
so  often  to  and  from  the  sea.  Until 
1876  no  marble  shaft  reared  its  height 
to  heaven  to  recall  his  life  and  ser- 
vices, but  in  that  Centennial  year  the 
Catholic  Total  Abstinence  Union  of 
America  placed  his  statue  on  their 
fountain  in  Fairmount  Park,  at  the 
foot  of  George's  Hill.  That  same 
year  his  grave  in  St.  Mary's  Cemetery 
was  marked  by  his  friends  and  fellow 
churchmen  with  a  tomb,  the  inscrip- 
tion on  which  was  composed  in  part 
by  his  friend,  Dr.  Benjamin  Rush,  one 
of  the  signers  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence.  This  brief  sketch  of 
the  life  of  a  great  and  good  man  may 
fitly  end  with  an  extract  from  the  mes- 
sage on  the  sculptured  marble: 

"Sacred  to  the  memory  of 
COMMODORE  JOHN  BARRY, 

Father  of  the  American  Navy. 

Let    the    Christian,    Patriot    and    Soldier 

who    visits    these    mansions     of    the 

dead    view    this    monument    with 

respect  and  veneration. 
Beneath    it    rest    the    remains    of    JOHN 
BARRY,    who    was    born    in    County 
Wexford,    Ireland,    in   the   year    1745. 
America    was    the    object   of    his    patriot- 
ism and  the  aim  of  his  useful- 
ness  and   ambition. 

At    the    beginning    of    the    Revolutionary 

War  he  held  the  commission  of 

Captain  in  the  then  limited 

Navy  of  the  Colonies. 
His  achievements  in  battle  and  his  re- 
nowned naval  tactics  merited  for  him 
the  position  of  Commodore,  and  to  be 
justly  regarded  as  the  father  of  the 
American  navy. 

He    fought   often   and   bled    in   the   cause 
of    freedom,    but   his    deeds    of   valor 
did  not  diminish   in   him   the  vir- 
tues which  adorn  his  private  life. 
He     was     eminently     gentle,     kind,     just 
and    charitable,    and    no    less    beloved 
by    his    family    and    friends    than 
by   his    grateful    country." 

674 


0f 


EtmlutUw  of  a 

JJrrsmmil  AiUirmnrnt  into 

tlyr  &rlf-prntf  rtUm  of  thr  pitman  Ktut  > 

Uplift  of  a  fHrutal  fcraftr  to  a  (£rr at  Amrrlran 

mljirb   noro  bears   tb.r   "Sail  &ark"  of  (Titlturr   ana   has   brromr  a 

part   of  thr  Amrnran  tonrattonal   &UBtrin   J*   £br  Sirth  of  Srutal 


BT 


DR.  JAMES  MCMANUS 

AUTHOB  or  A  TREATISE  OH  "HI8TOKT  OF  AxKSTHKHlV   AM)  A 

DKAM  or  AMERICAN  DENTISTRY 


sidered 
ated    by 


evolution  of  a  new  sur- 
gical  science  that  has  be- 
come  an  important  ele- 
ment  in  the  uplift  of  the 
human  race  is  here  told. 
Not  many  years  ago 
this  science  was  con- 
foppery and  was  repudi- 
American educators.  To- 
day it  stands  as  one  of  the  great 
American  professions  and  is  accepted 
as  a  "hall  mark"  of  culture.  It  is  one 
of  those  interesting  instances  where 
personal  adornment  has  led  to  self- 
protection  and  even  longevity. 

Not  until  the  present  generation 
has  medical  science  and  education 
acknowledged  dentistry.  The  Mary- 
land University,  in  1839,  refused  to 
add  a  dental  department  to  its  medical 
school  on  the  ground  that  "dentistry 
is  of  no  consequence."  Twenty- 
seven  years  later,  in  1866,  Yale  Col- 
lege considered  the  project  unfavora- 
ble, and  a  year  later  Harvard  gave  it 
position.  That  was  forty  years  ago. 
Now,  in  1907,  there  are  twenty-one 
independent  dental  colleges;  ten  den- 
tal departments  connected  with  medi- 
cal colleges  and  twenty  dental  de- 
partments connected  with  universities 
throughout  the  United  States.  From 
these  fifty-one  institutions  in  the  past 
sixty-seven  years  there  has  been  grad- 
uated probably  over  twenty-five  thou- 
sand doctors  of  dental  surgery.  The 
record  tells  of  how  "much  conse- 
quence" civilized  people  consider 
dentistry  to-day. 

675 


America  has  led  the  world  in  surgi- 
cal surprises  and  the  marvelous  ope- 
rations by  surgeons  all  over  the 
world  have  been  made  possible  only 
by  the  discovery  and  demonstration 
of  the  "Mastery  of  Pain"  by  Horace 
Wells,  whose  "anaesthesia"  has  been 
possibly  the  most  practical  blessing 
bestowed  on  mankind. 

The  American  people  cannot  forget 
to  pay  honor  to  the  memory  of  their 
benefactors  and  those  who  have  given 
valuable  service  to  the  country  or  to 
the  cause  of  science. 

Dr.  McManus  here  contributes  to 
American  historical  records  his  re- 
searches into  the  development  of  this 
surgical  science  of  dentistry.  There 
is  no  authority  in  America  more  capa- 
ble of  presenting  the  subject.  He  is 
not  only  a  thorough  scholar,  but  his 
services  to  the  profession  and  its  ele- 
vation as  a  science  have  been  recog- 
nized throughout  the  United  States 
and  Europe.  His  lectures  in  this 
country  and  abroad  have  been  impor- 
tant factors  in  the  development  of 
dental  surgery. 

This  article  is  of  especial  interest 
in  connection  with  the  story  of  "The 
First  Physicians  in  America"  by  Dr. 
Steiner  in  the  second  number  of  this 
first  volume  of  THE  JOURNAL  OF 
AMERICAN  HISTORY.  It  is  the  intent 
of  these  pages  to  record  from  time  to 
time  just  such  articles  of  practical 
value  to  the  public-at-large,  told  en- 
tertainingly, and  showing  the  begin- 
nings of  the  works  of  mankind. 


a 


A  NT  years  ago,  when 
I  was  young  and 
credulous,  I  listened 
with  great  interest 
and  pleasure  to  Wen- 
dell Phillips  deliver 
his  celebrated  lecture 
on  the  "Lost  Arts."  He  told  of  many 
things  as  facts  that  I  could  readily 
believe,  but  when  he  stated  that  gold 
fillings  had  been  found  in  the  teeth 
of  mummies  over  three  thousand 
years  old,  the  germ  of  doubt  found 
lodgment  and  my  faith  and  belief  in 
the  eloquent  orator  weakened. 

In  a  paper  before  the  American 
Dental  Society  of  Europe  at  Geneva, 
Switzerland,  in  1905,  by  Dr.  W.  J. 
Younger,  formerly  of  California,  now 
of  Paris,  France,  he  told  of  his  mak- 
ing a  study  of  mummies  in  the  mu- 
seum of  Cairo,  Egypt,  under  the  su- 
pervision and  intelligent  assistance  of 
the  doctor  in  charge,  G.  Elliott  Smith, 
and  after  critical  examination  of 
many  subjects,  some  dating  seven 
thousand  years  B.C.,  in  none  did  they 
find  any  trace  of  dental  art.  We 
have,  however,  evidence  that  gold  leaf 
was  used  by  Italian  dentists  previous 
to  1450,  as  stated  by  Giovani  de  Arcoli 
in  a  work  on  medicine  that  he  pub- 
lished in  1450  in  which  were  several 
chapters  on  dental  medicine. 

Ancient  Origin  of  Surgical 
Science  of  Dentistry  in   1850 

While  it  is  believed  that  dentistry 
had  its  origin  in  ancient  Egypt, 
coming  down  through  Greece,  Italy, 
Germany,  France  and  England,  and, 
while  some  of  the  medical  writers 
of  those  countries  as  early  as  the 
thirteenth  century  gave  some  atten- 
tion to  the  teeth,  it  was  not  until 
1700  in  France  that  one  desiring 
to  pass  examination  before  an  ex- 
amining board,  and  in  1728  Pierre 
Fauchard,  a  dentist  in  Paris,  after 
many  years'  practice,  published  a 
work  on  dentistry  which  to-day  is 
held  in  high  estimation  for  its  ad- 
vanced and  valuable  teachings. 

The   student  of  early  history  can 


find  little  information  in  the  records 
as  to  the  methods  of  treating  the 
mouth.  Substitutes  for  lost  teeth 
were  worn  by  the  wealthy.  The 
pieces  of  fine  gold  metal  work 
to  hold  such  in  place  in  the  mouth 
that  may  be  seen  in  several  of 
the  museums  of  Europe  prove  conclu- 
sively that  there  were  artisans  in  the 
dental  prosthetic  line  several  hundred 
years  before  the  Christian  era. 

To-day  the  science  is  known  as  the 
"American  profession."  It  is  dis- 
tinctively a  development  of  American 
culture,  and  yet  it  was  but  a  few  years 
ago  that  educational  institutions  in 
America  refused  to  acknowledge  it  as 
a  science.  In  1866,  when  Dr.  Asa 
Hill  of  Norwalk  petitioned  the  medi- 
cal faculty  and  corporation  of  Yale 
for  the  addition  of  a  dental  depart- 
ment there  was  opposition  among  the 
scholars.  The  Maryland  University 
in  1839  refused  to  add  to  its  medical 
school  a  dental  department  on  the 
ground  that  "dentistry  was  of  no  con- 
sequence," and  the  faculty  and  corpo- 
ration of  Yale  College  when  asked  to 
add  a  dental  department,  twenty- 
seven  years  later,  refused. 

First  Medical  School  in  America  to 
Recognize  Dentistry  \\as  Harvard 

Harvard  University  was  asked  later 
that  year,  and  a  quick  response  was 
given  and  a  dental  school  was  estab- 
ished  there  in  1867.  In  1907,  there 
are  twenty-one  independent  dental 
colleges;  ten  dental  departments  con- 
nected with  medical  colleges  and 
twenty  dental  departments  connected 
with  universities  throughout  the 
United  States.  From  these  fifty-one 
institutions  in  the  past  sixty-seven 
years  there  has  been  graduated  prob- 
ably over  twenty-five  thousand  doc- 
tcrs  of  dental  surgery.  The  record 
tells  of  how  "much  consequence"  civ- 
ilized people  consider  dentistry,  and 
how  much  they  value  and  appreciate 
the  services  of  educated  and  skilful 
surgeons. 

It  is  within  the  past  one  hundred 
years  that  surgery  and  surgeons  have 

66 


An  £i*m*nt  in  Uplift  nf  iff*  ijnman 


commanded  respect  and  professional 
rank,  as  the  early  records  tell  that 
surgeons  were  generally  held  in  con- 
tempt and  operations  given  over  to 
barbers  or  "Menial  Servants"  of  phy- 
sicians to  be  performed  under  their 
direction.  The  surgeons  were  just 
tolerated  at  the  time  when  their  ser- 
vices were  in  demand,  but  of  little  im- 
portance after  the  operations  were 
performed.  As  many  of  the  minor 
operations,  such  as  bleeding,  cup- 
ping, dressing  wounds  and  extract- 
ing teeth  fell  to  the  care  of  the 
barbers,  they  were  incorporated  into 
a  common  company  with  the  surgeons 
in  London  in  1308,  but  the  name  or 
title  Surgeon  Dentist  was  not  known 
until  1622. 

First  Dentists  in  America  were 
at  New  York  and  Boston  in  1766-68 

The  first  qualified  dentist  on  record 
in  the  United  States  was  an  English- 
man named  Robert  Woffendale,  who 
practiced  in  New  York  in  1766. 
There  was  a  Mr.  John  Baker  in  Bos- 
ton in  1768,  who  had  as  a  pupil  that 
Boston  celebrity  and  patriot  of  revo- 
lutionary fame,  Paul  Revere,  who, 
it  would  seem,  was  "Jack-at-all- 
Trades."  During  the  War  of  the 
Revolution  there  came,  with  the 
French  soldiers  under  the  Count  de 
Rochambeau,  a  young  officer  named 
Joseph  Lemaire,  who,  previous  to  his 
joining  the  Army,  had  been  a  practic- 
ing dentist  in  Paris.  While  the 
French  and  American  soldiers  were  in 
winter  quarters  near  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  in  1781-84,  Lemaire 
gave  his  services  to  the  officers  and 
others  who  were  in  need  of  dental 
operations  and  also  gave  instructions 
in  dentistry  to  Josiah  Flagg,  the  first 
native  American  to  take  up  dentistry 
exclusively  for  a  business.  There 
was  also  with  the  French  fleet,  a  sur- 
geon by  the  name  of  James  Gardette, 
who  had,  as  required  by  the  French 
service,  received  instruction  in  dentis- 
try. He  later  resigned  from  the  ser- 
vice and  located  in  Philadelphia  where 

67? 


he  practiced   dentistry   for   forty-five 
years. 

From  1 790,  and  for  years  following, 
many  men  handy  with  tools  and  suffi- 
cient assurance  to  offer  their  services 
were  classed  as  dentists.  The  "Hall 
Mark"  of  ability  and  respectability 
was  conferred  on  John  Greenwood  of 
New  York  city  by  President  Wash- 
ington, who  wrote  to  him  from  Mount 
Vernon,  New  York,  in  1795,  saying: 
"I  shall  always  prefer  your  services 
to  those  of  any  other  in  the  line  of 
your  present  profession." 

First  Skilled  Foreign 

Dentists  in  Philadelphia  in  1803 

The  dentist  whom  tradition  holds 
in  highest  esteem  as  an  educated,  cul- 
tivated, skilful  dental  practitioner  is 
the  Irishman,  Edward  Hudson,  who 
practiced  in  Philadelphia  from  1803 
for  many  years.  The  Army  and 
Navy  standing  of  the  Frenchmen, 
Lemaire  and  Gardette,  and  the  experi- 
ence of  the  Irishman,  Hudson,  in  the 
office  of  his  uncle,  a  dentist  of  reputa- 
tion in  Dublin,  Ireland,  with  the  so- 
cial and  educational  advantages  they 
possessed,  enabled  these  foreigners  to 
offer  assurances  to  the  public  that 
they  would  give  intelligent  and  com- 
petent service.  Their  success  was  an 
object-lesson  and  they  opened  up  a 
new  and  attractive  field  for  Americans 
to  enter.  Previous  to  1840,  there 
were  a  few  graduates  in  medicine 
who  turned  their  attention  success- 
fully to  dental  work,  but  for  twenty 
years  later  to  1860  the  large  majority 
were  men  who  had  been  employed  in 
some  kind  of  mechanical  work,  such 
as  wood  and  ivory  workers,  tool-mak- 
ers, engravers  and  jewelers;  and  the 
transition  from  bench-work  to  office 
workers  was  often  quickly  effected  by 
giving  a  few  weeks'  time  in  looking 
on,  and  practicing  in  the  office  of  a 
dentist  who  had  attained  reputation 
and  success  on  as  little  previous  prep- 
aration. There  were  few  text-books; 
the  French  and  German  works  were 
not  then  translated  and  the  few  Eng- 
lish books  were  expensive  and  not  in 


a 


the  American  market.  Dentistry  then 
was  in  this  country  a  possible  artistic 
trade,  and  those  following  it  could 
expect  no  more  cordial  recognition 
from  the  medical  men  than  the  sur- 
geons received  fifty  years  earlier. 

Among  the  few,  early  in  1800,  who 
chose  dentistry  as  their  calling  after 
spending  years  in  other  and  varied 
avocations,  was  a  man  named  Horace 
H.  Hayden,  who  was  born  in  Wind- 
sor, Connecticut,  October  13,  1769. 
His  name  and  fame  as  the  Father  of 
American  Professional  Dentistry  is 
known  not  only  in  the  United  States 
but  is  universally  acknowledged  in  all 
civilized  countries. 

William  Hayden  is  mentioned  in 
colonial  history  as  early  as  1630,  and 
in  1637,  his  name  as  a  soldier  is  spe- 
cially mentioned  for  bravery  in  the 
report  of  Captain  John  Mason,  whose 
life  he  saved  in  the  Pequot  War. 
William  Hayden  bought  and  secured 
land  from  the  Colony  of  Connecticut 
for  military  services  in  the  Pequot 
War  and  settled  in  the  valley  of 
Windsor  in  1642.  His  eldest  son, 
Daniel,  was  a  lieutenant  in  the  Colo- 
nial Service  and  an  influential  member 
of  the  General  Court,  and  his  eld- 
est son  was  also  a  member  of  the  Gen- 
eral Court.  The  third  Daniel  was  a 
lieutenant  in  the  French  and  Indian 
War,  and  was  considered  a  rich  man. 
The  third  lieutenant,  Daniel  Hayden's 
eldest  son,  Thomas  Hayden,  was  the 
father  of  Dr.  Horace  H.  Hayden. 
The  Revolutionary  War  Record  of 
Thomas  Hayden  reads  as  Sergeant  in 
the  Army  at  the  alarm  at  Lexington 
in  1775  and  later  as  Sergeant  Major, 
Second  Lieutenant  and  Adjutant  in 
the  Revolutionary  War  until  1783. 
Previous  to  his  military  service  his 
business  was  an  architect  and  builder, 
which  he  resumed  after  the  close  of 
the  war.  The  wife  of  Thomas  Hay- 
den, Abigail  Parsons,  had  an  ances- 
tral record,  equally  honorable  as  a 
descendant  from  families  noted  for 
their  intellectual  and  scholarly  at- 
tainments. 


Father  of  Professional 
Dentistry  in  America 

Horace  H.  Hayden  was  born 
in  ancient  Windsor,  October  13, 
1769,  with  the  Hayden  inheritance, 
and  a  mother's  record,  as  de- 
scendant of  one  of  the  brainiest  fami- 
lies in  New  England;  the  legend  may 
well  be  accepted  that  the  boy  learned 
to  read  as  soon  as  he  could  talk ;  that 
he  early  loved  to  tramp  in  the  woods ; 
his  later  botanical  and  geological 
writings  and  the  first  book  published 
on  geology  in  the  country,  written  by 
him,  and  his  discovery  of  a  mineral 
which  was  named  "Haydenite"  after 
him,  proved  that  his  love  of  nature 
studies  was  an  early  development. 

At  fourteen  years  of  age  he  made 
two  trips  on  a  brig,  working  his  pas- 
sage to  the  West  Indies.  On  his  re- 
turn, he  went  to  school  until  he  was 
sixteen,  when  he  learned  the  trade  of 
a  carpenter  of  his  father  and  later 
studied  architecture.  At  twenty-one 
he  sailed  again  to  the  West  Indies,  but 
his  stay  was  short  on  account  of  an 
attack  of  fever,  returning  the  next 
year  and  again  forced  home  on 
account  of  the  unhealthy  condition  of 
the  island.  For  several  years  he  con- 
tinued his  studies  in  architecture  and 
at  twenty-four  years  of  age  he  went 
to  New  York,  remaining  a  few 
months,  but  not  meeting  with  suc- 
cess he  returned  to  his  home  and 
taught  school  one  winter  near  Hart- 
ford. His  ability  as  a  teacher  was 
recognized  and  he  was  advised  to  fol- 
low that  calling,  but  while  on  a  visit 
to  New  York  he  called  for  dental 
work  on  a  Mr.  John  Greenwood,  Pres- 
ident Washington's  favorite  dentist, 
and,  while  under  his  care,  he  became 
so  much  interested  in  the  man,  his 
methods  and  his  skill,  that  he  decided 
that  he  would  like  to  be  a  dentist. 

The  manual  ability  acquired,  as  a 
boy  and  man,  in  the  different  lines  of 
work  he  had  followed,  his  studies, 
travels,  and  the  few  months'  experi- 
ence as  a  school  teacher,  well  fitted  him 
to  take  up  the  study  and  practice  of 


An  Hilmtnt  in  Uplift  of  tlf?  ^mnan 


dentistry,  with,  it  is  told,  only  one  or 
two  books  and  pamphlets  on  dentistry, 
a  few  instruments,  such  as  he  could 
procure,  depending  on  the  instruction 
that  Greenwood  was  able  to  give  him, 
in  the  short  time  he  was  with  him,  with 
little  money  and  no  friends,  he  opened 
an  office  in  Baltimore,  Maryland,  in 
1800.  While  he  was  fairly  success- 
ful from  the  start,  he  wasted  no  time 
but  took  up  the  study  of  medicine  and 
surgery,  and  by  his  zeal  in  his  studies 
and  close  attention  to  his  business,  he 
soon  gained  the  confidence  of  the  pub- 
lic and  the  esteem  of  many  of  the 
medical  profession.  When  the  British 
attacked  Baltimore  in  1814,  Hayden's 
military  inheritance  broke  out,  and  he 
enisted  as  a  sergeant;  but,  as  medical 
men  and  surgeons  were  in  demand, 
General  Smith,  who  knew  his  skill, 
assigned  him  to  an  hospital,  as  an 
assistant  surgeon,  where  he  remained 
as  long  as  the  sick  and  wounded  need- 
ed his  care.  To  his  dental  and  medi- 
cal studies  he  added  the  studies  of 
botany  and  geology  and,  in  1810,  pub- 
lished a  geological  sketch  of  Balti- 
more. It  was  near  that  city  that  he 
discovered  a  form  of  "Chabazite"  to 
which  Professor  Silliman  gave  the 
name  "Haydenite."  Dr.  Hayden, 
early  in  his  practice,  felt  the  need  of, 
and  realized  in  part  what  might  be 
gained,  if  dentists  were  to  meet  fre- 
quently in  convention.  After  years  of 
thought  he  started  a  movement  in 
1817  to  call  in  convention  the  leading 
dentists  of  the  country.  The  effort 
was  unsuccessful. 

First  Book  on  Geology  in  America 
Written  by  Dentist  in  1812 

The  great  interest  taken  to-day,  by 
professional  men,  in  post  graduate 
schools,  and  the  great  benefit  they,  as 
well  as  the  country,  gained  by  these 
meetings,  tell  how  far-seeing  and  edu- 
cational were  the  aims  and  ideas  of 
Dr.  Hayden  as  early  as  1817.  His 
love  for  the  study  of  geology  and  the 
difficulty  of  finding  works  on  the  sub- 
ject in  Engish  forced  him  to  learn  to 
read  and  translate  French,  as  the  best 


works  on  the  subject  were  in  that  lan- 
guage, and  in  1812  he  published  a  vol- 
ume of  four  hundred  pages  entitled 
"Geological  Essays,"  the  first  work  on 
that  subject  published  in  the  United 
States.  He  had  for  the  time  a  valu- 
able collection  of  American  minerals, 
which  are  now  a  part  of  the  collection 
of  Roanoke  College,  Virginia.  His 
reputation  as  a  dentist  and  a  student, 
his  fame  as  a  professional  and  scien- 
tific writer  and  his  success  as  a  teacher 
gained  for  him  the  compliment,  the 
first  of  the  kind  ever  paid  to  a  den- 
tist, of  an  invitation  to  give  a  course 
of  lectures  on  dentistry  before  the 
Medical  Class  in  the  University  of 
Maryland  in  1825,  and  in  1837  the 
honorary  medical  degree  was  con- 
ferred on  him  by  both  the  University 
of  Maryland  and  the  Jefferson  Med- 
ical School  of  Philadelphia.  From 
1817,  when  the  effort  made  by  Dr. 
Hayden  to  organize  a  dental  society 
failed,  until  1840,  dental  progress 
was  of  the  individual  go-as-you-please 
order. 

First  Dental  Society  in  America 
Organized  in  New  York  in  1840 

Dr.  Hayden's  many  years  of  daily 
office  work,  and  his  habits  of  study 
had  convinced  him  that  dentistry 
meant  more  than  how  to  fill  teeth  and 
make  artificial  ones;  and,  that  one 
attempting  to  practice  dentistry  should 
have  a  knowledge  of  medicine.  With 
settled  belief  that  through  associated 
efforts  great  good  would  speedily  re- 
sult, he  again  invited  a  few  of  the 
leading  dentists  of  the  country  to 
meet  in  New  York  City,  August  18, 
1840,  when  the  American  Society  of 
Dental  Surgeons  was  organized.  Dr. 
Hayden  was  then  elected  president, 
continuing  in  that  office  four  years, 
until  his  death.  Many  scientific  men 
from  all  the  states  in  the  West  and 
South  soon  became  interested  in  the 
new  organization. 

The  first  serious  public  move- 
ment made  towards  elevating  the  call- 
ing of  dentistry,  quickly  led  to  the 
project  of  publishing  a  journal.  The 


Eooluitnn  of  a 


Dental,  Medical,  Scientific  and  other 
papers,  written  by  Drs.  Hayden,  Har- 
ris, Hudson  and  many  others  in  the 
country,   were   at  the   mercy  of  the 
medical  publishers,  and  at  the  second 
meeting  of  the  society,  it  was  decided 
to  institute  a  journal,  the  first  devoted 
to    dentistry    ever    published,    to    be 
known  as  the  American  Journal  of 
Dental  Science,  and  Dr.  Hayden  was 
a  frequent  contributor  to  this  journal. 
The  last,  and  without  doubt,  most 
important  step  was  the  establishing  of 
a  school  for  dental  instruction.    From 
the  early  years  of  his  practice,  Dr. 
Hayden  felt  the  need  of  a  properly 
equipped  dental  school,  and  with  his 
friends,  both  dental  and  medical,  it 
was  a  subject  frequently  talked  over, 
with  the  hope  of  inspiring  them  with 
the  high  professional  ideas  that  col- 
lege instruction  should   foster.     One 
of    Dr.    Hayden's    former    students 
named    Chapin   A.    Harris,   was   not 
only  an  enthusiastic  admirer  but  was 
in  full  sympathy  with  his  ideas.    As 
to  the  necessity  for  an  advanced  sys- 
tem of  dental  education,  as  also  an 
energetic,  practical,  intelligent  worker, 
they  both  had  presented  their  views 
and  hopes  to  men  connected  with  the 
Maryland  University,  and  urged  the 
advisability  of  their  adding  a  dental 
department   to    the    Medical    School. 
The  faculty,  like  others  of  later  years, 
were  blind  to  their  best  interests,  and 
gave  as  an  excuse  for  rejecting  the 
proposition  "that  dentistry  was  of  no 
consequence."     This    refusal    forced 
them  to  think  of  organizing  an  inde- 
pendent dental  school,  and,  acting  on 
the  advice  of  Dr.  Hayden,  the  work 
preparatory  to  applying  to  the  Legis- 
lature for  a  charter,  was  mainly  done 
by  Dr.  Harris.     He  was  successful  in 
getting  influential  citizens  to  favor  the 
movement,  and  February  I,  1840,  the 
Maryland  Legislature  granted  a  char- 
ter incorporating  the  Baltimore  Col- 
lege of  Dental  Surgery. 

First  Dental  College   in  the  World 
Instituted  at  Baltimore  in  1840 

In   the   Articles   of   Incorporation,     I 


section  two,  were  appointed  and  con- 
stituted as  professors  of  said  college 
Horace  H.  Hayden,  M.D.,  to  be  pro- 
fessor of  Dental  Pathology  and  Physi- 
ology;  Chapin  A.   Harris,   M.D.,   to 
be  professor  of  Practical  Dentistry; 
Thomas  E.  Bond,  junior,  M.D.,  to  be 
professor  of   Special  Dental   Pathol- 
ogy and  Therapeutics,  and  H.  Willis 
Baxter,    M.D.,    to    be    professor    of 
Special  Dental  Anatomy  and  Physi- 
ology.    A  meeting  of  the  faculty  was 
held  in  the  house  of  Dr.  H.  H.  Hay- 
den,  February  3,   1840,   and   H.   H. 
Hayden,  M.D.,  was  elected  president 
and    Chapin   A.    Harris,    M.D.,   was 
elected  dean.      The  long  wished  for 
dental    college    was    incorporated,    a 
faculty  appointed   and   ready  to   re- 
ceive students.     At  the  second  faculty 
meeting  arrangements  were  made  to 
advertise   in   several   of   the   leading 
newspapers  of  the  country  and  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Dental  Science 
and  the  Maryland  Medical  and  Surgi- 
cal  Journal.     The    first    annual    an- 
nouncement   stated    that    the    desire 
of  the  faculty  was  to  offer  to  stu- 
dents a  course  of  instruction  in  the- 
oretical  and  practical   dentistry,  and 
told    of   the    advantages    the    college 
already   possessed   in   the  cabinet  of 
anatomical    and    physiological    speci- 
mens of  Professor  Baxter  and  the  val- 
uable pathological  specimens  collected 
during  many  years  of  extensive  prac- 
tice by  Professor  Hayden.    The  college 
opened  its  first  course  in  the  winter  of 
1840  and  1841  with  five  students.     A 
small  room  in  a  good  locality  was  tem- 
porarily engaged  for  a  lecture  hall,  but 
for  the  teaching  of  anatomy  and  dis- 
section a  private  and  secluded  stable 
loft   was   deemed   the   most   prudent 
quarters  for  the  student  to  occupy. 

From  the  introductory  lecture  to 
the  students  and  friends,  delivered 
November  3, 1840, by  Professor  Chapin 
A.  Harris,  a  few  quotations  will  be  of 
interest:  "Accessible  as  has  been  the 
calling  of  the  dentist  to  all  that  were 
disposed  to  engage  in  it,  and  that,  too, 
without  regard  to  qualification,  it  has 
been  resorted  to  by  the  ignorant  and 

680 


An  m?m?nt  in  Uplift  of  tlf?  ijuman 


illiterate  and  I  am  sorry  to  say,  in  too 
many  instances,  by  unprincipled  indi- 
viduals until  it  now  numbers  in  the 
United  States  about  twelve  hundred, 
and  of  which  I  think  it  may  be  safely 
asserted  that  not  more  than  one-sixth 
possess  any  just  claims  to  a  correct 
or  thorough  knowledge  of  the  pursuit, 
— a  little  mechanical  tact  or  dexterity 
is  thought  by  some  to  be  all  that  is 
requisite  to  a  practitioner  of  dental 
surgery,  and  that  this  could  be  ob- 
tained in,  at  most,  a  few  weeks,— ele- 
vate the  standard  of  the  qualifications 
of  the  dental  surgeon  to  a  level  with 
those  of  a  medical  practitioner,  and 
the  results  of  his  practice  will  be 
always  beneficial,  which  at  present 
are  frequently  the  reverse.  Require 
of  the  practitioner  of  dental  surgery 
to  be  educated  in  the  collateral 
sciences  of  anatomical  and  physiologi- 
cal surgery,  pathology  and  therapeu- 
tics and  the  sphere  of  his  usefulness 
and  his  respectability  will  be  increased, 
— aware  of  the  responsibility  that  rests 
upon  them ;  the  faculty  will  spare  no 
efforts  to  make  it  creditable  to  the 
state  that  created  it  and -beneficial  to 
the  public, — in  short,  they  are  deter- 
mined that  no  reproach  shall  rest 
upon  them  for  fixing  a  standard  of 
qualification  that  shall  not  at  once  te 
respectable,  and  entitle  those  coming 
up  to  it  to  the  confidence  of  an  en- 
lightened community." 

Dr.  Harris,  in  his  introductory  lec- 
ture to  students,  tells  "that  in  1840, 
there  were  twelve  hundred  dentists  in 
this  country,and  not  over  two  hundred 
of  them  possessed  any  just  claim  to 
correct  or  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
calling  they  pursued."  The  aim  of  the 
professor  of  the  Baltimore  Dental 
College  was  to  teach  students  scienti- 
fic and  practical  dentistry.  At  the 
first  commencement  exercises  in  the 
Assembly  Hall,  Baltimore,  March  9, 
1841,  Professor  Bond  in  his  valedic- 
tory address  tells  the  friends  and  stu- 
dents gathered  there  what  has  been 
taught  to  them  during  the  course  of 
instruction,  and  what  they  ought,  or 
were  believed  to  know.  "You  have 

MI 


been  taught  that  dental  surgery  is  not 
a  mere  art,  separate  from,  and  inde- 
pendent of  general  medicine,  but  that 
it  is  an  important  branch  of  the 
science  of  cure.  Your  knowledge  has 
been  based  on  extensive  and  accurate 
anatomical  investigation.  You  have 
seen  and  traced  out  the  exquisitely 
beautiful  machinery,  by  which  the  or- 
ganism is  everywhere  knit  together. 
You  have  learned  the  secrets  of  ner- 
vous communication  and  studied  the 
simple,  yet  admirable,  arrangements  by 
which  nutrition  is  drawn  by  each  part 
from  the  common  receptacle  of 
strength.  You  have  also  carefully  ex- 
amined the  phenomena  of  health  and 
disease,  as  they  are  manifested  in  the 
dental  arch,  its  connections  and  rela- 
tions. Your  attention  has  been  partic- 
ularly directed  to  the  effect  of  irrita- 
tion on  the  general  health,  and  you 
have  seen  how  readily  organs  appar- 
ently unconnected  and  independent 
may  be  involved  in  mutual  disease. 
You  have  been  taught  to  regard  the 
human  body  as  a  complete  whole, 
united  in  all  its  parts  and  pervaded 
everywhere  by  strong  and  active  sym- 
pathies, and  your  principles  of  practice 
have  been  carefully  formed  on  a  sound 
knowledge  of  general  medicine." 

First  Degree  Granted  by 
the  Legislature  of  Maryland 

This  instruction  from  November 
3,  1840,  to  the  day  of  the  valedictory 
address  by  Professor  Bond  at  the 
commencement  exercises  and  the  con- 
ferring of  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Dental  Surgery  upon  two  students 
who  had  passed  a  satisfactory  exami- 
nation, Robert  Arthur  and  R.  Coving- 
ton  Mackall,  by  the  president  of  the 
college,  Horace  H.  Hayden,  M.D., 
incidentally  proclaimed  to  the  world 
that  the  trade  or  calling  of  dentistry 
had,  by  virtue  of  an  act  of  incorpo- 
ration granted  by  the  Legislature  of 
the  State  of  Maryland,  been  changed 
to  the  profession  of  dentistry  and  ad- 
mitted to  the  rank  with  the  learned 
professions.  One  of  the  provisions  of 
the  charter  allowed  the  conferring  of 


Uunluttatt  of  a 


the  honorary  degree  on  any  dentist 
who  had  distinguished  himself  in  his 
profession.  Any  reputable  dentist, 
who  had  not  obtained  an  honorary  de- 
gree, could  apply  for  an  examination 
and  if,  after  the  presentation  of  a 
thesis,  showing  specimens  of  me- 
chanical work  and  demonstrating  his 
ability  to  operate  skilfully  in  the 
mouth,  he  could  pass  a  satisfactory 
oral  examination  before  each  member 
of  the  faculty,  the  degree  of  Doctor 
of  Dental  Surgery  might  be  con- 
ferred. During  the  early  years  of  the 
college  this  power  was  judiciously 
exercised  for  the  records  of  the  col- 
lege show  that  not  all  who  applied 
were  successful  in  gaining  the  cov- 
eted degree ;  after  the  first  session  the 
faculty  conferred  the  honorary  de- 
gree on  a  number  of  worthy  dentists 
in  this  country,  Canada,  England, 
Scotland  and  France.  There  were 
two  graduates  the  first  year,  three  the 
second,  and  the  third  year,  six.  The 
fourth  year  the  president,  Dr.  Hayden, 
died  January  26,  1844,  aged  75.  The 
college  that  was  "opposed  by  many, 
and  a  short  life  predicted,"  he  lived 
to  see  firmly  established  and  in  charge 
of  earnest  men  on  the  road  to  assured 
success.  In  1846,  a  suitable  building 
was  secured  that  gave  ample  facilities 
for  both  theoretical  and  practical  in- 
struction and  for  the  establishment  of 
a  dental  infirmary  and  operating 
room.  In  1846,  Cyrenus  O.  Cone, 
M.D.,  D.D.S.,  was  appointed  pro- 
fessor of  mechanical  dentistry  in  the 
first  dental  college  in  the  world. 

Earliest  Dental  Colleges  in  Ohio, 
Kentucky,  Missouri  and   Louisiana 

The  marked  success  of  the  Balti- 
more College  led  to  the  establishment 
of  the  Ohio  Dental  College,  which  was 
chartered  in  1845  an^  commenced  its 
sessions  that  year  in  the  city  of  Cin- 
cinnati. Soon  followed  the  establish- 
ment of  dental  colleges  in  Kentucky, 
New  York,  Pennsylvania,  Missouri, 
Louisiana  and  Massachusetts.  Har- 
vard University  in  1867  was  the  first 
to  add  a  dental  department  to  its  Med- 


ical School,  and  the  Boston  Dental 
College  was  established  in  1868.  The 
Baltimore  Dental  College  commenced 
in  1840  with  four  professors,  and  in 
1855  there  were  added  five,  making 
nine.  Harvard  University  opened  a 
dental  school  twenty-seven  years  later, 
1867,  with  a  teaching  faculty  of  ten 
professors.  The  medical  and  dental 
schools  then  required  students  to 
attend  two  full  courses  of  lectures 
before  examination  for  graduation. 

The  courses  of  instruction  were 
mainly  alike,  the  dental  having  addi- 
tional studies  in  metallurgy  and  me- 
chanical and  manipulative  training 
in  place  of  general  surgery  and  ob- 
stetrics. In  the  lecture  room  students 
were  taught  the  use  of  the  microscope 
and  dental  histology,  anatomy — hu- 
man and  comparative — physiology, 
pathology,  therapeutics,  materia  med- 
ica,  chemistry,  anaesthesia,  general 
and  oral  surgery,  bacteriology  and 
orthodenthia.  In  the  laboratory,  met- 
allurgy was  scientifically  and  practi- 
cally taught,  with  special  reference  to 
the  working  of  lead,  zinc,  tin,  silver, 
gold  and  platina ;  also  vulcanite.  The 
student  was  taught  to  make  and  artis- 
tically adjust  artificial  teeth,  to  make 
continuous  gum  work,  make  crowns, 
bridges  and  porcelain  inlays.  He 
was  taught  to  treat  and  master  cleft 
palate  deformities,  make  and  adjust 
splints  for  broken  jaws  and  restore 
portions  of  the  jaws  when  lost,  either 
by  accident  or  disease.  These  include 
the  scientific,  artistic,  mechanical  and 
practical  teaching  that  is  given  by 
the  professors  and  demonstrators  in 
dental  colleges. 

In  the  first  twenty-five  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century  there  were 
twelve  books  published  by  American 
authors  on  dental  subjects.  A  "Sys- 
tem of  Dental  Surgery"  was  published 
by  Samuel  Sheldon  Fitch,  M.D.,  sur- 
geon dentist,  New  York,  1829.  This 
v/ork  was  not  claimed  by  its  author 
to  be  more  than  an  extended  com- 
pilation. "Dentalogia,"  a  poem  on  dis- 
eases of  the  teeth  and  their  proper 
remedies,  in  five  cantos,  was  published 

68* 


An  Element  in  Uplift  nf  iff*  ijnman 


by  Solyman  Brown,  A.M.,  New  York, 
1835,  a°d  another  poem,  "Dental 
Hygeia,"  1838.  The  year  the  Balti- 
more College  was  organized,  Chapin 
A.  Harris,  M.D.,  surgeon  dentist,  Bal- 
timore, 1839,  published  "The  Dental 
Art,"  a  practical  treatise  on  dental 
surgery.  This  was  the  first  entirely 
original  work  published  in  this  country 
for  the  use  of  the  profession  exclu- 
sively. In  1845,  a  second  edition,  en- 
larged and  revised,  appeared  under 
the  title  of  "The  Principles  and  Prac- 
tice of  Dental  Surgery."  This  work 
was  generally  acknowledged  to  be  the 
best  practical  treatise  on  dental  sur- 
gery that  had  ever  appeared  in  any 
language.  There  have  been  many 
editions  of  this  work  since  and  it  still 
is  a  standard  text-book  in  the  dental 
colleges  of  the  world. 

More  than  a  century  and  a  quarter 
ago,  human  teeth  were  used  to  replace 
lost  front  teeth.  An  advertisement  of 
M.  Lemaire,  dentist,  in  a  Philadelphia 
paper,  offering  two  guineas  each  for 
front  teeth,  tells  that  they  were  so 
used  in  1784,  and  have  been  occasion- 
ally ever  since.  Those  wanting  a 
partial  or  full  upper  or  lower  set  of 
teeth  had  to  take  what  the  dentist 
could  best  make  for  them,  using  either 
the  teeth  of  cattle,  sheep,  or  teeth 
carved  from  hippopotamus  ivory  or 
elephants'  tusks,  until  about  1825, 
when  porcelain  teeth  were  introduced 
from  France.  The  improvements 
over  the  French  formula  for  making 
porcelain  teeth  by  Americans  were 
many.  The  most  successful  were  those 
made  by  Samuel  S.  White,  who 
opened  a  manufactory  in  Philadelphia, 
in  1844,  for  making  porcelain  teeth  for 
dentists.  That  establishment  has 
since  grown  to  be  the  largest  and 
most  successful  manufactory  of  arti- 
ficial teeth  in  the  world.  Only  the 
well-to-do  could  afford  artificial  teeth 
on  gold,  platinum  or  silver;  cheaper 
metals  had  been  experimented  with 
and  were  failures.  The  poor  had  lit- 
tle show  for  looks  or  comfort  until 
after  the  invention  and  introduction 
of  vulcanite  by  Nelson  Goodyear  in 


1851  and  1855,  enabling  dentists  to 
make  artistic  and  serviceable  artifi- 
cial teeth  that  are  within  the  reach  of 
the  poor. 

The  Drs.  Hayden,  Harris,  and 
all  associated  with  them,  were  desir- 
ous that  dental  students  should  be 
given  as  good  opportunities  to  acquire 
education  as  the  student  at  medical 
colleges,  and  the  standard  in  the  col- 
leges to-day  are  no  higher  than  the 
one  set  by  Professor  Harris  in  his  in- 
troductory lecture,  and  Professor 
Bond  in  his  valedictory  to  the  stu- 
dents in  the  Baltimore  Dental  Col- 
lege in  1841.  Medical  colleges  send 
out  graduates,  as  physicians  and  sur- 
geons, and  it  is  well  known  that  a 
large  majority  never  practice  either 
general  nor  special  surgery.  Dental 
practitioners  have  to  do  daily  more 
or  less  surgery  and  many  have  at- 
tained high  rank  in  that  most  delicate, 
difficult  and  dangerous  specialty,  oral 
surgery.  These  are  from  choice — 
surgeon  dentists  and  mechanical  den- 
tists. The  degree  of  the  medical  and 
dental  colleges  alike  confers  on  all 
graduates  professional  rank. 

First  Legislature  to  Regulate  Prac- 
tice o!  Dentistry  was  in  Alabama 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the 
Legislature  of  Alabama  passed  an 
act  to  regulate  the  practice  of  den- 
tistry in  1841,  the  year  the  Baltimore 
Dental  College  held  its  first  session. 
The  gift  of  foresight  surely  impelled 
the  few  dentists  of  that  state  to  be  the 
first  to  procure  by  legislative  enact- 
ment professional  and  legal  standing 
for  dentistry. 

In  the  last  half  century  nearly  every 
commonwealth  in  the  United  States 
has  contributed  to  the  advancement  of 
the  new  surgical  science,  but  it  is  a 
curious  historical  fact  that  the  prog- 
ress emanated  from  New  England  and 
one  of  the  smallest  states  in  the  Union 
was  one  of  the  largest,  most  liberal 
contributors  to  the  profession.  That 
the  upward  development  of  the  calling 
of  dentistry  along  scientific  and  pro- 


0f  a 


fessional  lines  was  largely  the  work  of 
a  clique  of  men,  will  be  seen  when  the 
names  are  chronologically  noted  with 
the  character  of  their  work.  Horace 
H.  Hayden,  M.D.,  born  in  Windsor, 
Connecticut,  October  13,  1769,  archi- 
tect and  builder,  dentist,  army  surgeon, 
geologist,  the  organizer  of  the  first 
dental  college  in  the  world,  its  first 
president  and  first  professor  of  the 
principles  and  practice  of  dental 
science,  a  voluminous  writer  on  den- 
tal and  scientific  subjects,  was  one  of 
the  organizers  of  the  first  dental  soci- 
ety and  the  first  dental  journal  of  the 
world.  Solyman  Brown,  A.M.,  D.D  . 
M.D.,  D,D.S.,  born  in  Litchfieldj 
Connecticut,  November  17,  1790,  a 
dental  writer,  dental  poet,  teacher,  was 
first  secretary  of  the  first  dental  or- 
ganization and  one  of  the  organizers 
of  the  first  dental  journal.  Dr.  J. 
Smith  Dodge,  born  in  Connecticut, 
1806,  writer,  teacher,  was  one  of  the 
organizers  of  the  first  dental  society. 
J.  M.  Riggs,  born  in  Seymour,  Con- 
necticut, October  25,  1810,  was  a 
student  with  Dr.  Horace  Wells.  On 
the  eleventh  of  December,  1844,  he 
extracted  a  tooth  for  Dr.  Wells  while 
he  was  under  the  influence  of  nitrous 
oxide  gas  administered  by  Professor 
G.  Q.  Colton.  This  was  the  first  ap- 
plication of  anaesthesia  in  surgery,  an- 
tedating by  nearly  two  years  Dr.  Mor- 
ton's use  of  sulphuric  ether.  Dr. 
Riggs  gave  a  clinic  at  Northampton, 
Massachusetts,  in  June,  1867,  and  also 
gave  a  description  of  his  method  of 
treating  and  operating  for  the  condi- 
tions now  known  as  Pyorrhoea  Alve- 
volaris,  but  which  for  a  time  was 
called  by  his  name  "Rigg's  Disease." 
Dr.  John  S.  Clark,  born  in  Brooklyn, 
Connecticut,  1813,  practiced  for  sev- 
eral years  in  St.  Louis  and  in  New 
Orleans.  In  that  city,  1850,  he  pub- 
lished a  magazine  called  "The  Dental 
Obturator."  Dr.  Asa  Hill,  born  in 
Norwalk,  Connecticut,  November  20, 
1816,  a  man  of  fine  literary  attain- 
ments and  a  frequent  contributor  to 
the  periodicals,  and  associate  editor 


of  several  dental  journals,  invented 
the  valuable  temporary  filling  ma- 
terial known  as  "Hill's  Stopping." 
He  was  also  a  member  of  the  Con- 
necticut State  Legislature,  1856.  Dr. 
C.  A.  Kingsbury,  born  in  East  Wind- 
sor, Connecticut,  1819,  writer,  teacher, 
was  for  many  years  a  professor  of  the 
Philadelphia  Dental  College.  Cyre- 
nus  O.  Cone,  M.D.,  D.D.S.,  born  in 
East  Haddam,  September  20,  1820, 
was  pioneer  professor  of  mechanical 
dentistry  in  the  Baltimore  Dental  Col- 
lege. 

First  Manufacturers  of  Dental 
Instruments  in  America 

Dr.  Horace  Wells,  writer  on  den- 
tal subjects,  was  the  discoverer  and 
demonstrator  of  the  anaesthetic  prop- 
erties of  nitrous  oxide  or  laughing 
gas,  December  n,  1844.  The  first 
one  to  manufacture  gold  foil  in  this 
country  was  Marcus  Bull  of  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  in  1812.  Levi  Gilbert,  a 
confectioner  in  New  Haven,  Connect- 
icut, in  1848,  obtained  a  patent  for 
cavity  plates,  the  first  application  of 
the  principles  of  atmospheric  pressure 
in  dentistry — a  most  important  part 
of  mechanical  dentistry.  Nelson 
Goodyear  of  New  Haven,  Connecti- 
cut, in  1851  invented  a  process  of 
making  hard  rubber  or  vulcanite, 
which  has  since  been  so  successfully 
used  for  making  artificial  dentures, 
obturators,  dental  splints,  and  regulat- 
ing appliances  and  in  many  and  vari- 
ous ways  has  proved  of  great  value  to 
mankind. 

The  American  profession  is  now  es- 
tablished for  all  ages.  It  has  become 
a  notable  element  in  civilization  and  a 
mark  of  culture.  Great  credit  is  due 
to  the  men  who  lifted  it  from  an  ob- 
scure and  menial  trade  to  a  position 
of  dignity  and  achievement,  doing  its 
part  toward  the  higher  uplift  of  the 
human  race,  and  to  the  men  who  to- 
day are  upholding  its  honor ;  that  they, 
too,  may  contribute  to  the  history  of 
human  endeavor  for  the  good  of  man. 


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HONORABLE   NORMAN  WHITE 

MEMBER  or  THE  STATE  LEGISLATURE  or  MASSACHUSETTS 
HOME  or  TOE  FIRST  AMERICAN  SAVINGS  BANK 


is  the  centennial  year 
of  the  savings  banks.  In 
one  hundred  years  a  sys- 
tern  has  been  built  up 
that  throughout  the 
world  is  notable  for  sta- 
bility and  conservatism. 
The  Duke  of  Wellington  once  said 
when  somebody  proposed  a  savings 
bank  plan  for  the  British  Army  that 
if  Tommy  Atkins  had  money  to  spare 
it  was  time  to  reduce  his  pay.  But 
that  was  not  the  sentiment  of  ad- 
vanced people  of  his  day.  The  be- 
ginnings of  the  savings  banks  is  a 
story  of  humanitarian  efforts.  Rev- 
erend Joseph  Smith,  in  1/98,  with  the 
support  of  two  wealthy  parishioners 
at  Wendover,  started  a  system  of  re- 
ceiving from  members  of  his  congre- 
gation any  sum  from  twopence  up,  to 
be  returned  at  Christmas  with  one- 
third  of  the  whole  added  as  interest. 
Mrs.  Priscilla  Wakefield  started  in 
1799,  her  famous  scheme  for  the  ben- 
efit of  women  and  children  in  the  vil- 
lage of  Tottenham,  which  was  after- 
ward regularly  organized  under  the 
name  of  the  Charitable  Bank. 

Just  loo  years  ago  this  winter,  the 
whole  plan  of  the  modern  savings 
bank  was  outlined  in  a  speech  in  the 
House  of  Commons  by  a  Mr.  Whit- 
bread.  His  clear-sighted  formulation 
began  the  system  of  which  we  know. 

America  was  not  far  behind  Eng- 
land in  the  development  of  the  benefi- 
cent scheme.  If  1907  marks  the  one 
hundredth  anniversary  of  modern 


savings,  it  is  also  the  ninetieth  anni- 
versary of  the  opening  for  business  of 
the  earliest  American  savings  bank. 
The  Provident  Institution  for  Sav- 
ings, Boston,  was  incorporated  De- 
cember 13,  1816,  and  began  to  receive 
accounts  a  few  weeks  later. 

From  then  on  one  finds  an  interest- 
ing story  of  the  devotion  and  self-sac- 
rifice by  busy  Americans,  who  have 
voluntarily  taken  charge  of  funds 
which  they  have,  save  in  the  most  ex- 
ceptional instances,  regarded  as  a 
trust  rather  than  as  an  investment. 
In  one  of  the  first  advertisements  of 
the  Provident  Institution  for  Savings 
it  is  stated :  "The  trustees  will  take  no 
emolument  or  pay  for  their  services, 
having  undertaken  solely  to  premote 
the  interest  of  the  city  and  of  the  per- 
sons above  described  who  may  put 
their  money  therein."  That  has  been 
the  prevailing  spirit  in  savings  bank 
management  down  to  this  day. 

After  the  immediate  success  of  the 
Provident  was  assured  numerous 
other  institutions  of  the  same  kind 
were  started  in  New  England.  Most 
of  these  have  continued  in  their  hon- 
orable career  down  to  this  time. 
Among  those  that  soonest  opened 
their  doors  to  depositors  were:  Insti- 
tution for  Savings  in  the  town  of 
Portland  and  vicinity,  1819,  not  or- 
ganized; Savings  Bank  of  Newport, 
Rhode  Island,  1819;  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  Institution  for  Savings, 
1819;  Society  for  Savings,  Hartford, 
Connecticut,  1819;  Institution  for 


lEffrri  nn  Ammran 


Savings  in  Newburyport,  1820; 
Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire,  Sav- 
ings Bank,  1823;  Institution  for  Sav- 
ings in  Roxbury,  1825;  New  Bed- 
ford Institution  for  Savings,  1825 ; 
Lynn  Institution  for  Savings,  1826; 
Provident  Institution  for  Savings  in 
Taunton,  1827;  Springfield  Institu- 
tion for  Savings,  1827;  Institution  for 
Savings  in  Haverhill,  1828;  Worces- 
ter County  Institution  for  Savings, 
1828;  Provident  Institution  for  Sav- 
ings, Salisbury  and  Amesbury,  1828; 
Fall  River  Institution  for  Savings, 
1828;  Plymouth  Institution  for  Sav- 
ings, 1829;  Provident  Institution  for 
Savings,  Gloucester,  1831 ;  Institu- 
tion for  Savings,  Fairhaven,  1832 ; 
Windham,  Vermont,  Provident  Insti- 
tution for  Savings,  1846. 

An  ingenious  example  of  the  adver- 
tising of  the  early  nineteenth  century 
is  to  be  found  in  a  little  drama,  a  copy 
of  which  is  one  of  the  treasures  of  the 
Boston  Public  Library,  called  "The 
Brothers,  or  Consequences;  A  Story 
of  What  Happens  Every  Day."  It 
was  designed,  as  the  name  indicates, 
to  be  acted  in  the  Village  Lyceum  or 
Town  Hall.  By  showing  what  hap- 
pened to  the  family  of  the  unthrifty 
brother  it  was  supposed  to  induce  peo- 
ple to  make  regular  deposits  with 
the  Provident  Institution  for  Savings. 

With  the  safeguarding  exercised  by 
the  law,  and  the  personal  devotion  dis- 
played by  trustees  who  receive  no 
compensation  for  their  services,  no 
department  of  modern  finance  has 
been  freer  from  suspicion  or  reproach. 
Even  in  the  early  decades  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  the  savings  banks  were 
noted  for  their  safe  and  conservative 
management.  Savings  banks,  while 
needing  supervision,  have  never  had 
to  be  drastically  reformed. 

Some  of  the  banks  were  hard  hit 
by  the  panic  of  1837-8,  but  as  an 
institution  they  had  become  firmly 
established.  Along  about  1850  most 
of  the  "five  cent  savings  banks," 
which  are  now  a  feature  in  nearly 
every  American  municipality,  were 
organized.  The  idea  of  so  low  a  min- 


imum was  to  induce  minors  to  start 
deposits  which  would  grow  later. 

The  first  hundred  years  of  the  sav- 
ings bank  has  made  it  a  mighty  factor 
in  civilization.  Through  it  the  labors 
of  mankind  have  garnered  the  har- 
vest until  in  every  enlightened  nation 
to-day  savings  banks  are  the  greatest 
arbiters  of  industry. 

The  first  century  of  the  savings 
bank  finds  more  than  eight  millions 
of  the  American  people  with  nearly 
four  billions  of  dollars  safely  guarded 
in  these  institutions.  New  York, 
last  year,  brought  seventy  millions 
to  the  savings  banks,  which  is  alone 
"greater  than  the  total  savings  in  the 
banks  of  Japan  or  Canada  and  almost 
as  much  as  the  total  of  rich  Holland." 

On  this  centennial  it  is  interesting 
to  observe  that  the  savings  in  New 
York  are  more  than  one-third  of  those 
of  the  entire  United  States — more 
than  those  of  thrifty  New  England, 
with  Pennsylvania  added;  more  than 
those  of  any  nation  and  even  the  Ger- 
man empire  cannot  double  the  depos- 
its of  one  American  commonwealth. 

In  reflecting  on  the  significance  of 
this  anniversary  an  observer  remarks 
that  the  savings  banks  deposits  of 
New  York  overtop  those  of  all  France 
by  $500,000,000;  those  of  Great 
Britain  by  $360,000,000.  These  de- 
posits are  $514  for  each  depositor 
and  $170  for  each  inhabitant  of  the 
state.  No  other  state  in  the  Union 
equals  the  latter  proportions,  only 
California  and  Rhode  Island  reach 
the  former.  The  German  average 
deposit  is  $150,  the  average  for  each 
German  inhabitant  is  forty  dollars. 
Denmark,  Switzerland  and  New  Zea- 
land have  the  highest  of  the  foreign 
savings  bank  deposits  in  proportion 
to  population — respectively,  seventy- 
eight,  sixty-two,  forty-nine  dollars. 

It  is  a  wonderful  story  of  progress 
and  prosperity.  Never  before  in 
human  history  has  there  been  such 
astounding  material  advance,  and 
through  the  savings  bank,  on  this,  its 
one  hundredth  birthday,  pulsates  the 
life-blood  of  industry  and  thrift. 


686 


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fHnral  Eflfrrt  on  American  Citornaljtp  j*  Cibrrtg  ana 
llir  fflinhhi  €ronomir  |Iroblrm  J*  ilhr  Drmurrar ;i  of  Nr0o- 
liablr  ^rruritira  J*  QHj*  CTm  (Comtnanatnrnta  in  SuBinraa 

BT 

SERENO  D.  PRATT 

EDITOR  or  "Tan  WALL  STRICT  JOURNAL" 


N  this  centennial  of 
the  financial  system, 
through  which  the  sav- 
ings of  the  American 
people  have  been  safe- 
guarded, it  is  well  to 
consider  the  outcome 
of  this  first  epoch,  viewing  its  moral 
effects  on  American  citizenship.  In 
speaking  of  America's  amazing  ad- 
vance, an  economist  recently  re- 
marked: "Until  we  learn  to  think  in 
billions  we  cannot  measure  the  ma- 
terial development  of  the  United 
States;  much  less  can  we  mentally 
grasp  the  potentialities  which  the 
coming  years  have  in  store  for  us. 
Our  progress,  however,  has  only 
been  the  pioneering  work  of  clearing 
the  wilderness,  of  ploughing  and 
planting  amid  the  stumps  which  mark 
the  new  land  of  the  settler.  Not  yet 
have  we  had  time  to  pull  the  stumps 


ANKS  and  stock  ex- 
changes were  born  at 
the  very  time  when  the 
world,  shaking  off  the 
shackles  of  the  old 
feudal  system,  leaped 
into  the  modern  con- 
ception of  liberty.  With  national 
wealth  represented  by  ownership  of 
land  there  was  aristocracy.  With 
national  wealth  represented  by  own- 
ership of  negotiable  securities  there 
is  democracy.  Dean  Swift,  writing 
at  the  time  of  the  South  Sea  bubble, 
lamented  the  fact  that  owners  of  the 
land  no  longer  had  their  old  authority 
over  the  government.  The  commer- 
cial class,  the  bankers,  the  merchants, 
the  speculators  and  promoters  began 
to  take  the  lead  in  the  affairs  of  state. 

687 


and  drain  the  swamps.  What  we 
have  been  doing  is  like  sowing  by 
hand  and  gathering  our  harvest  with 
the  old  sickle  as  compared  with  what 
we  are  now  preparing  to  do."  The 
material  development  of  the  United 
States  is  an  impelling  factor  in  the 
history  of  our  growth  as  a  Nation ; 
from  it  will  ultimately  arise  the  age 
of  Arts  and  Science.  It  is,  there- 
fore, critically  essential  that  the  in- 
tegrity of  American  finance  be  pro- 
tected and  that  demagogues  be  not 
allowed  to  undermine  the  faith  of  the 
American  people  in  either  labor  or 
capital,  the  two  elements  on  which  the 
history  of  the  future  must  be  made. 
This,  then,  is  an  appropriate  time  and 
place  to  moralize  on  the  modern  econ- 
omic problems,  especially  the  moral 
principles  that  are  involved  in  true 
American  business  development. 


The  aristocracy  of  birth  and  land  be- 
gan to  give  way  to  the  democracy  of 
trade  and  the  money  market. 

Thus  the  history  of  banks,  corpo- 
rations and  stock  exchanges  which 
are  the  mightiest  financial  products  of 
modern  civilization,  is  closely  allied  to 
the  growth  of  republican  political  in- 
stitutions; and  it  is  noteworthy  that 
the  two  nations — England  and  the 
United  States — where  popular  repre- 
sentative government  is  most  ad- 
vanced, have  developed  to  the  highest 
degree  of  efficiency  the  systems  of 
credit  and  investment. 

Is  there  anything  more  democratic 
in  form  at  least  than  the  stock  corpo- 
ration? Its  ownership  is  represented 
by  shares  of  stock  that  may  be  held  by 
hundreds  and  in  some  cases  are  held 


Amrrtran 


by  thousands  of  persons.  These 
stockholders  are  like  the  citizens  of  a 
little  republic.  They  vote — or  have 
the  right  to  vote — for  a  Board  of  Di- 
rectors which  is  the  congress  of  the 
republic.  These  directors  elect  a 
president  who  is  the  chief  executive 
of  the  republic.  The  parallelism  be- 
tween the  corporation  and  the  form 
of  our  government  is  absolute.  Those 
who  attack  our  corporations  are  apt 
to  overlook  this  fact.  In  attacking 
the  corporation  they  are,  in  a  meas- 
ure, indicting  the  nature  of  the  very 
government  under  which  they  live. 

Banks  and  stock  markets  are  im- 
portant branches  of  the  immense  sys- 
tem of  transportation  by  which  the 
world  is  being  unified,  by  which 
boundary  lines  and  race  distinctions 
are  made  to  appear  less  vital  and  by 
which  peace  is  promoted,  trade  inter- 
nationalized, tyranny  overthrown  and 
liberty  crowned.  The  stock  market 
is  the  freest  thing  in  the  world  to  en- 
ter, though  it  may  be  costly  to  get 
out.  It  is  a  great  leveller.  It  widens 
opportunity  and  gives  the  common 
man  the  same  chance  for  development 
that  formerly  was  monopolized  by  the 
landed  aristocrat. 

But  as  it  has  been  an  unending 
struggle  to  preserve  our  republican 
institutions,  as  our  political  history 
has  been  a  record  of  contest  with  cor- 
ruption, of  battles  against  bosses  who 
have  attempted  to  seize  the  machinery 
of  liberty  to  use  it  for  tyranny  and 
graft,  so  the  history  of  corporations — 
these  myriad  republics  of  trade  has 
become  a  record  of  struggle  against 
financial  bosses  and  financial  graft. 
What  the  people  of  the  United  States 
are  now  trying  to  do  is  not  to  destroy 
the  corporations.  As  well  admit  that 
republican  government  is  a  failure  and 
go  back  to  absolutism.  What  they 
are  trying  to  do  is  to  rescue  the  cor- 
porations for  liberty  and  fair  dealing. 

It  is  important  at  this  time  to  make 
this  distinction.  The  great  mass  of 
the  business  men  of  the  country  are 
honest.  The  great  majority  of  the 


men  in  control  of  the  corporations  are 
honest.  What  has  taken  place  has 
been  an  unconscious  drift  toward  ab- 
solutism in  the  control  of  corpora- 
tions. Stockholders  who  were  indif- 
ferent to  their  rights,  and  directors 
who  did  not  direct,  have  developed  a 
class  of  financial  bosses  in  this  coun- 
try. These  bosses  have  been  some  of 
them  constructive  and  some  of  them 
destructive,  some  builders  of  the  na- 
tion, some  violators  of  law,  bribers 
of  legislators,  manipulators  of  the 
markets  and  monopolizers  of  the 
sources  of  supplies. 

The  mighty  economic  movement  of 
to-day  is  a  call  to  liberty.  Its  aim 
is  to  make  the  corporations  demo- 
cratic in  fact  as  in  form.  Could  any 
instrument  be  invented  that  is  better 
adapted  to  secure  a  wide  distribution 
of  wealth  than  the  stock  company? 
Could  anything  better  promote  in- 
vestment in  securities  by  which  that 
distribution  is  brought  about  than  a 
free  stock  market?  During  the  past 
eighteen  years  the  New  York  Stock 
Exchange  alone  has  listed  over 
$20,000,000,000  of  stocks  and  bonds, 
and  through  the  agency  of  its  market 
these  securities  have  been  distributed 
among  millions  of  investors.  Could 
anything  be  more  wholesome  ?  Could 
anything  contribute  more  to  national 
strength  and  patriotism  than  the  fact 
that  the  ownership  of  our  banks,  our 
railroads  and  our  industries  are 
widely  distributed  among  the  actual 
producers  and  wage  earners  of  the 
country?  This  is  the  best  kind  of 
socialism,  the  only  kind  that  will  be 
permitted  in  this  country,  a  socialism 
without  confiscation,  a  socialism  that 
does  not  overthrow  the  principles  of 
individualism  and  the  rights  of  prop- 
erty. 

We  are  rapidly  reaching  toward  a 
wider  distribution  of  wealth.  The 
next  problem  is  to  promote  a  greater 
democracy  in  the  control  of  wealth. 
We  want  to  dethrone  financial  boss- 
ism  and  establish  financial  leadership. 
We  want  to  inspire  greater  vigilance 

688 


3ta  4H0nii  Effort  ntt  Ammrart  <Ettt2*ttHlftp 


among  stockholders.  We  want, 
above  all,  a  higher  sense  of  responsi- 
bility among  trustees,  for  it  is  prob- 
ably fair  to  estimate  that  at  least  one- 
half  of  the  enormous  wealth  of  the 
United  States  which  has  in  this  year 
reached  the  amazing  total  of  $115,- 
ocx>,ooo,ooo  is  in  the  hands  of  trustees. 

Probably  few  appreciate  the  ser- 
vice speculation  has  performed  in  this 
process  of  distributing  the  wealth  of 
the  country.  But  at  the  same  time  it 
has  made  possible  the  financial  olig- 
archy reaching  for  the  government  of 
this  wealth. 

Speculation  has  its  good  and  its  bad 
side.  It  has  a  philosophic  as  well  as 
a  financial  meaning.  In  philosophy  it 
implies  mental  contemplation  of  data, 
examination  of  reasons  and  argu- 
ments. In  finance  it  means  the  tak- 
ing of  greater  or  less  risks.  Both 
meanings  may  be  and  should  be 
united  in  order  to  form  any  proper 
conception  of  the  nature  of  stock  spec- 
ulation. To  speculate  is  to  take  risks 
after  an  examination  of  all  known 
fact.  Such  speculation  is  entirely 
legitimate  and  beneficent.  Undoubt- 
edly stock  speculation  enormously 
promotes  the  enterprise  of  the  coun- 
try. Those  who  decry  Wall  street  as 
the  American  "Monte  Carlo"  and  the 
stock  exchange  as  a  den  of  thieves, 
and  regard  the  broker,  to  use  a  defini- 
tion attributed  to  Dr.  Samuel  John- 
son, as  "a  negotiator  between  two 
parties  who  contrives  to  cheat  both," 
should  pause  for  a  moment  and  con- 
sider what  this  country  would  be 
without  the  stock  exchange. 

The  facilities  of  credit  and  specula- 
tion have  enabled  the  world,  in  two 
centuries,  to  accomplish  the  work  of 
ten  centuries.  The  stock  market 
serves  to  mobilize  capital,  enabling  it 
to  be  quickly  massed  for  great  enter- 
prises, too  large  to  be  undertaken  ex- 
cept by  collective  effort.  It  serves 
also  to  equalize  prices,  to  prevent  an 
over-supply  at  one  time  and  a  short- 
age at  another.  Conant  says  that  the 
stock  market  is  the  great  governor  of 

689 


values,  the  determinant  of  the  rela- 
tionship between  production  and  con- 
sumption, the  guide  which  points  the 
finger  as  to  where  capital  is  needed 
and  where  it  has  ceased  to  exist. 

Even  the  room  traders,  apparently 
the  most  useless  body  of  men  in  the 
world  and  who  in  a  sense  "toil  not, 
neither  do  they  spin,"  who  produce  no 
wealth,  aid  largely  in  the  service 
which  speculation  performs  for  the 
country.  These  men,  whose  opera- 
tions represent  about  one-third  of  the 
stock  exchange  transactions,  simply 
trade  on  their  own  account  and  are  in 
and  out  the  market,  it  may  be,  a  dozen 
times  a  day.  They  are  at  one  mo- 
ment bulls  and  the  next  bears.  They 
are  ever  after  the  one-eighth  or  one- 
fourth  profit  to  be  made  in  the  buying 
and  selling  of  stocks  on  the  floor. 
And  yet  these  men  who  make  specula- 
tion their  constant  business  serve  to 
maintain  a  constant  market.  It  is  the 
existence  of  these  room  traders  that 
makes  it  possible  at  all  times  to  estab- 
lish quotations  to  affect  sales  and  to 
have  a  place  where  you  can  always 
dispose  of  your  securities  at  the  price. 
Thus  it  is  that  even  this  class  of  spec- 
ulators hold  no  inconsiderable  a  place 
in  economics. 

Moreover  the  same  may  be  said  of 
the  whole  body  of  margin  operations, 
although  a  very  small  proportion  of 
them  can  be  considered  as  speculative 
in  the  highest  sense.  They  enable  the 
real  financial  builders  oftentimes  to 
perform  their  constructive  work  the 
easier  in  that  the  speculation  facili- 
tates the  distribution  of  stocks. 

Unquestionably  a  large  proportion 
of  the  stock  market  transactions  are 
gambling.  At  the  bottom  there  is  in- 
vestment. Resting  on  this  is  a  broader 
body  of  speculation,  and  above  this, 
making  a  sort  of  inverted  pyramid,  is 
a  great  mass  of  gambling,  that  is  to 
say,  transactions  which  do  not  repre- 
sent either  investment  for  income  or 
intelligent  purchases  for  sale  at  profit, 
but  more  or  less  blind  dependence 
upon  chance. 


nf  Ameruatt 


President  Hadley  of  Yale  Univer- 
sity recently  made  an  excellent  dis- 
tinction between  the  different  kinds  of 
speculation.  "Much  of  the  present- 
day  speculation,"  he  said,  "is  bad  but 
side  by  side  with  the  bad  there  is 
much  that  is  good  and  indeed  neces- 
sary. The  first  essential  in  right 
speculation  is  that  a  man  must  be 
really  able  to  make  good  his  guaran- 
tee as  to  the  future.  In  other  words, 
he  must  be  risking  his  own  money. 
If  he  is  making  contracts  for  future 
delivery  on  the  basis  of  other  people's 
money,  whether  through  actual  bor- 
rowings or  through  inflated  credit, 
this  is  not  trade  but  gambling  with 
loaded  dice." 

W.  R.  Lawson,  the  English  econo- 
mist, in  his  latest  work  says  that 
wherever  there  is  business  there  must 
be  speculation  for  the  one  grows  out 
of  the  other,  but  legitimate  trading 
rests  upon  a  substantial  basis  of  bona 
fide  business  while  a  stock  gamble 
may  be  a  mere  fooling  with  market 
prices.  He  adds  that  the  United 
States  has  had  much  experience  of 
both  these  kinds  of  speculation.  It 
has  had  its  substantial  El  Dorados  in 
the  West  and  its  fictitious  El  Dorados 
in  New  York,  and  he  thinks  that  a 
safe  guide  of  an  American  boom  is 
the  proportion  of  Western  solidity 
there  may  be  in  it  as  compared  with 
the  Wall  street  gas. 

The  country  is  apt  to  think  of  Wall 
street  as  the  richest  place  in  the  world. 
So  it  is  from  one  point  of  view.  But 
did  you  ever  think  of  Wall  street  as 
the  biggest  borrower  in  the  country? 
That  is  what  it  is,  and  the  great  mass 
of  the  transactions  of  the  stock  mar- 
ket are  conducted  on  borrowed 
money.  It  is  of  interest  to  consider 
this  point  in  connection  with  Presi- 
dent Hadley's  statement,  that  the  first 
essential  in  right  speculation  is  that  a 
man  must  be  risking  his  own,  and  not 
borrowed,  money.  The  speculator 
puts  up  ten  per  cent  of  cash  and  bor- 
rows ninety  per  cent  from  his  broker. 
The  broker  puts  up  ten  per  cent  more 


and  borrows  eighty  per  cent  more 
from  the  banks.  And  the  banks? 
Well,  a  great  part  of  the  money  which 
they  loan  out  on  call  to  support  the 
stock  market  is  borrowed  from  the 
country  banks  for  their  deposits  paid 
for  by  two  per  cent  interest  must  be 
regarded  substantially  as  borrowed 
money.  In  addition  to  the  hundreds 
of  millions  of  out-of-town  deposits  in 
the  New  York  banks  there  is  at  this 
time  between  $300,000,000  and  $400,- 
000,000  of  loans  on  call  in  the  stock 
market  made  directly  by  banks  and 
trust  companies  in  the  interior,  and 
this  makes  a  body  of  credit  which  is 
used  almost  exclusively  for  specula- 
tive purposes.  The  interest  paid  on 
the  deposits  of  out-of-town  banks  and 
the  direct  loans  made  by  out-of-town 
banks  in  Wall  street  constitute  a  real 
menace  to  the  financial  situation.  If, 
then,  speculation  has  become  a  na- 
tional evil,  it  is  largely  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  country  itself  is  lending  the 
money  to  the  speculators  to  carry  it 
on. 

For  reasons  which  I  have  already 
tried  to  indicate,  it  would  be  the 
height  of  folly  to  attempt  to  suppress 
speculation  and  close  the  stock  ex- 
change, but  something  might  be  done 
to  keep  speculation  from  overstep- 
ping the  boundaries  of  moderation. 
If  the  line  between  gambling  and 
legitimate  speculation  is  the  ability  of 
the  speculator  to  make  good  his  guar- 
antee as  to  the  future,  might  it  not  be 
wise  to  apply  this  principle  so  as  to 
reduce  the  volume  of  stock  gambling 
and  at  the  same  time  give  ample  op- 
portunity for  legitimate  speculation? 
As  a  mere  suggestion  along  this  line 
would  it  not  be  well  to  increase  the 
margin  required  in  stock  operation? 
If  the  broker  would  demand  more 
margin  from  his  customer  and  the 
bank  more  margin  from  the  broker, 
the  number  of  people  who  enter  the 
stock  market  with  insufficient  capital 
would  be  immensely  reduced  and  the 
security  of  stock  operations  im- 
mensely increased. 


3la  floral 


nn  Ammratt  <Etttz*ttjalftp 


I  have  gone  into  this  matter  some- 
what at  length  because  it  serves  to 
emphasize  the  main  point  wfcich  I  de- 
sire to  make,  namely,  that  all  these 
great  tools  of  modern  business  are 
capable  of  being  used  for  mighty  con- 
structive enterprises  and  at  the  same 
time  of  being  misused  for  immoral 
and  destructive  ends.  In  so  far  as 
they  have  failed  of  the  highest 
achievements  it  is  because,  to  use  the 
recent  language  of  President  Schur- 
man  of  Cornell  University,  "the  moral 
nature  of  man  has  not  developed  as 
rapidly  as  his  economic  and  financial 
capacities."  In  other  words,  we  have 
failed  in  part  at  least  to  make  a  moral 
use  of  these  mighty  instruments  of 
credit,  of  investment  and  of  specula- 
tion. The  most  optimistic  feature  of 
the  present  day  is  the  fact  that  we 
have  awakened  to  this  situation  and 
are  endeavoring  to  find  out  the  ethical 
basis  of  business. 

Let  us  test  this  whole  matter  by 
applying  that  simple  but  sublime  code 
of  morals — the  ten  commandments — 
to  the  business  conditions  of  to-day. 

You  may  remember  Speaker  Reed's 
cynical  description  of  Theodore 
Roosevelt  as  a  man  who  had  "discov- 
ered the  ten  commandments."  I  do 
riot  pretend  to  have  discovered  the  ten 
commandments,  but  perhaps  I  am  en- 
titled to  the  distinction  of  first  putting 
them  in  double  harness  with  the  stock 
market.  Take  up  the  commandments 
one  by  one  and  see  their  economic 
significance : 

"Thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods 
but  me." 

It  is  time  that  we  found  out  ex- 
actly where  we  stand  on  the  question 
of  religious  faith.  Accompanying  the 
radical  attack  on  wealth  is  a  radical 
attack  on  the  belief  in  God  and  the 
eternal  life.  All  socialists  are  not 
atheists  nor  are  all  atheists  socialists, 
but  it  is  true  that  the  radical  type  of 
socialist  believes  that  it  is  essential 
to  the  establishment  of  his  economic 
philosophy  that  God  and  marriage,  re- 

691 


ligion  and  the  home,  should  be  legis- 
lated out  of  existence.  Apart  from 
this,  moreover,  there  are  many  evi- 
dences, although  I  admit  that  they 
may  be  superficial,  of  a  decline  in  the 
faith  that  lays  hold  on  etenial  life. 
This  is  a  matter  of  most  serious  im- 
portance. I  am  speaking  now  not 
from  the  standpoint  of  religion  but 
from  that  of  business.  If  it  be  true 
that  faith  is  declining  then  that  means 
enormous  economic  readjustments. 
I  can  imagine  nothing  more  deplor- 
able, more  destructive  of  values  and 
of  national  lasting  prosperity  than 
that.  If  it  be  true,  then  the  seeds  of 
national  deterioration  are  being  sown. 
Nothing  would  be  more  wholesome, 
more  inspiring,  more  helpful  to  na- 
tional prosperity  than  a  revival  of  re- 
ligious faith  and  observance,  and  bus- 
iness men  could  make  no  better  in- 
vestment of  their  money  and  time 
than  to  push  such  a  movement  along. 

"Thou  shalt  not  make  to  thyselves 
any  graven  images." 

How  about  the  worship  of  the  gold- 
en calf  of  wealth  and  luxury?  Per- 
haps there  is  no  more  of  this  than  for- 
merly. One  of  the  most  respected 
business  men  of  Hartford  wrote  to 
me  the  other  day  that  luxury  was  a 
good  thing  for  the  country,  that  the 
expenditure  of  money  upon  other 
things  kept  money  in  circulation,  men 
employed  and  trade  active.  In  like 
manner  it  might  be  said  that  wars, 
earthquakes  and  fires  were  good  be- 
cause they  created  new  demands.  Su- 
perficially, this  is  true.  Actually  lux- 
ury, that  is  to  say,  excessive  expen- 
ditures of  money  on  things  that  are 
not  necessary,  is,  like  war,  destructive. 
More  than  that,  it  is  demoralizing. 
Russell  Sage,  with  all  his  penurious- 
ness,  was  a  better  example  to  our 
young  men  than  some  of  our  new  rich 
men  with  their  lavish  display  of  lux- 
ury. I  may  add  that  at  this  time  one 
of  the  features  of  the  business  situa- 
tion to  be  deplored  and  feared  is  the 
fact  that,  owing  to  this  growing  love 


of  luxury  which  is  spreading  through 
all  grades  of  society,  we  are  spending 
so  much  and  saving  so  little. 

Why  is  it  that  France,  with  only 
207,000  square  miles  of  territory  and 
thirty-nine  millions  of  population  is 
such  a  stupendous  financial  power, 
and  is  able  at  all  times  to  command 
such  immense  investing  resources? 
It  is  because  every  man,  woman  and 
child  in  the  country  saves  something 
out  of  his  income.  Saving  is  the  key- 
note of  French  industry.  In  this 
country  the  waste  of  national  re- 
sources has  been  shameful. 

"Thou  shalt  not  take  the  name  of 
the  Lord  thy  God  in  vain." 

No  one  who  goes  to  our  great  cities 
can  have  failed  to  notice  a  marked  de- 
cline in  profanity  in  the  past  few 
years.  Whatever  may  be  in  our  hearts 
our  lips  are  at  least  cleaner.  It  is  be- 
ginning to  be  recognized  that  profan- 
ity and  obscenity  are  unmanly. 

"Remember  that  Thou  keep  holy 
the  Sabbath  day." 

There  has  been  a  marvelous  change 
in  the  observance  of  Sunday  in  the 
United  States  during  the  past  genera- 
tion. From  the  strictness  of  Puritan 
observance  we  are  rapidly  swinging 
to  the  opposite  extreme.  The  only 
safe  and  reasonable  position  is  be- 
tween these  two  extremes.  France 
is  as  far  removed  from  Puritanism  as 
it  is  possible  to  be  and  yet  it  is  one  of 
the  significant  events  of  the  present 
year  that  in  France,  and  apparently 
strictly  upon  economic  grounds,  there 
has  been  enacted  there  a  law  making 
one  day's  rest  out  of  seven  compul- 
sory. It  is  a  fair  question  to  ask 
whether  in  this  country  we  are  not 
drifting  too  far  away  from  that  rule. 
It  seems  to  me  that  some  of  our  rich 
men  are  setting  a  bad  example  in  this 
respect  and  need  to  be  called  into 
account  for  it.  They  are  compelling 
a  great  many  people  to  work  on  Sun- 
day for  their  pleasure  and  instead  of 
making  the  day  one  of  rest,  they  are 
occupying  it  to  a  very  large  extent,  if 
not  in  business  and  conference,  then 


in  conspicuous  pleasure.  The  intro- 
duction of  the  automobile,  beneficent 
as  it  has  been  in  many  other  respects, 
is  responsible  not  a  little  for  the  mis- 
use of  the  Sabbath. 

"Honor  thy  father  and  thy  mother." 
Perhaps  it  would  be  too  sweeping 
a  generalization  to  say  that  reverence 
has  about  died  out  in  the  United 
States,  but  it  is  a  fact  to  be  noted  by 
everybody  that  it  is  certainly  at  low 
ebb.  This  fact  is  responsible  in  no 
small  measure  for  that  indifference  to 
law,  that  contempt  of  authority  which 
is  making  for  anarchy  alike  in  high 
and  low  places.  No  share  of  stock, 
no  bond,  no  business  contract  has  any 
value  except  it  be  safeguarded  by  re- 
spect for  law  and  authority. 
"Thou  shalt  do  no  murd'er." 
Human  life  has  a  value  which  it 
never  possessed  before  and  we  are 
certainly  doing  much  by  police  pro- 
tection, health  laws,  sanitation  and 
otherwise  to  protect  it.  We  owe  a 
stupendous  debt  of .  gratitude  to  the 
medical  profession  for  having  low- 
ered the  mortality  rate  in  so  many 
of  our  crowded  cities.  Nevertheless, 
I  would  call  on  you  to  witness  the 
lynchings,  the  labor  riots,  and  the 
railroad  accidents ;  all  of  which  tes- 
tify loudly  to  the  fact  that  human  life 
is  still  held  in  low  esteem  by  many 
people.  The  fact  that  in  1895  the 
number  of  passengers  carried  upon 
the  railways  of  the  country  to  every 
one  passenger  killed  was  2,984,832, 
while  in  1905  the  number  of  passen- 
gers carried  for  every  one  killed  was 
1,375,856  shows  a  condition  of  in- 
creasing carelessness  to  human  life 
that  is  not  altogether  flattering  to  the 
United  States.  We  are  so  eager  for 
results  that  we  are  not  always  careful 
about  means  and  we  are  in  so  much 
of  a  hurry  that  we  pay  too  little  atten- 
tion to  safety. 

"Thou  shalt  not  commit  adultery." 
The  home  is  or  should  be  the  cen- 
ter of  civilization.     Shall  we  permit  it 
to  be  destroyed?     What  answer  do 
you  make  to  this  question  ?    Certainly 


e<ju*lto  money  Stfllltte -arc  rr 
Trreafu/teT  a/r\d 
tokvtn  vrv  all  PA  lick  pay -m 

al 

.  Bollon  i/ru  /N/*w-Lngl*i\cL» 
tke  tKircb  IQOcoBy 
t  U C^i  e/r al  C? 


FIRST  PAPER   MONEY  IN  AMERICA   IN    169O 

BY  HENRY  RUSSELL  DROWNB 

of  th:  American  N'umUm  itic  aid  Arch* logic il  Society 

This  is  an  actual  fa  .•simile  of  the  First  Paper  Money  in  America,  which  eventually 
led  to  the  founding  of  thi  A  n -ricai  binlcin<  system  Tne  A-n  :rican  Colonists  prior 
to  the  reign  of  William  and  Marv  were  prohibited  frou  coiaiag  m  >ney.  In  1693.  the 
Colonists  of  tiiv  England  and  Mew  York  sent  an  expedition  against  Canada,  which 
wn  u  wucceiiful.  Oa  ttie  return  of  the  troopt  from  B>*ton  there  wi<  ao  m  >ney 
with  which  to  pay  th;m.  The  saldier*  cUm  jred  for  pavm.-nt  and  were  on  the  verge 
of  mutiny  when  it  WAJ  resolved  to  resort  to  Paper  Mine/  and  a  Com  nittee  WAS 
empowered  to  isiue  £7.00  In  bills  from  five  jhillln<-»  to  fi/e  PJJ  nl«.  Thas  was  Paper 
Money  introduced  by  M  tssachusetts  ii  16} >.  Carol!  ta  followed  In  1701,  in  conse- 
quence of  an  Ill-advised  expedition  to  St.  Augustine,  Florida,  watch  entailed  a  debt 
of  ,£5,o DO.  In  IT<X),  New  Y  >rk  and  Connecticut  first  lsiu:d  b.Ha  of  credit  a  id  the 
othir  Colonies  followed  in  due  course.  Georgia  being  the  last.  Paper  Money,  which 
had  been  first  auth  >rizid  to  m:et  the  necessities  of  Colonial  Treasuries  to  wage  war, 
soon  became  generally  established  In  relie/in<  c  im  n::cial  aid  financial  embarrass- 
ment, and  ontinued  in  ms  until  after  the  close  of  the  Revolutionary  War  and  in 
fact  until  the  establishment  of  the  United  S;ates  Mint  at  Phllalelp'ili  m 


Amrriratt 


the  growth  of  divorces  in  this  country 
is  something  which  business  men  sim- 
ply from  purely  business  motives 
should  take  measures  to  check.  Dr. 
Dix  in  Trinity  Church,  which  stands 
at  the  head  of  Wall  street,  only  a  few 
days  ago  said  that  in  the  past  twenty 
years  there  have  been  500,000  di- 
vorces in  the  United  States  against 
214,000  in  Europe,  although  Europe 
has  five  times  the  population  of  the 
United  States.  Our  material  pros- 
perity can  have  no  permanency  if 
accompanied  by  moral  deterioration. 

'Thou  shalt  not  steal." 

This  opens  a  wide  subject.  On  the 
one  hand  there  is  to  be  witnessed  a 
wonderful  increase  in  honesty  and  on 
the  other  a  most  shameful  lack  of  it. 
One  of  the  most  magnificent  specta- 
cles which  this  country  of  enormous 
wealth  presents  is  the  scrupulous  care 
which  is  exercised  by  the  great  body 
of  our  people  in  the  actual  handling 
of  money.  Our  inland  trade  amount- 
ing to  at  least  $22,000,000,000  a  year 
is  carried  on  with  an  infinitesimal  loss 
caused  by  actual  theft.  The  great 
body  of  our  servants  in  the  banks  and 
public  institutions  through  which  mil- 
lions of  money  pass  every  week 
account  for  every  penny  of  it. 

The  enormous  bulk  of  Wall  street 
transactions  require  no  written  con- 
tract. In  the  stock  exchange  mil- 
lions upon  millions  of  property  are 
transferred  every  day  simply  by  the 
nod  of  a  head  and  the  raising  of  a  fin- 
ger. The  oral  promise  has  all  the 
force  of  the  written  bond.  This  is 
certainly  a  splendid  spectacle  of  hon- 
esty. I  think  few  people  appreciate 
the  full  significance  of  this  fact  and 
give  Wall  street  the  credit  which  it 
deserves  in  this  respect.  The  world 
has  gained  much  in  having  gained 
this. 

But  there  are  other  forms  of  steal- 
ing than  actually  putting  one's  hands 
into  the  till  and  filling  one's  pockets 
with  the  contents  thereof.  There  a 
other  kinds  of  stealing  than  going 
back  upon  one's  contract  and  refusing 


to  fulfill  one's  promises.  In  the  pres- 
ent transition  age  .of  American  busi- 
ness, at  this  time  when  we  are  apply- 
ing upon  a  colossal  scale  the  mechan- 
ism of  corporations  and  syndicates 
and  promotion,  new  forms  of  stealing 
have  developed,  to  a  large  extent,  let 
it  be  admitted,  unconsciously ;  so  that 
people  are  actually  robbing  their 
neighbors  oftentimes  under  the  very 
forms  of  law.  There  has,  therefore, 
developed  what  President  Roosevelt 
calls  a  "law  honesty,"  which  in  effect 
is  criminal  dishonesty. 

Suppose  we  apply  this  command- 
ment, "Thou  shalt  not  steal,"  to  the 
stock  market  and  to  some  of  the  ope- 
rations of  modern  business  and  see 
what  becomes  of  it. 

A  corporation  by  clever  bookkeep- 
ing covers  up  essential  facts  as  to  its 
financial  condition  and  thus  leads  in- 
vestors astray. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  director  by  reason  of  his  confi- 
dential position  gains  advance  knowl- 
edge of  a  coming  dividend  and  uses 
this  knowledge  so  as  to  speculate  with 
absolute  certainty  in  the  stock  market, 
thereby  profiting  at  the  expense  of 
others  and  perhaps  of  some  of  the 
very  stockholders  of  whom  he  is  the 
trustee. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  financier  by  his  control  of  banks 
and  corporations  and  the  mechanism 
of  the  markets  r-o  manipulates  prices 
as  to  give  a  fictitious  appearance  of 
prosperity  and  then  proceeds  to  un- 
load his  securities  on  the  public. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  trust  resorts  to  oppressive  meth- 
ods of  destroying  competition. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  railroad  grants  and  a  favored 
shipper  accepts  rebates  or  other  forms 
of  discrimination  by  which  the  latter 
gets  control  of  the  trade. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  public  service  corporation  unable 
to  get  a  franchise  in  any  other  way 
buys  a  board  of  aldermen. 

Is  that  stealing? 

694 


3ta  Ifinral  lEflfrrt  nn  Ammratt 


A  professional  operator  "washes 
sales"  on  the  curb  in  order  to  sell  a 
mining  prospect  of  no  or  of  doubtful 
value  to  the  public  at  grossly  inflated 
prices. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  promoter  makes  a  present  of  a 
"call"  on  a  newspaper  reporter  in 
order  to  get  an  alluring  but  deceitful 
paragraph  before  the  public. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  corporation  hires  the  smartest 
lawyer  in  the  country  to  tell  it  how 
near  it  can  get  to  the  edge  of  illegality 
and  of  even  criminal  conduct  and  yet 
escape  any  penalty  or  violation. 

Is  that  stealing? 

A  bank  refuses  information  on  the 
pretense  that  it  is  private  business, 
although  such  refusal  obscures  the 
whole  financial  situation  and  puts 
thousands  of  investors  in  peril. 

Is  that  stealing? 

We  need,  do  we  not,  to  give  a  wider 
interpretation  to  this  commandment 
so  that  it  shall  apply  as  well  to  the 
new  conditions  of  modern  trade  as  to 
the  old  forms  and  practices  ? 

The  London  Times  recently  com- 
plained of  "window  dressing"  by 
British  banks.  What  is  it?  Simply 
making  a  special  showing  of  strength, 
particularly  in  reserve,  for  the  period- 
ical public  reports  and  then,  after 
their  publication,  going  back  to  the 
old  condition  of  low  reserves  and  ex- 
panded credits. 

Is  that  strictly  honest  ? 

The  world  is  to-day  prosperous  as 
never  before.  Russia  is  the  only  sore 
spot  in  the  international  situation. 
But  this  prosperity  is  accompanied  by 
an  overstraining  of  bank  credits. 
Wastes  by  war,  earthquake  and  fire, 
marvelous  enterprise  in  every  part 
of  the  globe,  $15,000,000,000  of  new 
securities  issued  in  the  principal  coun- 
tries in  the  past  four  years,  great  in- 
dustrial and  commercial  activity  ac- 
companied by  extensive  land  and 
stock  speculation  in  the  United  States, 
England  and  Germany, — these  have 
piled  up  credit  liabilities  on  a  dimin- 

693 


ishing  percentage  of  reserves,  and  this 
fact  more  than  any  political  disturb- 
ance menaces  the  business  situation. 

Under  such  conditions  as  these  sup- 
pose that  some  one  undertakes  to  ma- 
nipulate the  call  money  rate  on  the 
floor  of  the  stock  exchange  in  order 
to  influence  the  course  of  the  stock 
market,  thereby  striking  directly  at 
public  confidence. 

Would  that  be  honest  ? 

Let  us  not  do  the  injustice  to  sup- 
pose that  all  the  stealing  is  in  these 
regions  of  finance  and  speculation. 
The  other  day  I  stood  at  the  Brook- 
lyn end  of  the  Williamsburg  Bridge 
and  saw  scores  of  men  and  women 
getting  off  Manhattan  cars  and  push- 
ing into  the  crowds  around  the  Brook- 
lyn cars,  secure  transfers  to  the  latter 
for  which  they  are  not  entitled ;  in 
other  words,  stealing  five  cent  rides 
from  an  unpopular  corporation. 

In  plain  truth,  is  there  not  to-day 
a  good  deal  of  downright  dishonesty 
by  the  people  in  dealing  with  the  cor- 
porations. A  gentleman  told  me  the 
other  day  that  a  man  in  his  town 
burned  his  house  in  order  to  get  the 
insurance.  One  jury  sent  the  incen- 
diary to  jail  but  another  jury  decided 
that  the  insurance  company  must  pay 
the  amount  of  the  insurance  to  the 
wife  of  the  incendiary ;  in  other 
words,  there  was  no  particular  con- 
science in  stealing  from  a  rich  corpo- 
ration in  order  to  enrich  a  neighbor. 

In  contrast  to  this  and  in  order  to 
show  that  high  finance  with  all  its 
ethical  shortcomings  is  capable  of  pre- 
senting a  splendid  example  of  hon- 
esty, witness  James  J.  Hill's  distribu- 
tion of  the  profits  of  the  iron  ore  deal 
to  the  stockholders  of  the  Great 
Northern  Railroad.  Can  any  doubt 
that  Mr.  Hill  with  the  resources  at 
his  command  might  have  been  able  to 
reserve  this  rich  melon  for  himself 
and  his  few  wealthy  associates?  In- 
stead of  that  he  carved  it  up  equitably. 
In  this  transaction  at  least  he  has 
coupled  financial  square  dealing  with 
magnificent  material  achievement. 


nf  Amrruan 


These  are  some  of  the  questions 
which  the  people  are  considering  at 
this  time,  and  the  fact  that  they  are 
asking  them  is  evidence  of  a  moral 
awakening  which  to  me  is  the  best 
possible  proof  that  the  world  is  grow- 
ing better  instead  of  worse. 

"Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness 
against  thy  neighbor." 

No  other  branch  of  business  has 
had  a  more  wonderful  growth  during 
the  past  generation  than  the  news- 
paper business,  and  it  seems  to  me  as 
if  this  commandment  is  at  this  time 
especially  applicable  to  that  particu- 
lar business.  By  and  by  the  people 
will  take  up  newspaper  reform  just 
as  they  have  taken  up  insurance  re- 
form and  will  insist  upon  the  estab- 
lishment of  higher  moral  standards  in 
the  conduct  of  the  newspaper  press 
I  am  not  going  to  say  anything  in  de- 
preciation of  the  profession  to  which 
I  belong,  especially  as  I  believe  that 
on  the  whole  it  compares  favorably 
with  any  other  department  of  human 
endeavor,  and  I  ask  you  in  all  fairness 
whether  you  would  like  to  live  in 
San  Francisco,  or  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  or  in  the  United  States  if  you 
were  deprived  of  the  protection 
afforded  by  our  free  press.  Never- 
theless there  are  two  classes  of  news- 
papers which  are  bearing  false  wit- 
ness. One  class  we  call  the  yellow 
journalism.  The  other  class  may  be 
called  the  court  circular  journalism. 
The  former  bears  false  witness  by  ex- 
aggeration, by  sensation,  by  innuendo, 
by  inspiring  hopes  of  general  equality 
of  condition  which  can  never  be  real- 
ized, by  inspiring  false  doctrine  and 
class  hatreds.  Court  journalism,  on 
the  other  hand,  bears  false  witness  by 
serving  as  servile  organs  of  political 
or  financial  interests,  by  concealing 
the  truth  and  by  defending  wrong. 

"Thou  shalt  not  covet." 

A  part  at  least  of  the  social  unrest 
of  to-day  is  due  to  covetousness,  to 
envy  of  the  rich.  And  while  we  may 
properly  legislate  for  fairer  methods 


in  the  accumulation  and  distribution 
of  wealth,  we  should  take  care  to 
guard  zealously  the  rights  of  property 
and  permit  no  greed,  no  false  philos- 
ophy to  overthrow  that  great  principle 
upon  which  our  social  order  rests. 

The  Greek  philosophers  were  also 
the  Greek  economists.  It  is  essential 
that  ethics  and  economics  should  go 
together,  for  political  economy  which 
is  not  based  upon  morality  means  sim- 
ply brute  force,  while  a  morality 
which  cannot  be  applied  practically  to 
everyday  business  is  simply  a  useless 
idealism.  It  is  for  this  reason  that  I 
have  this  evening  endeavored  in  this 
superficial  and  crude  way  to  link  some 
of  the  business  conditions  of  to-day 
to  the  sublime  principles  of  the  moral 
code. 

I  would  not  leave  the  impression 
that  I  am  a  pessimist.  I  am  emphat- 
ically an  optimist.  The  very  fact  that 
people  are  so  universally  talking  about 
these  ethical  phases  of  business  is  of 
itself  a  conclusive  proof  of  progress. 
We  cannot  tell  what  the  next  day,  or 
the  next  year  may  bring  forth,  but  in 
a  great  measure  we  can  tell  what  the 
next  ten  years  will  bring  forth  for  this 
nation.  There  is  not  unlikely  to  be 
serious  disturbance  and  a  grave  crisis 
or  two  in  the  meantime,  for  it  always 
seems  that  as  the  richest  soil  is  often 
on  the  side  of  a  volcano  so  under  our 
national  prosperity  are  always  burn- 
ing the  fires  of  possible  financial  up- 
heaval. But  there  is  an  absolute  cer- 
tainty of  a  great  development  of 
American  citizenship  and  American 
wealth  in  the  coming  ten-year  period. 

In  spite  of  tyranny  in  high  finance 
and  anarchy  in  low  places,  in  spite  of 
criticism  just  and  unjust,  in  spite  of 
condemnation  and  denunciation  and 
investigation,  the  people  of  this  coun- 
try now,  and  in  the  years  to  come, 
will  stand  up  and  vote  and  fight  for 
liberty  and  justice,  and  the  rights  of 
property,  and  for  equal  opportunity 
under  the  law  to  work  out  their  high 
destiny. 

696 


nf  lEarlg  Ammratt  Harriots 

(Cnrrraumtornrr 

nf  thr  3Firat  (Citizrna  nf  thr 

Natintt.  il\  rural  iu  it  llirir  |Irrannalitira  anb 

JJritmtr  Ciura  o*  A  finmanrr  nf  tl]r  Nnrlb,  anb  &nnth, 

mnrr  Hum  a  (i'ruturu  Aiin  <+   Jlutinuitr  3Frlrnbah,ips  nf  Diatinijiniahrb 

An'.rrtrana  ^  &nrial  Srlatinna  nf  th.r  ^Familira  nf  COffirrra  tn  thr  Early  IHara 

BT 

MABEL.  CASSIXE  UOLMAN 

FROM  OKIKINAI.  LETTEIIS  Now  IN  POSSESSION  OF  CIIAHI.ES  EBKN  JACKSON, 
A  DESCENDANT  OF  (II:NERAL  MICH  ATI.  JArKrox 


Powder  Horn  presented  to  Colonel  M  chael  Jpckfon  in  1782  for  his  bravery  in  the  American  Revolution 


discovery  of  these  old 
letters,  rich  in  their  side- 
lights    on    the    personali- 
ties  of  many  of  the  dis- 
J        tinguished  Americans  of 
the  first  days  of  the  Re- 
public,    is     of     especial 
value  to  the  historical  literature. 

Not  long  ago  I  became  acquainted 
with  a  wealth  of  ancient  documents 
that  had  been  secreted  for  several 
generations  in  the  privacy  of  one 
of  our  oldest  homes.  I  was  fav- 
ored with  the  permission  to  delve 
among  them.  In  them  I  found  re- 
vealed much  that  had  hitherto  been 


unknown  to  me  and  through  them  I 
gained  a  clear  knowledge  of  the  early 
American  character. 

The  frankness  of  these  time-wont 
letters,  inscribed  by  hands  that  have 
long  since  left  the  affairs  of  state  to 
other  generations,  was  such  that  I 
felt  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the 
writers,  and  I  sought  the  privilege  of 
bringing  them  before  the  public. 

In  introducing  them  I  wish  to  make 
public  recognition  of  the  courtesies 
extended  me  by  Mr.  Charles  Eben 
Jackson,  a  descendant  of  General 
Michael  Jackson,  in  whose  possession 
the  treasured  originals  now  remain. 


Ancient  Miniature  of 
Ebenezer  Jackson,  Senior, 

a  Gentleman  of  the 
First  Days  of  the  American  Republic 


Original  in  Possession  of 
Mr.   Charles  Eben  Jackson 


3ttttmat? 


0f  First  Ammran  <Etit??n0 


The  Ancient  Jackson  Estate,  "Walnut  Grove"— The  names  of  Washington  and  Lafayette  are  carved  on 
one  of  the  trees-It  was  to  the  hollow  trunk  of  one  of  these  "button  ball"  trees  that  the  Indian  Chief, 
"Mamoosa,"  according  to  one  of  the  old  legends,  escaped  after  killing  a  fellow  tribesman  about  1650 


ORE  than  a  hundred 
years  ago  there  came 
from  -Savannah, 
Georgia,  a  gentleman 
looking  for  a  sum- 
mer home  in  the 
north,  and  being  di- 
rected by  friends  to  Newport,  Rhode 
Island,  or  to  Middletown,  Connecti- 
cut, his  choice  fell  upon  the  latter 
place,  where  he  purchased  one  of  the 
famous  Wetmore  houses,  built  as  the 
houses  were  in  those  days  to  with- 
stand the  ravages  of  time,  a  fine  ram- 
bling brick  structure,  with  heavy  dog- 
tooth cornices  running  around  the 
ceilings,  and  quaint  sliding  shutters 
at  the  windows.  The  wide  colonial 
fireplaces  were  decorated  in  figures 
and  garlands  of  high  relief.  The 
grounds,  shaded  by  stately  trees  slop- 
ing to  the  banks  of  the  Arawana 
stream. 

It  was  here,  in  1801,  that  Ebenezer 
Jackson,  the  third  son  of  General 
Michael  Jackson,  of  Newton,  Massa- 
chusetts, accompanied  by  his  charm- 
ing Southern  wife,  and  children, 

699 


made  his  Northern  home,  which  is 
known  as  "Walnut  Grove,"  and  still 
occupied  by  his  descendants.  Some 
years  before  this,  Ebenezer  Jackson 
had  been  sent  by  the  government  to 
establish  the  border-line  between  Vir- 
ginia and  North  Carolina,  meeting  in 
Savannah,  Charlotte  Fenwick  Pierce, 
the  widow  of  Major  William  Leigh 
Pierce ;  he  surrendered  his  heart  and 
they  were  married  in  Savannah  July 
25,  1792.  Mrs.  Jackson  was  a  daugh- 
ter of  Edward  Fenwick  and  Mary 
Drayton  of  Charleston,  South  Car- 
olina, and  a  relative  of  George  Fen- 
wick, an  agent  of  the  Warwick  pat- 
ent, who,  with  his  wife,  Lady  Alice 
Fenwick,  were  among  the  first  set- 
tlers of  Saybrook,  Connecticut. 
Brought  up  in  a  true  Southern  home 
in  the  midst  of  wealth  and  refinement, 
Charlotte  Fenwick  developed  early 
into  a  beautiful  woman.  When  fif- 
teen years  old,  during  the  absence  of 
her  mother  in  England,  she  was 
placed  at  school.  As  the  English 
army  approached  Charleston  the 
school  disbanded,  and  the  teachers 


(H0m0p0ttteni:e  of  Earlg  Ammran 


fled.  Charlotte  took  refuge  with  her 
sister,  Harriette,  the  wife  of  Josiah 
Tatnell,  afterward  Governor  of 
Georgia  (their  son  gave  the  beauti- 
ful cemetery,  Bonaventure,  to  the 
city  of  Savannah.  A  daughter  of 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Ebenezer  Jackson, 
Harriette  Fenwick  Jackson,  married 
her  cousin,  the  famous  Commodore 
Josiah  Tatnell  of  Savannah,  who  was 
the  originator  of  the  phrase,  "Blood 
is  thicker  than  water")  ;  here  she  met 
Major  Pierce,  and  soon  after  became 
betrothed  to  him.  The  following  de- 
scription of  Miss  Fenwick  at  this  time 
is  taken  from  a  letter  written  to 
Major  Pierce  by  a  friend,  July  10, 
1783: 

"DEAR  PIERCE  : 

Last  evening  for  the  first  time  in  my  life 
I  saw  Miss  Charlotte  Fenwick.  She  sang 
'Return  enraptured  hours'  most  divinely. 
She  is  rather  pretty  than  handsome.  She 
is  lively,  facitious  and  I  think  abominably 
clever.  The  whole  town  say  you  are  en- 
gaged to  her — its  taken  for  granted — and 
now  you  are  ranked  on  the  list  of  a  North- 
ern Gentlemen  marrying  a  Southern 
Lady." 

The  writer  adds : 
"I  am  a  little  in  love — not  much." 
Mrs.      Fenwick,      upon      receiving 


word  of  the  trouble  in  Charleston 
at  once  hastened  home  to  find  her 
daughter  Charlotte  married  to  a 
stranger.  Highly  indignant,  Mrs. 
Fenwick  addressed  her:  "And  who 
is  this  Major  Pierce?"  "A  gentle- 
man, Madam,"  Mrs.  Pierce  replied, 
haughtily.  "Go  to  your  room, 
Madam,  and  stay  there  the  rest  of  the 
day,"  which  the  young  bride  did. 
Major  Pierce  was  born  in  Virginia 
about  1740;  he  engaged  in  the  Revo- 
lutionary War  and  was  commis- 
sioned a  captain  in  the  First  Conti- 
nental Artillery,  becoming  an  aide  to 
General  Green.  After  the  battle  of 
Eutaw  Springs,  Major  Pierce  bore 
the  general's  dispatches  with  the  news 
of  the  victory  to  Congress  at  Phila- 
delphia. On  October  29,  1781,  Con- 
gress resolved  "that  a  sword  be  pre- 
sented to  Captain  Pierce."  This 
sword  suitably  inscribed  is  now 
owned  by  a  grandson  of  Mrs. 
Pierce.  In  1786,  Major  Pierce  was 
elected  to  the  Continental  Con- 
gress from  Georgia  for  one  year. 
Among  many  valuable  documents  in 
the  possession  of  the  Jackson  family 
is  a  small  book  bound  in  red  morocco 


EARLY   COLONIAL   ARCHITECTURE— WETMORE   HOMESTEAD    BUILT    IN   i746-Erected   by 
one  of  the  first  families  settling  near  the  Jackson  Ancestral  Estate  in  the  old  Colony  of  Connecticut 

700 


Knttmai? 


0f 


Ammran  <E 


RARE  MINIATURE  OF  MRS.  COMFORT 
SAGE— After  Arnold's  treason,  she  sheltered  and 
concealed  the  traitor's  two  little  sons  in  her  home 


and  lettered,  "Pierces*  Reliques,"  con- 
taining the  notes  taken  by  Major 
Pierce  while  attending  the  conven- 
tion, and  several  interesting  anec- 
dotes. A  memorandum  in  Wash- 
ington Irving's  handwriting,  pasted 
within,  shows  the  book  to  have  been 
borrowed  by  him.  He  derived  from 
it  the  following  anecdote  for  his  "Life 
of  Washington:"  "When  the  Con- 
vention first  opened  at  Philadelphia, 
there  were  a  number  of  propositions 
brought  forward  as  great  leading 
principles  for  the  new  Government  to 
be  established  for  the  United  States. 
A  copy  of  these  propositions  was 
given  to  each  Member  with  an  injunc- 
tion to  keep  everything  a  profound 
secret.  One  morning,  by  accident, 
one  of  the  Members  dropt  his  copy  of 
the  propositions,  which  being  luckily 
picked  up  by  General  Mifflin  was  pre- 
sented to  General  Washington,  our 
President,  who  put  it  in  his  pocket. 
After  the  debates  of  the  Day  were 
over,  and  the  question  for  adjourn- 
ment was  called  for,  the  General 
arose  from  his  seat,  and  previous  to 
his  putting  the  question  addressed  the 

701 


PAINTING  OF  GENERAL  COMFORT  SAGE 
—He  was  at  Valley  Forge  with  Washington- 
While  ill  in  1789.  Washington  sat  at  his  bedside 

Convention  in  the  following  man- 
ner,— 

GENTLEMEN  : 

I  am  sorry  to  find  that  some  one  Mem- 
ber of  this  Body,  has  been  so  neglectful  of 
the  secrets  of  the  Convention  as  to  drop  in 
the  State  House  a  copy  of  their  proceed- 
ings, which  by  accident  was  picked  up  and 
delivered  to  me  this  Morning,  I  must  en- 
treat Gentlemen  to  be  more  careful,  least 
our  transactions  get  into  the  News  Papers, 
and  disturb  the  public  repose  by  premature 
speculations.  I  know  not  whose  paper  it 
is,  but  there  it  is  (throwing  it  down  on  the 
table),  let  him  who  owns  it  take  it. 

At  the  same  time  he  bowed,  picked 
up  his  Hat  and  quitted  the  room  with 
a  dignity  so  severe  that  every  Person 
seemed  alarmed ;  for  my  part  I  was 
extremely  so,  for  putting  my  hand  in 
my  pocket  I  missed  my  copy  of  the 
same  Paper,  but  advancing  up  to  the 
Table  my  fears  soon  dissipated;  I 
found  it  to  be  the  handwriting  of 
another  Person.  When  I  went  to  my 
lodgings  at  the  Indian  Queen,  I  found 
my  copy  in  a  pocket  which  I  had 
pulled  off  that  Morning.  It  is  some- 
thing remarkable  that  no  Person  ever 
owned  the  Paper." 


PERSONAL  NOTES  FROM    A  WARRIOR'S   DIARY 

Accurate  Transcripts  from  Journal  of  Major  William  Leigh  Pierce,  a  Member  of  the  First 

Continental  Congress  from  Georgia,  describing  the  "  Characters  in  the 

Convention  of  the  States  at  Philadelphia,  May,  1787" 


General  George  Washington  of 
Virginia — Politician  and  Statesman 

Genl  Washington  is  well  known  as  the 
Commander  in  chief  of  the  late  American 
Army.  Having  conducted  these  States  to 
independence  and  peace,  he  now  appears 
to  assist  in  framing  a  Government  to  make 
the  People  happy.  Like  Gustavus  Vasa, 
he  may  be  said  to  be  the  deliverer  of  his 
country; — like  Peter  the  great  he  appears 
as  the  politician  and  the  States-man;  and 
like  Cincinnatus  he  returned  to  his  farm 
perfectly  contented  with  being  only  a  plain 
Citizen,  after  enjoying  the  highest  honor 
of  the  confederacy, — and  now  only  seeks 
for  the  approbation  of  his  Country — men 
bj  being  virtuous  and  useful.  The  Gen- 
eral was  conducted  to  the  Chair  as  Presi- 
dent of  the  Convention  by  the  unanimous 
voice  of  its  Members.  He  is  in  the  52d 
year  of  his  age. 


Colonel  Alexander  Hamilton  of 
New  York — a  Finished  Scholar 

Col.  Hamilton  is  deservedly  celebrated 
for  his  talents.  He  is  a  practitioner  of  the 
Law,  and  reputed  to  be  a  finished  Scholar. 
To  a  clear  and  strong  judgment  he  unites 
the  ornaments  of  fancy,  and  whilst  he  is 
able,  convincing,  and  engaging  in  his  elo- 
quence the  Heart  and  Head  svmnathize  in 
approving  him.  Yet  there  is  something 
too  feeble  in  his  voice  to  be  equal  to  the 
strains  of  oratory; — it  is  my  opinion  that 
he  is  rather  a  convincing  Speaker,  than  a 
blazing  Orator.  Col.  Hamilton  requires 
time  to  think, — he  enquires  into  every  part 
of  his  subject  with  the  searchings  of 
phylosophy,  and  when  he  comes  forward 
he  comes  highly  charged  with  interesting 
matter,  there  is  no  skimming  over  the  sur- 
face of  a  subject  with  him,  he  must  sink 
to  the  bottom  to  see  what  foundation  it 
rests  on. — His  language  is  not  always 
equal,  sometimes  didactic  like  Boling- 
broke's,  at  others  light  and  tripping  like 
Stern's.  His  eloquence  is  not  so  defusive 
as  to  trifle  with  the  senses,  but  he  rambles 
just  enough  to  strike  and  keep  up  the 
attention.  He  is  about  33  years,  of  small 
stature,  and  lean.  His  manners  are  tinc- 
tured with  stiffness,  and  sometimes  with  a 
degree  of  vanity  that  is  highly  disagree- 
able. 


Judge  Oliver  Ellsworth  of  Supreme 
Court — Respected  for  Integrity 

Mr.  Elsworth  is  a  Judge  of  the  Supreme 
Court  in  Connecticut; — he  is  a  Gentlemen 
of  a  clear,  deep,  and  copious  understand- 
ing; eloquent,  and  connected  in  public  de- 
bate; and  always  attentive  to  his  duty.  He 
is  quick  in  a  reply,  and  choice  in  selecting 
such  parts  of  his  adversary's  arguments  as 
he  finds  make  the  strongest  impressions, — 
in  order  to  take  off  the  force  of  them,  so 
as  to  admit  the  power  of  his  own.  Mr. 
Elsworth  is  about  37  years  of  age,  a  Man 
much  respected  for  his  integrity,  and  ven- 
erated for  his  abilities. 


Roger  Sherman — "  No  Man  has  a 
Better  Heart  or  a  Clearer  Head" 

Mr.     Sherman 

exhibits  the  oddest-shaped  character  I  ever 
remember  to  have  met  with.  He  is 
awkward,  un-meaning,  and  unaccountably 
strange  in  his  manner.  But  in  his  train  of 
thinking  there  is  something  regular,  deep, 
and  comprehensive;  yet  the  oddity  of  his 
address,  the  vulgarisms  that  accompany  his 
public  speaking,  and  that  strange  new  Eng- 
land cant  which  runs  through  his  public  as 
his  private  speaking  make  everything  that 
is  connected  with  him  grotesque  and  laugh- 
able;— and  yet  he  deserves  infinite  praise, 
— no  Man  has  a  better  Heart  or  a  clearer 
Head.  If  he  cannot  embellish  he  can  fur- 
nish thoughts  that  are  wise  and  useful. 
He  is  an  able  politician,  and  extremely 
artful  jn  accomplishing  any  particular  ob- 
ject;— it  is  remarked  that  he  seldom  fails. 
I  am  told  he  sits  on  the  Bench  in  Connect- 
icut and  is  very  correct  in  the  discharge  of 
his  Judicial  functions.  In  the  early  part 
of  his  life  he  was  a  Shoemaker ;— but  de- 
spising the  lowness  of  his  condition,  he 
turned  Almanack  maker,  and  so  pro- 
gressed upwards  to  a  Judge.  He  has  been 
several  years  a  Member  of  Congress,  and 
discharged  the  duties  of  his  Office  with 
honor  and  credit  to  himself,  and  advan- 
tage to  the  State  he  represented.  He  is 
about  60. 


jot 


44  Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin  of  Pennsylvania 
—The   Greatest  Philosopher  of    His  Age" 


Dr.  Franklin  is  well  known  to  be  the 
greatest  phylosopher  of  the  present  age; — 
all  the  operations  of  nature  he  seems  to 
understand, — the  very  heavens  obey  him, 
and  the  Clouds  yeild  up  their  Lightning  to 
be  imprisoned  in  his  rod.  But  what  claim 
he  has  to  the  politician,  posterity  must  de- 
termine. It  is  certain  that  he  does  not 
shine  much  in  public  Council ; — he  is  no 
Speaker,  nor  does  he  seem  to  let  politics 
engage  his  attention.  He  is,  however,  a 
most  extraordinary  Man,  and  tells  a  story 
in  a  style  more  engaging  than  anything 
I  ever  heard.  Let  his  Biographer  finish 
his  character.  He  is  82  years  old,  and 
possesses  an  activity  of  mind  equal  to  a 
youth  of  25  years  of  age. 
"When  I  was  in  Philadelphia  attending  the 


federal  convention  June  1787,  I  waited  on 
Dr.  Franklin  one  morning  to  pay  my  re- 
spects to  him  and  after  some  little  conver- 
sation which  was  of  a  gay  and  cheerful 
kind  he  gave  me  an  opportunity  to  ask  him 
his  age,  when  he  informed  me  he  was  82 
years  old.  to  which  he  observed  that  he 
had  'lived  long  enough  to  intrude  himself 
on  posterity,'  and  a  few  words  concerning 
General  Green,—  After  the  raising  of  the 
seige  of  Ninety  six  in  So.  Carolina  when 
the  American  Army  were  retrenching,  in 
officer  of  high  rank  persuaded  Gen  Green 
to  abondone  the  States,  and  to  go  into  Vir- 
ginia, on  which  the  general  replied — 'no 
Sir  I  will  conquer  this  Country  or  die  in 
the  attempt." 


4  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson— One  of  the  First  Classicists 
in  America — Eloquent  and  Clear" 


Dr.  Johnson  is  a  character  much  cele- 
brated for  his  legal  knowledge;  he  is  said 
to  be  one  of  the  first  classics  in  America, 
and  certainly  possesses  a  very  strong  and 
enlightened  understanding.  As  an  Orator 
in  my  opinion,  there  is  nothing  in  him 
that  warrants  the  high  reputation  which 
he  has  for  public  speaking.  There  is 
something  in  the  tone  of  his  voice  not 
pleasing  to  the  Ear, — but  he  is  eloquent 
and  clear, — always  abounding  with  infor- 
mation and  instruction.  He  was  once  em- 
ployed as  an  Agent  for  the  State  of  Con- 


necticut to  state  her  claims  to  certain 
landed  territory  before  the  British  House 
of  Commons ;  this  Office  he  discharged 
with  so  much  dignity,  and  made  such  an 
ingenious  display  of  his  powers,  that  he 
laid  the  foundation  of  a  reputation  which 
will  probably  last  much  longer  than  his 
own  life.  Dr.  Johnson  is  about  sixty 
years  of  age,  possesses  the  manners  of  a 
Gentlemen,  and  engages  the  Hearts  of 
Men  by  the  sweetness  with  which  he 
accosts  his  acquaintance. 


Major  Pierce  died  December  loth, 
1789,  and  three  years  later  Mrs. 
Pierce  became  the  wife  of  Ebenezer 
Jackson. 

After  buying  "Walnut  Grove"  Mr. 
Jackson  greatly  improved  and  beauti- 
fied the  old  mansion.  The  walks 
winding  in  and  out  among  the  an- 
cient trees  and  terraced  lawns  were 
bordered  with  boxes  of  orange  and 
lemon  trees  Mrs.  Jackson  sent  from 
the  South.  The  gentle  murmur  of 
the  stream,  with  the  sounds  of  child- 
ish laughter,  and  the  patter  of  little 
feet  guarded  by  colored  mammies 
made  it  an  ideal  home.  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Jackson  usually  made  the  jour- 
neys between  Middletown  and  Savan- 
nah by  water,  until  their  lives  were 


endangered  by  a  severe  storm,  during 
which  one  of  their  slaves  who  was 
very  ill  and  frightened,  begged  the 
captain  to  put  her  ashore  and  "let  her 
walk  home."  After  this  the  trips 
were  accomplished  by  carriage,  the 
journey  taking  five  or  six  weeks. 
Occasionally  a  winter  was  passed  in 
Middletown,  and  "Walnut  Grove"  be- 
came the  scene  of  many  social  gath- 
erings. The  table  is  still  there  on 
which  Major  Andre  took  tea.  Mr. 
Jackson  owned  the  irst  carriage  in 
Middletown,  and  frequently  Mrs. 
Jackson  would  send  the  carriage  for 
her  friends  that  they  might  enjoy  a 
game  of  cards  to  white  away  the  long 
winter  evenings. 

After   some   years    Mr.    and    Mrs. 


Jnttmate 


of 


Ammran  (Ettt^nta 


Jackson  decided  to  locate  perma- 
nently in  the  North.  Great  was  the 
grief  of  the  slaves  who  with  tears  in 
their  eyes  begged  to  be  taken  north 
with  master  and  mistress.  They  were 
not  separated  but  all  found  a  home 
with  a  relative  of  the  family.  Mrs. 
Jackson  died  in  Savannah,  April  4th, 
1819,  where  she  is  buried.  Ebenezer 
Jackson  spent  his  last  days  in  Middle- 
town,  where  he  died  in  1836,  and  was 
buried  in  Indian  Hill  Cemetery. 

It  was  at  "Walnut  Grove"  that 
Ruth  Parker  Jackson,  the  widow  of 
that  grand  soldier,  General  Michael 
Jackson,  passed  her  last  days.  Mrs. 
Jackson  was  a  true  soldier's  wife ;  not 
only  did  she  bravely  see  her  husband 
depart  to  lay  down  his  life  if  need  be, 
for  the  freedom  of  the  new  country, 
but  with  him  served  their  five  sons. 
General  Jackson  was  a  descendant  of 
Edward  Jackson,  a  nailer  of  London, 
who  settled  at  Cambridge,  Mass.,  in 
1643.  General  Jackson  was  born  in 
Newton,  December  i8th,  1735.  And 
it  is  a  very  strange  coincidence  that 
his  son  Ebenezer,  was  born  on  the 
same  date.  His  great-great-grand- 
son, born  December  i8th,  graduated 
from  West  Point  in  1900,  and  en- 
tered the  army ;  and  another  great- 
great-grandson,  born  on  the  same 
date,  desired  to  enter  West  Point,  but 
was  unable  to  get  an  appointment. 
Every  member  of  the  family  born  on 
December  i8th  either  follow,  or  de- 
sire to  follow,  a  military  life.  Gen- 
eral Jackson  served  from  the  battle 
of  Lexington  to  the  close  of  the  Revo- 
lutionary War  with  his  five  sons,  all 
officers  of  the  Continental  Line — 
Michael,  jr.,  Simon,  Ebenezer,  Amasa 
and  Charles.  Four  brothers  of  Gen- 
eral Jackson  enlisted  for  three  years 
of  the  war,  and  two  more  brothers 
served  as  volunteers  from  time  to 
time. 

General  Michael  Jackson  and  his 
five  sons  were  all  members  of  the  So- 
ciety of  Cincinnati.  When  raising 
his  famous  8th  Massachusetts  Regi- 
ment, he  tried  to  have  his  five  sons 
mustered  in,  the  three  youngest  were 


rejected  as  too  young,  but  he  finally 
succeeded  with  another  muster-mas- 
ter in  having  them  accepted  as  drum- 
mers and  fifers,  and  maintained  that 
boys  were  better  than  men  for  that 
service.  The  eldest  of  the  three, 
Ebenezer,  was  but  thirteen,  and  the 
youngest,  Charles,  only  ten.  General 
Jackson  first  served  in  the  Colonial 
army  during  the  French  War,  and 
was  present  at  the  siege  of  Louisburg, 
and  later  was  assigned  to  the  com- 
mand of  a  company  of  Minute  Men. 
Before  the  Battle  of  Lexington  while 
on  his  way  to  Boston  on  horseback 
one  morning  before  day  light,  with  his 
panniers  filled  with  "garden  sauce," 
the  Sergeant  of  the  minute  company 
at  Cambridge,  Major  Timothy  Jack- 
son, met  a  man  coming  from  the  city 
to  inform  them  of  the  British  having 
started  for  Lexington  and  Concord. 
He  immediately  turned  back  and  dis- 
mounting at  the  Meeting  house,  the 
rendezvous  of  the  company,  rang  the 
bell.  By  sunrise  the  whole  company 
was  present  with  the  exception  of  the 
Captain,  who  sent  an  excuse  of  ill- 
ness. Michael  Jackson  was  nomi- 
nated and  unanimously  chosen  to  fill 
his  place.  Wasting  no  time  in  re- 
turning thanks,  he  at  once  marched 
his  men  to  the  regimental  muster 
ground,  and  found  the  officers  of  cer- 
tain companies  in  council  deliberating 
as  to  further  plans.  As  soon  as  Gen- 
eral Jackson  had  an  opportunity  to 
speak,  he  told  them  no  brave  men 
would  stop  to  deliberate,  all  they 
needed  to  do  was  to  pursue  the  en- 
emy to  Lexington,  and  no  time  was 
to  be  lost.  The  council  broke  up  and 
all  proceeded  to  Lexington,  where 
they  arrived  in  time  to  engage  the 
enemy,  until  they  re-entered  Boston. 


The  following  letter,  written  from 
Savannah,  in  1823,  from  Ebenezer 
Jackson,  to  his  son,  Ebenezer,  jr.  con- 
cerning his  grandfather's  brilliant 
service  during  the  Revolutionary 
War,  pictures  the  scenes  as  nothing 
else  can  do. 


704 


nf  3:arUj  Ammran  Warrinra 


PORTRAIT  OF  A  REVOLUTIONARY  MATRON 
—Mary  Wright,  Daughter  of  Captain  Wright,  a  friend  of 
the  Jacksons—  She  married  Richard  AIsop,  merchant,  ship 
owuer,  and  successful  Wrst  Indian  trader  —  After  her 
husband's  drath  she  took  the  management  of  the  business 
and  became  an  importer  of  sugar,  mo'asses  and  mahogany 

SAVANNAH,  MAY  7™,  1823. 
MY  DEAR  SON: 

With  respect  to  the  history  of  my  late 
father's  life,  my  recollections  are  imper- 
fect. I  believe  the  date  of  his  age  and 
death  is  recorded  in  his  family  Bible  now 
at  Middletown.  When  quite  a  young  man 
he  was  appointed  a  subaltern  officer  and 
was  attached  to  one  of  the  Massachusetts 
Provincial  Regiments.  I  do  not  recollect 
to  have  heard  him  say  what  services  he 
performed.  I  think  he  marched  to  join 
Gen.  Amerst  at  Ticonderoga  or  Ft.  Ed- 
ward. On  his  return  from  this  tour  of 
duty  to  the  Westward,  he  engaged  and 
went  with  the  Provincial  Troops  as  a  sub- 
altern at  the  taking  of  the  Island  of  Cane 
Breton  where  he  saw  some  service.  He 
was  one  of  those  who  under  a  disguise  of 
Indian  dress  destroyed  the  tea  in  Boston 
at  the  commencement  of  the  Revolution. 
At  the  early  commencement  of  the  trou- 
bles between  England  and  her  colonies, 
when  the  people  in  the  different  towns  in 
New  England  began  to  prepare  an  opposi- 
tion to  the  Mother  Country  by  raising 
Minute  Companies  to  be  ready  at  a  mo- 


mcnt's  call,  and  to  be  better  disciplined 
than  the  common  Militia,  a  company  was 
raised  in  Newton,  and  the  command 
assigned  to  Capt.  Michael  Jackson,  in  con- 
sequence of  his  former  military  experi- 
ences, and  the  high  opinion  they  enter- 
tained of  his  courage  and  personal  firm- 
ness. This  Company  he  lead  into  the 
memorable  first  battle  of  Lexington,  at 
which  time  all  the  officers  were  armed  with 
guns,  and  my  father  who  was  a  firstrate 
shot,  informed  me  that  he  had  32  thirtv- 
two  very  fair  and  deliberate  shots  at  the 
enemy  on  that  day.  Soon  after  this  battle, 
Captain  Michael  Jackson  was  promoted  to 
the  rank  of  Major  in  the  Regiment  com- 
manded by  Col.  Gardner,  who  afterwards 
lost  his  life  from  wounds  received  in  the 
Battle  of  Blinker  Hill.  At  the  Battle  of 
Bunker's  Hill,  Major  Michael  Jackson 
acted  in  the  most  spirited  manner  during 
the  whole  of  that  action,  and  informed  me 
repeatedly  that  on  that  day  he  had  forty- 
two  very  fair  shots  at  the  enemy,  many  of 
which  were  deliberately  fired  as  near  a 
Eleven  to  Thirty  yards  distance,  and  I 
think  he  said  his  piece  was  loaded  with  a 
ball  and  3  buckshot.  He  informed  me 


RARE  PAINTING  OF  A  REVOLUTIONARY 
MOTH  ER— Mrs.  Wright,  wife  cf  Captain  Wright— Her 
ancient  home  was  built  of  the  first  bricks  that  were  ever 
made  in  her  State,  and  probably  in  all  New  England 


705 


3nttmate 


of  SUral  Ammran  (Etttjnts 


ANCIENT  CANVAS  OF  FIRST  MAYOR  OF  AN  OLD  AMERICAN  MUNICIPALITY-Colonel  Jabez 
Hamlin,  a  politician  of  the  Revolutionary  period,  a  friend  of  the  family  of  General  Jackson,  and  first  Mayor  of 
Middletown— His  love  affairs  are  an  interesting  story— When  a  student  at  Yale  he  stood  on  the  dock  one  Com- 
mencement Day  looking  out  into  Long  Island  Sound  through  a  field  glass— In  a  sloop  he  spied  a  girl 
— Young  Hamlin  exclaimed  '•  That  girl  sh*ll  02  my  wife,"  and  ths  wedding  occurred  a  few  weeks  later 


that  the  day  was  so  very  hot  that  he  threw 
away  his  coat  and  on  the  retreat  near  the 
margin  of  Bunker's  Hill  towards  Cam- 
bridge, he  rallied  about  twenty-five  men, 
all  he  could  collect,  and  made  a  stand, 
which  checked  the  advance  of  the  British, 
as  they  suspected  some  kind  of  an  ambush, 
that  he  and  his  little  party  stood  their 
ground  until  they  had  discharged  ten  or 
twelve  rounds,  and  often  within  twelve 
yards  of  each  other,  that  in  the  last  skir- 
mish, while  taking  aim  at  the  enemy,  he 
received  a  ball  through  his  Bayonet  Belt 
which  passed  through  his  jacket  and  shirt, 
just  drawing  blood  from  the  side  of  his 
ribs,  and  passed  through  the  other  side  of 
his  Bayonet  Belt,  so  that  to  see  him  after 
the  action,  it  would  appear  that  the  ball 
must  have  passed  through  his  body.  What 
saved  his  life  on  that  occasion  was  the 
attitude  in  which  he  threw  his  body  while 


taking  aim  at  the  enemy.  It  was  acknowl- 
edged by  all  his  acquaintances  that  Major 
Michael  Jackson  has  performed  most  dis- 
tinguished and  gallant  services  to  his  coun- 
try on  that  memorable  day.  Major 
Michael  Jackson  was  immediately  after 
promoted  to  the  rank  of  Lieut.  Colonel  in 
one  of  the  Regiments  of  the  Massachusetts 
Line,  which  was  ordered  on  in  the  year 
1776  to  the  defence  of  New  York.  This 
Regiment  was  stationed  at  Hell  Gate,  be- 
fore which  the  British  opened  several 
heavy  batteries  of  cannon  and  Mortars, 
and  during  eight  days  the  cannonading  and 
bombarding  was  continued  mostly  day  and 
night  until  all  our  great  guns  were  dis- 
mounted and  incapable  of  further  use. 
About  this  time  or  a  few  days  after,  the 
action  of  York  Island  took  place.  Col. 
Michael  Jackson  was  in  the  hottest  of  this 
action,  and  a  ball  from  the  enemy  carried 

706 


nf  lEarlg  Ammran  Jiarrtnra 


away  a  part  of  the  smaller  part  of  the 
breach  of  his  musket,  and  cut  his  fingers 
slightly.  Soon  after  the  Americans  re- 
treated from  York  Island,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Fort  Washington.  While  the  Regi- 
ment to  which  Col.  Michael  Jackson  was 
attached  lay  a  little  above  King's  Bridge, 
General  Health  projected  an  expedition  to 
capture  an  Island,  called  Montresor's  on 
the  East  River,  where  there  were  about  80 
British  Troops,  with  fifty  or  sixty  officers 
belonging  to  the  British  Army.  The  com- 
mand was  given  to  Col.  Jackson,  allowing 
him  to  take  260  men  as  volunteers.  They 
went  in  5  boats,  and  passing  down  the 
Harlem  River,  the  American  sentinels  fre- 
quently fired  upon  the  boats,  and  gave  the 
alarm  to  the  British  on  the  Island.  On 
Col.  Jackson's  arrival  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Harlem  River,  he  reported  to  General 
Scott  then  commanding  on  the  spot,  and 
asked  his  orders,  what  he  should  do.  Gen. 
Scott  replied  that  Col.  Jackson  might  do 
as  he  pleased.  His  reply  then  was,  "I 
must  go  on,  but  must  proceed  under  every 
disadvantage."  Accordingly  he  arranged 
his  plans,  so  that  one  boat  with  60  men. 
commanded  by  a  Captain,  should  advance 
on  the  right,  and  another  boat  of  equal 
force  to  advance  on  his  left,  and  with 
three  boats  he  would  lead  the  van  in  the 
centre.  His  own  leading  boat  was  the 
smallest  with  only  42  men.  Commenced 
their  approaches  to  the  Island.  There 
was  no  means  of  chaining  the  boats  to- 
gether, so  that  as  the  leading  boat  ad- 
vanced, the  British  in  perfect  order  hailed 
the  van  boat  and  ordered  them  to  lay  on 
their  oars.  Col.  Jackson  told  them  not  to 
fire,  and  pushed  forward  his  boat  for  the 
shore.  The  British  commenced  a  heavy 
fire  on  the  boats,  and  all  the  boats  fled  with 
the  exception  of  the  one  in  which  Col. 
Jackson  was,  who  effected  their  landing, 
charged  and  drove  the  British,  expecting 
to  be  instantly  seconded  by  the  troops  in 
his  four  other  boats.  The  British  seeing 
the  party  so  small  renewed  the  attack. 
Major  Hendly,  an  aid  of  Genl.  Heath,  who 
had  volunteered  his  services  was  killed, 
the  Major  who  was  second  in  command 
was  badly  wounded,  and  a  Captain  of  the 
British  Navy  who  had  taken  part  with  the 
Americans  and  volunteered  his  services  on 
this  occasion,  fell  dead,  and  Col.  Jackson 
received  an  ounce  ball  about  2  inches  be- 
low the  right  knee,  which  split  one  bone 
and  broke  the  other  bone  of  the  leg.  So 
severe  was  the  shock,  not  more  than  12 
yards  off,  that  he  fell  to  the  ground.  His 
men  came  to  his  assistance,  and  told 
him  he  was  deserted  by  all  his  other  boats, 
and  they  urged  him  to  allow  them  to  assist 
him  to  the  boat,  and  endeavor  to  effect 
their  retreat,  which  they  did  under  a  most 
galling  fire.  The  whole  party  of  42  was 
killed  or  wounded,  with  the  exception 
of  8,  and  there  were  counted  32  ball  holes 

TOT 


through  the  sides  of  the  boat  on  her 
arrival  back.  Several  captains  were  broke 
for  cowardice,  and  Col.  Jackson  languished 
for  eighteen  months  before  the  ball  could 
be  extracted,  and  I  have  it  in  my  posses- 
sion, being  so  bruised  by  the  bones  that  it 
measured  I-J4  inches  in  length  and  ^  inc. 
in  width.*  In  the  organization  of  the 
army  at  the  commencement  of  the  year 
'777.  Col.  Jackson  was  promoted  to  com- 
mand of  the  8th  Massachusetts  Regiment, 
and  as  soon  as  he  had  sufficiently  recov- 
ered from  his  wounds,  he  took  the  com- 
mande  of  his  Regiment,  and  continued 
that  command  until  he  was  promoted  to 
the  rank  of  Brevet  Brigadier  General,  and 
in  November  1783,  with  the  rest  of  the 
Revolutionary  Army,  honorably  disbanded, 
and  retired  to  private  life. 

I  have  written  the  foregoing  in  great 
haste,  and  from  my  best  recollection. 
When  you  write  it  over  again,  do  not  say 
too  much,  but  try  to  imitate  Facities  of 
whom  Pliny  said  everything  he  wrote 
would  be  immortal.  How  interesting  is  a 
plain,  simple  and  well  told  story  or  narra- 
tive. Your  ever  effectionate  father, 

E.  JACKSON. 


An  interesting  incident  related  by 
General  Jackson  during  the  Battle  of 
Bunker  Hill  is  that  on  the  retreat  he 
met  quite  an  aged  man  standing  by  a 
stone  wall  armed  with  a  musket 
which  he  was  loading  with  swan  shot 
from  his  hat  that  lay  on  the  ground 
between  his  feet ;  to  the  urgent  ad- 
vice of  Major  Jackson  that  he  should 
leave  the  field,  he  replied:  "I  must 
have  one  shot  more,"  and  curiosity 
detained  the  major  long  enough  to 
see  what  the  effect  would  be  of  am- 
munition. When  the  charge  struck 
the  British  line,  one  man  fell,  and 
others  were  evidently  wounded,  but 
Major  Jackson  was  never  able  to 
learn  who  the  brave  old  patriot  was, 
or  what  was  his  fate.  Perhaps  the 
nearest  of  General  Jackson's  personal 
fiiends  was  a  man  of  whom  every 
patriotic  American  should  justly  be 
proud,  although  for  many  years, 
through  the  force  of  circumstances, 
his  name  rested  under  a  cloud,  only 


*This  bullet  is  now  in  the  possession  of 
the  New  England  Genealogical  &  Histori- 
cal Society. 


Ancient  Miniature  of 

Charlotte  Fenwick 

a  Beauty  of  the  Revolutionary  Period 
in  America 


Original  in  Possession  of 
Mr.   Charles  Eben  Jackson 


Jnttmai*  Jblaiuma  of  JtrHl  Ammratt  (Ettt 


in  the  end  to  shine  clearly  and  truly. 
This  man  was  General  William  Hull. 
In  the  following  words  he  informed 
one  of  General  Jackson's  sons  of  the 
death  of  his  father,  General  Hull  be- 
ing one  of  the  executors  of  his  will. 

NEWTON,  ZOTH  APRIL,  1801. 
DEAR  FRIEND: 

Before  this  reaches  you,  you  probably 
will  have  heard  of  the  death  of  your 
Father.  On  the  I4th  inst,  his  funeral  was 
attended  with  all  the  honors  which  possi- 
bly could  have  been  conferred  on  him. 
For  a  particular  account  of  it,  I  refer  you 
to  your  brother  Ebenezer.  He  died  as  he 
lived,  firm,  dignified,  and  satisfied.  En- 
closed is  a  copy  of  his  will.  He  men- 
tioned you  in  his  last  moments  with  tender 
affection.  I  was  with  him  when  he  ex- 
pired, and  he  was  easy  and  tranquil.  I 
hope  your  health  is  restored,  and  shall 
have  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  this  Sum- 
mer. It  would  be  a  happiness  inexpressi- 
ble to  your  mother. 

I  am  very  sincerely  your  friend. 
WILLIAM  HULL. 

This  friendship  continued  not  only 
during  the  life  of  General  Jackson, 
but  into  the  lives  of  his  children  and 
grandchildren.  In  1824,  when  Gen- 
eral Hull  first  published  the  accounts 
of  his  campaign  in  the  War  of  1812, 
he  wrote  several  letters  to  Ebenezer 
Jackson,  junior.  The  following  two 
are  of  the  greatest  interest,  showing 
his  strength  of  character  and  deep 
feeling.  

NEWTON,  27.  JANUARY  1824. 
DEAR  SIR: 

I  have  received  of  the  lost,  and  we  were 
highly  gratified  with  the  account  you  gave 
of  our  children  at  Augusta,  particularly  of 
the  character  you  gave  of  our  dear  Grand- 
daughter Sarah — I  took  the  liberty,  a  few 
days  ago  to  prepare  a  sketch  of  my  revo- 
lutionary services,  with  a  number  of  docu- 
ments, to  substantiate  the  facts  stated 
which  I  enclosed  and  sent  you.  I  did  it 
at  the  earnest  request  of  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Campbell,  who  wrote  to  me  that  they  con- 
versed with  you  on  the  subject,  and  you 
was  so  kind  as  to  say  you  would  arrange 
from  such  documents,  and  select  such  as 
would  arrange  from  such  documents,  and 
select  such  as  would  be  suitable  to  present 
to  Mr.  Walsh,  I  likewise  enclose  letters 
to  my  friends  Messrs.  Binny  and  Sergeant 
on  the  subject,  as  it  is  a  large  packet  I  left 
it  with  Dr  Qark  of  Boston,  to  be  sent  by 
a  private  conveyance.  My  time,  this  win- 
ter, has  been  employed  in  writing  memo- 

709 


ries  of  my  unfortunate  campaign  of  1812- 
6  have  nearly  completed  them,  Mr.  Ben- 
jamine  Russell  Esqr,  the  printer  of  the 
Columbian  Centinel,  has  read  a  few  of  the 
numbers,  and  is  very  desirous  of  publish- 
ing them  in  his  paper — He  offers  to  begin 
where  I  am  prepared.  He  does  it  gratis, 
and  presses  me  very  hard  for  the  privi- 
lege, as  he  calls  it.  Perhaps  when  it  is 
published  Mr.  Walsh  may  be  desirous  of 
examining  it— it  will  be  founded  on 
authentic  documents,  principally  from  the 
records  of  the  Government  And,  certi- 
fied by  the  present  Secretary  of  War, — the 
former  Secretaries  refused  them  to  me.  I 
do  not  know  that  Dr.  Qark  has  as  yet,  had 
a  "private  opportunity  to  send  you  the 
packet  to  which  I  alluded  if  not  it  shall 
be  sent  on.  In  looking  over  my  old  papers 
I  found  the  account  which  I  wrote  of  your 
Grandfather's  funeral  which  was  printed. 
I  do  myself  the  pleasure  of  sending  you 
the  original.  With  very  great  respects, 
and  with  strong  wishes  for  your  prosperity 
and  Happiness. 

I  am  your  Friend,  and., 
Most  O.  B.  S. 
WILLIAM  HULL. 

P.  S.  As  it  may  be  a  satisfaction  to  you. 
I  enclose  a  small  lock  of  your  Grandfath- 
er's hair  which  we  have  preserved,  from 
our  high  respect  to  his  memory. 


Three  months  later  General  Hull 
writes : 

NEWTON,  ITTH  APRIL  1824. 
DEAR  SIR  : 

Next  Monday,  the  igth  inst,  the  first 
number  of  my  memours  will  be  published 
in  the  Statesman,  a  republican  paper  .  .  . 
it  will  likewise  be  published  in  a  daily 
paper,  edited  by  Mr.  Buckingham  and 
probably  a  considerable  part  of  the  first 
number,  and  the  others  will  be  copied  in 
the  Sentinel.  .  .  .  The  first  is  merely 
an  introductory  address — The  whole  will 
contain  about  35  numbers,  and  two  will  be 
published  every  week,  until  the  whole  are 
finished.  ....  Mr.  Walsh  will  have  an 
opportunity  of  seeing  them  and  by  the 
documents  and  evidence  which  will  be  pub- 
lished in  support  of  the  facts,  and  be  able 
to  form  an  opinion  on  that  of  our  History. 
From  what  I  know  of  his  character,  I  feel 
confident,  truth  alone  will  be  his  motive. 
When  I  was  ordered  to  Philadelphia  for 
my  trial,  I  reed,  great  attention:  and  lib- 
erality and  candour  were  manifested.  .  .  . 
All  I  can  now  wish  is,  that  the  subject 
may  excite  inquiry,  and  the  facts  may  be 
known,  as  thus  alone  I  depend  for  the  vin- 
dication of  my  honour,  and  the  rectitude 
of  my  conduct  ...  all  my  statements 
are  proven  by  the  records  of  the  Govern- 
ment, and  the  best  evidence  the  nature  of 
the  case  will  admit  The  Administrator 


0f  lutrlg  Am^rtran  Harrtars 


OLD  PRINT  OF  ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  MEETING  HOUSES  IN  AMERICA-The  first  church  was  twenty 
feet  square  and  surrounded  by  palisades.  The  congregation  was  summoned  to  meeting  by  the  tap  of  a  drum, 
presented  to  the  town  by  Giles  Hamlin.  A  guard  of  eight  men  and  a  corporal  were  kept  outside  during  service. 
This  meeting  house  was  located  in  the  ancient  community  of  Middletown  in  the  Colony  of  Connecticut 


Genl.  Dearborn,  the  Court  Martial,  and 
other  officers  will  be  deeply  implicated. 
There  will  be  powerful  opposition  to  my 
attempt  to  exhibit  the  truth  of  the  events 
which  then  took  place.  .  .  .  Many 
characers  who  now  have  great  influence 
will  be  brought  into  view  in  a  manner  not 
pleasant  to  themselves,  or  friends.  .  .  . 
Fearless  of  any  consequences  I  shall  tell 
the  truth,  and  produce  evidence  in  support 
of  it  ...  If  there  is  any  action  of  my 
life,  on  which  I  reflect  with  pleasure  un- 
mixed with  any  alloy,  it  is  my  conduct  for 
which  I  have  been  condemned — Nothing 
influenced  me  but  a  sense  of  duty,  and  my 
strong  wish  is  to  show  that  even  my  judge- 
ment did  not  deceive  me,  and  that  I  faith- 
fully performed  my  duty.  .  .  .  I  hope 
you  will  receive  the  papers  in  which  the 
History  of  these  events  will  be  published, 
and  I  have  no  other  request  but  that  my 
fellow  sitizens,  will  form  an  opinion  of  the 
facts,  which  will  be  proven.  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Campbell  will  be  in  Phil,  probably  in  May. 
.  .  .  In  conformity  to  their  opinion  I 
have  published  the  History  of  my  cam- 
paign in  the  republican  paper.  It  has 
already  excited  much  attention  here,  and 
probably  will  be  published  in  many  papers. 
With  true  friendship,  it  is  a  happiness  to 
me  to  subscribe  myself. 

Your  very  sincere  and  effectionate 

friend. 
WILLIAM  HULL. 

PS.  I  sympathize  most  sincerely  with 
your  family  in  the  death  of  so  admirable  a 
character  and  so  useful  a  citizen  as  your 


uncle  Amasa.    I  hope  you  will  not  come  to 

M without   visiting   this   part   of   the 

country  and  viewing  the  spot,  which  was 
the  residence  of  your  venerable  ancestor, 
and  the  Tomb  where  his  remains  rest,  and 
making  my  house  your  home — in  such  a 
visit,  I  think  you  would  find  an  interest 
and  it  at  least  would  make  us  happy. 

Mrs.  Ruth  Parker  Jackson  often 
tcld  many  thrilling  stories  of  the 
events  that  occurred  while  she  was 
with  her  husband  at  Washington's 
headquarters.  Here  she  nursed  the 
sick  and  cared  for  the  wounded  sol- 
diers, often  feeling  that  she  was  need- 
ed at  home,  and  must  go.  General 
Washington  would  urge  her  to  re- 
main. The  late  Governor  Eustis,  who 
had  been  a  surgeon  in  General  Jack- 
son's regiment,  said:  "I  remember  of 
meeting  him  once  at  General  Wash- 
ington's table  at  West  Point,  and 
after  the  cloth  had  been  removed,  the 
General  beckoned  to  Colonel  Jackson 
to  come  and  take  a  seat  by  him,  and 
unbent  himself  more  than  I  ever  saw 
him  do  to  anyone."  The  following 
letter  written  to  Ebenezer  Jackson, 
junior,  January  n,  1841,  brings  to 
light  some  additional  facts  concern- 
ing this  time : 


Snttmafr 


of  Jtrat  Amrriran  (Ettt 


MR.  JACKSON: 

Thinking  you  might  be  pleased  as  I  was 
to  see  your  Grandfather's  name  and 
weight,  with  men  of  such  weight  of  char- 
acter) and  supposing  you  might  not  see 
the  Observer,  I  transcribe  it  for  you.  Do 
you  remember  your  Grandmother?  She 
was  an  excellent  woman,  hours  have  I  lis- 
tened to  her  account  of  events  that  oc- 
curred while  she  was  with  her  Husband  at 
the  headquarters  of  Gen.  Washington — 
Sometimes  she  said  when  she  talked  of 
leaving  for  her  home  where  she  was  much 
wanted — General  Washington  would  say — 
"do  not  leave  us  Mrs.  Jackson,  I  would 
sooner  spare  any  General  officer  of  the 
Army."  The  soldiers  she  said  called  her 
Mother,  and  were  so  grateful  for  hei* 
attentions  to  them  when  sick  or  wounded, 
that  it  repaid  her  for  all  that  she  did — She 
gave  me  a  detailed  account  of  the  dreadful 
scenes  of  the  poor  wounded  soldiers  who 
attempted  to  scale  Stony  point— and  her 
manner  of  treating  them — administering  at 
the  same  time,  spiritual  comfort  to  them — 
Indeed  Sir,  she  was  an  excellent  woman, 
and  deserves  a  monument  to  her  memory 
far  more  than  many  that  receive  at  this 
time  these  marks  of  late  approbation.  But 
the  extract: 

The  following  memorandum  was  found 
a  number  of  years  ago  in  the  pocket-book 
of  an  officer  of  the  Massachusetts  Line: 

WEIGHT  OF   MILITARY   MEN 

August  19,  1783. 
Weighed  at  the  scales  at  West  Point. 

X    General  Washington 209  Ibs 

X    General  Lincoln 224    " 

X    General  Knox 280   " 

General   Huntington 132    ' 

General  Greaton 166    ' 

Colonel   Swift 219    " 

"       M.  Jackson 252   " 

"       H.  Jackson 238   " 

X    Lt  Colonel  Huntington 232   " 

"       Cobb 186     " 

X     "         "       Humphreys 221     " 

Five  of  the  gentlemen  named  I  have 
seen,  with  three  was  well  acquainted — 
This  record  proves  them  men  of  weight, 
and  most  fine  looking  men  was  those  I 
have  marked — Col.  Huntington  was  among 
the  handsomest  men  of  his  time,  and  that 
is  saying  much — for  this  State  had  some  of 
the  finest  looking  men  at  that  period  that 
ever  appeared  probably  in  our  world — 
Ogden  Merely,  Pierpont  Edwards,  John 
Williams,  Donnal  Mitchel,  Gideon  Granger, 
Enoch  Huntington  of  this  town,  the  two 
Hosmers — were  all  handsome  men — Gen. 
Knox  and  Col.  Humphreys  were  fine  per- 
sons and  well  looking. 

This  memorandum  pleased  me,  I  hope 
it  will  you,  Sir.  My  compliments  to  the 
ladies  of  your  family. 

H.  WHITTELSEY. 
JANUARY  n,  1841. 

7" 


Mrs.  Benedict  Arnold  drank  tea 
with  Mrs.  Jackson  at  the  latter's  home 
or  quarters  the  night  of  the  trea- 
son, and  remembered  perfectly  that 
Arnold  would  not  sit  down  but  with 
teacup  in  hand  stood  by  the  window 
looking  across  the  river,  as  later  facts 
proved,  watching  for  the  signal  that 
the  boat  was  ready  to  take  him  to  the 
enemy's  camp.  And  it  is  remarkable 
that  Mrs.  Jackson's  grandson  mar- 
ried a  granddaughter  of  Mrs.  Com- 
fort Sage,  wife  of  General  Sage, 
of  Middletown,  who,  after  Arnold 
burned  New  London,  and  the  mas- 
sacre of  Fort  Griswold,  for  a  time 
sheltered  and  cared  for  his  two  young 
sons,  and  when  he  was  burned  in 
effigy  in  Middletown  and  the  streets 
were  filled  with  a  mob,  drew  the  win- 
dow shutters  closely  and  passed  an 
anxious  night  lest  the  children  should 
learn  the  cause  of  the  uproar.  Some 
years  later,  when  a  young  man,  one 
of  these  boys  called  upon  Mrs.  Sage 
in  Montreal  to  express  the  gratitude 
he  should  always  feel  for  the  kind- 
ness shown  him  by  the  wife  of  Gen- 
eral Sage. 

After  General  Jackson,  under  the 
disguise  of  Indian  dress,  helped  to 
destroy  the  tea  in  Boston  harbor,  he 
forbade  the  use  of  it  in  his  house  un- 
til the  tax  should  be  removed,  but 
Mrs.  Jackson,  who  had  melted  her 
teaspoons  into  bullets  for  her  hus- 
band, could  not  forego  so  delicious  a 
concoction,  and  often,  during  the 
General's  absence,  brewed  for  her 
friends  a  cup  while  they  chatted  over 
their  knitting;  if  her  husband  came 
home  unexpectedly,  the  teapot  was 
quietly  placed  in  the  deep  drawer  of 
Mrs.  Jackson's  tea  table  and  the  con- 
versation moved  on  as  before.  When 
the  fire  burns  low  on  the  hearth  at 
"Walnut  Grove"  and  the  evening 
shadows  come  and  go,  again,  to  fu- 
ture generations  shall  these  tales  be 
told  with  increasing  pride. 


Ammra'a    ®rthiit?    to 


A  (Trutrnntal  (Oiir  to  (Lamlt  &*  iiurhautbrau 


BT 


JOHN  GAYLORD  DAVENPORT,  D.D. 


SHIS  is  the  centenary  of  the 
death    of    Jean    Baptiste 
Donation  de  Vineure,the 
gallant  Count  de   Roch- 
ambeau,    who,     when 
America  declared  her  In- 
dependence   from    Mother    England, 
became     inspired     with     liberty    and 
came  to  this  country  in  1780  in  com- 
mand of  a  considerable  force  of  his 
fellow  countrymen  to  enter  the  con- 
flict   for   the   American   people.     He 
fixed    his    headquarters    at    Newport 
and,  having  concerted  his  plans  with 
General  Washington,  he  marched  to 
the  neighborhood  of  New  York  in  the 


summer  of  1781,  effected  a  junction 
with  his  ally,  and  the  two  moved  rap- 
idly southward  toward  Yorktown. 
Rochambeau  conducted  courageous 
assaults  on  the  town  and  was  one  of 
the  great  factors  in  its  ultimate  cap- 
ture. He  returned  to  France  in  1783 
and  later  became  a  field  marshal,  but 
was  inconspicuous  in  the  French  Rev- 
olution. He  died  in  1807  at  the  age 
of  eighty-two  years.  During  his 
long  life  he  served  in  the  War  of  the 
Austrian  Succession  and  the  Seven 
Years'  War.  With  Lafayette,  he  was 
the  principal  French  military  figure 
in  the  great  American  Revolution. 


Soldiers  of  long  ago, 

Who  with  brave  Rochambeau, 

Here  came  to  stand  for  liberty  and  right, 
Across  the  flood  of  years 
Your  noble  course  appears, 
Dimming  our  eyes  with  tears, 
Waking  our  eager  cheers, 

And  sphering  you  in  an  immortal  light. 

Your  valor  we  recall, 

Your  sacrifice,  and  all 
The  struggle  fierce  you  made  for  us  and 
ours. 

The  ceaseless  flight  of  time 

But  speaks  your  act  sublime; 

The  hurrying  centuries  chime 

In  grand,  heroic  rhyme, 
This  noble  consecration  of  your  powers. 


Ah,  we  can  ne'er  forget 
The  princely  Lafayette 

Who  came  to  aid  us  in  our  time  of  need ; 
Nor  gallant  Rochambeau 
And  Count  de  Grasse,  whose  blow 
Routed  our  mighty  foe 
That  all  the  world  might  know 

America  from  bonds  forever  freed! 

And  many  another  came 
In  Liberty's  great  name 

Inspiring  us  to  valor  in  the  fight. 
O  France,  thou  radiant  land, 
By  Freedom's  fervor  fanned, 
'Twas  thine  with  us  to  stand  • 
Thrilling  our  feeble  band 

To    tireless   struggle   here   for   manhood's 
right ! 


A  <E?nt?nntal  ©b?  tn  (Enuttt  U0rljamb*au 


We  love  to  tell  the  tale, 
Our  "Benefactor"  hail, 

And  bless  the  great  Republic  o'er  the  sea, 
Long  may  the  triple  hue. 
The  red,  the  white,  the  blue. 
The  strong,  the  pure,  the  true, 
Its  shining  way  pursue, 

A  morning  star  that  lights  to  liberty ! 


Lies 


In  glorious  slumber  deep 
Our  Lafayette  asleep 
»  'neath  its  folds,  his  form  a  priceless 

trust; 

And  there  the  men  that  pressed 
This  daisied  soil  found  rest. 
Their  memory  fondly  blessed 
By  millions  of  the  West, 
Who  love  the  land  that  holds  their  sacred 

dust 

This  humble  ode  we  rear 

To  sons  of  France  who  here 
Or  elsewhere  stood  for  us  in  distant  days. 

To  every  passer-by, 

As  years  and  decades  fly, 

Its  willing  lips  will  cry 

The  tale  that  must  not  die, 
And    yield    our    noble    helpers    deathless 
praise.  >•> 


God  of  the  Nations,  now 

Beneath  thy  heavens  we  bow 
And  own  Thy  grace  and  majesty  supreme. 

Long  as  these  hills  shall  stand. 

The  glory  of  our  land, 

May  all  the  service  grand 

Wrought  by  the  noble  band 
That  came  to  aid  us,  be  the  patriot's  theme ! 

We  humbly  pray  Thee,  keep, 

Whether  we  wake  or  sleep, 
The  monument  that  tells  the  noble  tale! 

Shield  it  when  tempests  lower 

From  their  destructive  power, 

And  in  the  fateful  hour, 

When  timid  mortals  cower, 
Let  lightning's  flash  nor  earthquake  shock 
assail ! 

While  morn  with  rose-red  hue 
This  column  shall  imbue, 

And  noon  its  white  and  eve  its  blue  shall 

shed, 

May  the  dear  flags  that  tell 
Of  those  who  nobly  fell 
While  nations  tolled  their  knell 
Both  sides  the  ocean's  swell. 

Still  float  in  splendor,  blue  and  white  and 
red! 


An  Attwto?  of  (tent 

in  Ammra 


BT 

SUSAN  E.  M.  JOCELYN 

GRAXD  DAUGHTER  or  THK  HKROINK  or  THIS  INCIDENT 


narrative    of    Count 
Rochambeau's     romantic 
experience     in     America 
is   absolutely    true,    even 
to  the  remark  of  Roch- 
ambeau    concerning    the 
heroine,  and  repeated  by  Aunt  Sary, 
Luciannah    Smith    before    marriage. 


She  was  the  daughter  of  Lieutenant 
James  Smith  and  mother  of  Nathaniel 
Jocelyn,  the  distinguished  American 
portrait  painter.  The  author  is  a 
daughter  of  Nathaniel  Jocelyn  and 
the  facts  here  related  have  come 
down  through  her  family  and  are 
now  recorded  *  historical  anecdote. 


713 


"(Ham 


la 


Sarah,  whose  fin- 
£ers  had  for  an  hour 
plied  wearily  through 
monotonous  exercises, 
Save  a  sigh  of  relief 
when  the  clock  struck 
five. 

Jerking  the  old  green  instruction 
book  from  the  piano  rack  and  compla- 
cently spreading  in  its  place  her  first 
sheet  music,  she  gave  sundry  prelim- 
inary twitches  at  her  pink  gingham 
skirt,  a  final  painstaking  adjustment 
of  her  weight  on  the  piano-stool,  then 
braced  herself  for  a  fresh  start,  and 
brisk  little  notes  came  twinkling  from 
rosy  finger-tips. 

Sarah  played  them  well,  bringing 
gay  dancers  to  the  mind's  eye  as  she 
dashed  along,  the  melody  floating  out 
through  the  open  window  to  the 
piazza,  where  the  grandmother  in  a 
shaded  corner  made  a  perfect  picture 
of  peace  and  beauty  in  old  age. 

In  an  old-fashioned  rocker,  straight 
and  regal  she  sat,  the  soft  folds  of  her 
black  dress  falling  in  pleasing  curves 
about  her,  and  the  white  kerchief  gen- 
tly outlining  her  bust  and  shoulders. 
A  widow's  cap  with  its  band  of  black 
brought  into  strong  relief  the  bur- 
nished silver  of  her  hair,  shading  a 
brow  of  marked  smoothness,  and  the 
eyes  of  that  unusual  shade  of  blue, 
matching  the  sea,  still  retained  their 
sparkle,  and  deepened  the  roses  which 
the  suns  of  many  summers  had  "set" 
in  her  cheeks. 

When  the  bright  quick  notes  fell 
upon  her  ear,  the  rocker  ceased  for  a 
moment  its  gentle  sway,  and  a  new 
ripple  of  light  came  into  the  blue  eyes. 
Swift-flying  needles  grew  quiet  and 
the  half-formed  stocking  dropped  un- 
heeded in  her  lap;  then  bending  for- 
ward to  listen,  she  caught  the  time  of 


the  swift  swinging  measures,  and  her 
head  nodded  in  unison  through  all 
the  quick  turns. 

"Sary,"  she  called  when  the  last 
note  was  sounded. 

"Yes,  grandma,"  answered  the 
young  musician. 

"What  was  that  tune  you  were 
playing,  child?"  and  Grandma's  voice 
had  a  tone  indicating  more  than  pass- 
ing interest. 

"'Come,  Haste  to  the  Wedding/ 
grandma;  pretty,  isn't  it?"  and  young 
Sarah  parted  the  muslin  curtains  and 
sprang  through  the  long  windows  to 
her  grandmother's  side.  "You  must 
have  heard  it  before  this,  grandma," 
she  said.  "It  is  an  old  song,  pub- 
lished in  England  almost  a  hundred 
years  ago,  so  my  teacher  says." 

"It  was  new  to  me  when  I  heard  it, 
'way  back  in  1781.  I  danced  to  that 
tune  with  "  and  Grandma  hesi- 
tated, then  added  in  a  slightly  exult- 
ant tone,  "with  Rochambeau,  Sary." 

"Grandma !"  exclaimed  Sarah, 
"you  don't  mean  the  Count  de  Roch- 
ambeau in  my  history,  do  you  ?" 

Grandma  nodded  smiling  assent 
and  her  granddaughter,  a-tilt  with  in- 
terest, clamored  for  details. 

"Wait  till  I  run  and  call  Margaret," 
she  said,  and  springing  down  the 
piazza  steps  and  racing  over  the  lawn 
she  called  in  a  high  treble:  "Marga- 
ret! Margaret!  Come  in  and  hear 
about  grandma  and  the  Count  de 
Rochambeau.  Grandma  knew  him 
and  danced  with  him,  and  she's  going 
to  tell  us  all  about  him.  Come  in! 
Come  in!" 

Then  little  Sarah,  repetitious  and 
emphatic,  led  her  somewhat  incredu- 
lous sister  to  the  piazza.. 

"Grandma,  what  fairy  tale  is  this?" 
asked  Margaret,  and  grandma,  for 

7«4 


An 


nf  (Enwtt  Hnrfyamteau  ttt  Ammra 


answer,  drew  both  of  the  girls  down 
on  the  seat  beside  her.  Closing  her 
eyes,  she  sat  for  a  moment  in  silence, 
then,  with  a  far-away  look  into  the 
past,  she  said : 

"One  July  day,  just  about  sun- 
down, Sister  Sary  and  I  were  busy 
putting  away  the  tea-things,  when 
Sylvy  Hart  came  in.  She  was  full  of 
talk  and  laugh  about  the  French  sol- 
diers who  were  in  camp  near  the 
town.  The  spot  has  been  called 
Trench  Hill'  ever  since.  They  had 
marched  from  Rhode  Island  to  Con- 
necticut and  were  on  their  way  to 
meet  Washington  in  New  York.  It 
was  a  great  thing  for  Southin'ton 
folks  to  have  those  thousands  of  sol- 
diers, in  their  gay  coats,  let  right 
down  in  the  town,  all  of  a  sudden. 
All  day  they  had  been  straying 
around,  and  Sylvy  Hart  said  that  two 
of  them  stopped  at  her  house  for  a 
drink  of  water  and  her  father  invited 
them  in  to  tea. 

"Now  Sylvy  was  a  great  mimic 
and  she  showed  us  just  how  one  of 
them  made  his  manners  when  she 
passed  his  cup  to  him.  She  put  her 
hand  on  her  heart  and  made  a  low 
bow,  saying:  'Pretty  Polly,  pretty 
Polly!'  in  a  queer  little  choppy  voice, 
which  she  said  was  just  like  his.  'It 
was  his  way  of  giving  a  compliment,' 
she  tittered.  'So,'  said  she,  'I  made 
a  curtsy  and  he  made  another  bow, 
jumping  up  from  the  table  every 
time.  Oh,  Luciannah  Smith !'  she 
said,  'I  wish  Harvey  Upson  would 
act  like  that.'  She  married  Harvey 
in  the  fall,  but  he  never  learned  to  bow 
and  scrape  and  say  'Pretty  Polly !' 

"Well,  while  she  was  talking, 
Daddy  came  'round  to  the  back  steps. 
'Come,  Luciannah,'  said  he,  'you  and 
Sary  had  better  smart  yourselves  up 
a  bit  and  go  along  with  me.  There's 
a-goin'  to  be  a  dance  for  the  soldiers 
up  by  the  French  camp.  It's  no  more 
than  right  that  we  should  make  things 
sort  o'  pleasant  for  them.' 

"Sylvy  started  right  off  for  home 
to  put  herself  into  trim  and  Sary  and 


I  got  out  of  our  short  gowns  and  pet- 
ticoats in  no  time.  Mother  had  gone 
out  visiting,  so  I  dared  put  on  my 
best  white  dimity  and  red  shoes,  and 
we  wore  white  gauze  scarfs  around 
our  shoulders.  Behind  Daddy  we 
walked  up  the  road,  hardly  daring  to 
lift  our  eyes  to  the  beautiful  soldiers 
who  peered  at  us  from  every  side; 
the  green  seemed  to  be  covered  with 
them  and  the  colors  of  their  uniforms 
looked  in  the  distance  like  bright  po- 
sies growing  there. 

"Pretty  soon  we  met  Sylvy  and 
Harvey  Upson.  She  was  talking  and 
giggling  about  her  Frenchman,  which 
gave  Harvey  a  pretty  dark  face,  and 
it  looked  blacker  still  when  the  young 
soldier,  along  with  a  comrade,  came 
sidling  up,  and  with  his  hand  on  his 
heart,  took  'Pretty  Polly'  off  to  the 
dance  ground.  Sister  Sary  followed 
with  the  comrade,  leaving  me  with 
Harvey  Upson,  who  wasn't  very  good 
company  just  then. 

"After  a  while  he  said  in  a  crusty 
sort  of  a  tone:  'It's  only  the  low- 
grade  officers  who  dance  with  the 
girls.  There's  the  general,  the  Count 
Rochambeau,  he  isn't  dancing.  I 
don't  believe  he'd  take  any  of  these 
girls  for  a  partner.  See  him  over 
there?  Don't  he  look  fine?' 

"I  felt  my  color  a-risin'  and  I  guess 
I  must  have  cast  a  pretty  animated 
glance  in  the  direction  marked  by 
Harvey's  thumb,  for  in  a  minute  I 
saw  that  the  general  was  staring 
straight  at  me.  He  was  standing  a 
little  apart  from  the  others,  with  his 
arms  folded,  and  was  a  smallish  sort 
of  a  man,  but  was  as  straight  as  an 
arrow.  His  long,  dark-blue  cloth 
coat  was  faced  with  red  and  white, 
and  his  cocked  hat  bore  the  same 
colors.  He  had  dreadful  piercing 
eyes  and  I  felt  pretty  uncomfortable 
and  turned  and  looked  the  other  way 
and  fidgeted,  tying  and  untying  my 
scarf;  then  I  thought,  how  foolish  I 
am;  'tisn't  likely  he  was  noticing  me 
at  all ;  so  I  slyly  gave  another  little 
peep  at  the  red  and  white  cocked  hat 


r«5 


An  Atitttat*  nf  (Ennnt 


in  Am?rtra 


and  the  next  minute  called  upon  the 
hills  to  cover  me,  for  lo,  and  behold! 
he  was  a-crossing  right  over  towards 
me,  cocked  hat  in  hand,  and  a  smile 
on  his  face.  Then  he  stopped  short, 
sort  o'  military-like,  made  a  low  bow, 
and  said:  'Madamoiselle?'  as  though 
he  was  asking  a  question,  and  held 
out  his  hand  for  a  partner." 

"Had  he  been  introduced?"  inter- 
rupted young  Margaret,  whose  ideas 
of  propriety  were  at  that  early  age 
well-formed. 

"Introduced  ?  No,"  explained 
grandma.  "It  was  war  times,  you 
know,  Margaret,  and  this  was  a  great 
general,  who  had  come  'way  across 
the  water  to  help  us  beat  the  British. 
That  was  introduction  enough,  child; 
so  I  just  made  my  prettiest  curtsy, 
put  my  hand  in  his,  and  with  a  glance 
at  Harvey,  which  meant,  'What  do 
you  say  now?'  I  went  skipping  off 
into  the  reel  with  the  Count. 

"He  was  not  young  (fifty  years  old 
they  said  he  was),  but  oh,  how  beau- 
tifully he  danced!  I  had  no  fear  of 
making  mistakes  with  such  a  partner. 
I  suppose  that  was  the  way  he  led  his 
troops.  Whirling  and  whirling,  this 
way  and  that  way,  forward  and  back- 
ward we  went,  while  the  fiddles  were 
spinning  over  and  over  the  pretty 
tune  that  Sary  just  played.  I  have 
never  heard  it  since  till  to-day. 

"You  want  to  know  how  he  talked 
and  what  he  said?  Well,  I  guess  I 
did  most  of  the  talking.  He  could 
understand  me  better  than  I  could 
him.  I  don't  believe  I  had  ever  heard 
any  but  Southin'ton  folks  talk  before 
that  I  think  I  must  have  been 
pretty  bright  or  pretty  foolish,  for  he 
seemed  a  good  deal  amused  by  my 
talk,  and  once  he  clapped  his  hands 
and  said  some  funny  French  words. 
I  didn't  know  what  they  meant,  un- 
less they  were  for  me  to  go  on  danc- 
ing, so,  as  I  was  serving  my  country 
according  to  my  gifts,  we  danced  till 
the  moon  came  out.  Then,  when  the 


music  stopped,  the  Count  led  me  to 
my  father,  and  said  some  beautiful 
sounding  words,  kalf  English  and 
half  French  I  took  it  that  he  was 
thanking  me  for  my  company,  so  I 
said:  'Thank  you,  Sir,'  and  dropped 
a  curtsy  and  he  made  a  low  bow,  hat 
in  hand,  and  walked  away.  In  a  mo- 
ment he  turned,  looked  back,  lifted 
his  hat  once  more  and  smiled.  I  can 
see  him  now,  just  as  he  looked  then," 
and  grandma  sat  smiling  reflectively. 

"You  haven't  told  all  he  said,  Luci- 
annah,"  laughed  great-aunt  Sary 
from  behind  the  window-curtain, 
where  she  had  been  living  over  her 
own  little  part  in  the  play  of  long  ago. 
"Why,  children,"  she  continued,  quite 
regardless  of  grandma's  protesting 
hand,  "he  told  lots  of  folks  that  your 
grandmother  was  the  most  beautiful 
girl  that  he  had  seen  in  America." 

"He  hadn't  been  here  long,  chil- 
dren," was  the  modest  rejoinder,  "and 

sister,  you  shouldn't " 

"Was  Rochambeau  anything  like 
grandpa?"  interrupted  little  Sarah, 
thus  early  in  life  recognizing  cause 
and  effect. 

"Not  at  all,"  laughed  grandma. 
"I  wasn't  thinking  of  Rochambeau, 
child,  when  I  said  'yes'  to  grandpa. 
Sylvy  Hart  and  I  were  not  much 
alike."  Then,  leading  back  again  in- 
to the  past,  she  said:  "Why,  let  me 
think,  children.  I  believe  it's  just 
sixty-five  years  ago  to-day  that  all 
this  happened.  Honeysuckles  were 
in  bloom  then ;  the  air  was  sweet  with 
them,  just  as  it  is  now.  I  wore  some 
in  my  belt.  Sary,  go  play  that  tune 
once  more,"  and  grandma,  in  the 
"vision  splendid,"  again  tripped 
lightly  through  the  merry  dance  with 
the  Count. 

And  Rochambeau,  did  ever  there 
come  to  him  again  in  life 

"A  lovely  apparition,  sent 
To  be  a  moment's  ornament — 
A  dancing  shape,  an  image  gay, 
To  haunt,  to  startle,  and  waylay?" 

7.6 


of  an  Amrrtran 
in  Jtrat  $?ar0  nf  tly?  ifojmhlir 


of 

3amra  fflorria,  Vorn  in  1752 

in  uiljirli  iff  Girlie  of  bring  Qtyargrb  roith 

Violation  of  <Cb.riHttan  Jlrarr  anb  flarrb  on  erial  for 

Qlonbnrttng  a  Jlrtoatr  ^r^ool  anb  JnBtrnrting  f  onng  ffiomrn  in 

Qighrr  Eboratiuu  J*  |Jrraunal  Narratitir  of  an  Early  Crrturrr  on  iluhlir  iflorala 

ORIGINAL.  KANUSCRIPT  IN  POSSESSION  OF 

MRS.  WASHINGTON  CHOATE 

OBKAT-GBJLND-DAUOHTXR  or  JAMES  MOBBU 
SKETCHES  BT  FLOBXNCX  E.  D.  MUZZY 


wholly  unfitted  them  for  the  duties  of 
the  home. 

The  public  school  system  which  had 
been  in  crude  operation  in  America 
from  the  first  days  of  the  Dutch  in 
New  Netherlands  and  the  English 
settlements  was  practically  abandoned 
during  the  American  Revolution. 
Those  who  had  instructed  the  youth 
in  the  rudiments  of  practical  knowl- 
edge were  engaged  in  the  fight  for  In- 
dependence. As  a  result  a  generation 
was  rising  that  verged  on  illiteracy. 

This  life  story  of  a  man  who  en- 
deavored to  re-establish  it  on  a  higher 
plane  is  of  vital  interest.  James  Mor- 
ris, the  author  of  this  diary,  was  born 
in  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  in  1752, 
and  died  in  Goshen  in  1820.  He  ren- 
dered distinguished  and  patriotic  ser- 
vice in  the  Revolutionary  War.  In 
recent  years  the  vicinity  in  which  he 
was  born  has  become  the  town  of 
Morris,  in  his  memory.  Mr.  Morris 
continued  his  work  of  teaching  for 
twenty  years,  supplementing  it  with  a 
weekly  lecture  on  morals.  He  thus 
became  a  pioneer  in  the  advanced  edu- 
cation of  women.  The  original  man- 
uscript is  here  transcribed  just  as  he 
wrote  it,  and  in  it  is  woven  the  testi- 
mony of  a  man  who  participated  in 
the  War  for  American  Independence. 


^g^M^HIS  is  the  experience  of  an 
y  educator  in  the  first  days 

m  of  the  American  Repub- 

M  I  I  lie.  It  tells  of  the  perse- 
^^^^Jr  cution  that  he  met  in  at- 
tempting to  establish  a 
private  school  for  the  in- 
struction of  young  ladies  when  the 
Nation  was  in  its  beginning.  The 
public  was  scandalized  by  such  a  pro- 
ject and  the  instructor  was  charged 
with  a  breach  of  Christian  peace. 
The  accusations  were  based  largely 
on  the  questions  of  morality.  It  was 
alleged  that  society  was  endangered 
by  allowing  girls  of  an  impressionable 
age  to  be  taken  from  their  homes  and 
congregate  under  the  influence  of  a 
male  instructor.  It  was  argued  that 
such  a  system  threatened  to  under- 
mine the  virtue  of  the  home  and  the 
race ;  that  it  gave  opportunity  for  irre- 
sponsible men  to  subject  maturing 
womanhood  to  their  wiles  and  author- 
ity, and  that  the  weakness  of  all  hu- 
man nature  was  such  that  it  would  be 
a  reproach  to  the  public  conscience. 

There  was  considerable  doubt  as 
to  the  morality  of  education  as  applied 
to  woman.  There  was  a  general 
feeling  that  it  destroyed  domesticity; 
that  it  unveiled  to  them  questionable 
avenues  of  thought,  and  that  it 

7«7 


FIRST   PUBLIC    SCHOOLS    IN    NEW  YORK 


RARE  OLD  PRINT  MADE  IN  1840.  THE  LANCASTER  MONITORIAL  SCHOOL— An  educational  idea 
imported  from  England,  in  which  a  thousand  pupils  sat  in  one  great  room  under  the  control  of  one  teacher, 
assisted  by  monitors  who  passed  up  and  down  the  aisles  to  maintain  order.  There  was  no  Public  School  sys- 
tem, supported  by  taxation,  in  America's  greatest  metropolis,  New  York,  until  1844.  As  early  as  1805,  a  system 
of  non-sectarian  schools  was  established  and  amalgamated  with  the  Public  School  system  in  1853 


PRINT  OF  AN  INFANT  SCHOOL  IN  NEW  YORK  IN  ilaj— The  Infanta  sat  on  a  flight  of  wide  stairs  on 
the  plan  of  the  ancient  amphitheaters.  The  teacher  stood  on  the  floor  below  and  taught  by  word  of  mouth. 
The  pupils  were  marched  to  and  from  the  school  room  in  lockstep  with  much  formality  and  rigid  discipline. 
These  schools  were  conducted  by  a  charitable  organization  which  was  known  as  the  Infant  School  Society 

718 


nf 


JEnrria  —  Snnt  in 


N  looking  back  to  my  early 
childhood  I  can  well  re- 
member  that  I  was  very 
much  attached  to  books. 
I  learned  to  read  when  I 
was  four  years  old  and  I 
plead  with  my  father  to 
get  me  a  new  Bible.  My  father 
told  me  I  might  read  in  his  Bible 
and  when  I  had  read  it  through 
he  would  get  me  a  new  one.  I  then 
applied  myself  to  reading  and  had 
read  his  Bible  through  by  the  time  I 
was  six  years  old.  He  then  gave  me 
a  new  Bible.  My  father  lived  three 
miles  from  the  Bethlehem  meeting- 
house and  six  or  seven  from  Litch- 
field.  On  any  Sabbath  that  I  did  not 
remember  the  text  I  was  made  to  sit 
down  on  a  small  bench  or  form,  and 
there  to  sit  till  sundown,  which  I 
found  to  be  a  great  punishment,  es- 
pecially in  the  summer  time  when  the 
days  were  very  long. 

In  my  youthful  days  I  had  an 
ardent  desire  to  have  a  public  educa- 
tion and  to  become  a  minister.  But 
being  the  only  son  of  my  father,  he 
could  not  brook  the  idea  of  my  leav- 
ing him  for  that  purpose.  My  father 
had  a  right  in  the  Public  Library  in 
Bethlehem  and  the  books  he  drew 
from  time  to  time  I  was  fond  of  read- 
ing. I  was  particularly  fond  of 
"Watts  on  the  Mind."'  When  I 
found  a  sentence  of  Latin  in  any  book 
I  was  exceedingly  desirous  of  know- 
ing the  meaning  of  it.  I  had  often 
solicited  my  father  to  let  me  go  to 
college  and  the  winter  I  was  eighteen 
he  told  me  that  if  I  would  go  and 
sled  home  a  quantity  of  wood,  I  might 
try  what  I  could  do  in  the  study  of 
Latin. 

In  three  weeks  I  had  sledded  horns 
sixty  boards  of  wood,  loading  and 
unloading  the  same  myself.  I  then 
went  to  live  with  Dr.  Bellamy  and 
was  put  under  the  tuition  of  Mr. 
Thomas  Miner,  who  was  studying 
divinity  with  Dr.  Bellamy.  I  studied 
Lilly's  Latin  Grammar,  no  English 
word  being  in  the  book.  I  under- 


stood  nothing  and  I  used  to  study 
and  cry  because  I  got  no  ideas.  But 
I  used  to  look  at  my  instructor  and 
hear  him  talk,  and  I  finally  concluded 
that  I  had  as  much  sense  as  Thomas 
Miner  and  if  he  had  learned  Latin 
and  gone  through  college  then  cer- 
tainly I  could.  I  would  then  plod 
away  again.  In  the  spring  of  1770  I 
returned  to  my  father.  It  was  his 
idea  that  I  remain  at  home  and  study 
with  Rev.  Mr.  Herbert  who  was 
preaching  in  the  place.  I  madi 
however  little  progress.  It  was 
"James,  you  must  bring  in  some 
wood."  "James,  you  must  draw  some 
water  and  bring  it  in."  "James,  you 
must  harness  the  old  mare,  your  maj- 
ter  wants  to  ride."  When  haying  and 
harvest  came  on  my  father  said, 
"Well,  James,  I  think  you  must  lay 
aside  your  studies  till  after  harvest. 
Help  is  hard  to  get  and  we  cannot 
afford  to  lose  our  crops."  So  I  shuf- 
fled from  pillar  to  post  till  in  the  fall 
I  went  to  Mr.  Brinsmade's  in  New 
Washington.  Mr.  Nathan  Hale, 
afterwards  Judge  Hale  of  Goshen, 
was  studying  theology  with  Mr. 
Brinsmade.  I  had  for  company,  pur- 
suing the  same  studies,  Adoniram 
Judson  and  David  Judson.  In  Octo- 
ber, 1771,  I  entered  Yale  college  after 
passing  a  good  examination.  I  passed 
through  college,  having  my  share  of 
honorary  appointments,  and  in  1775  I 
graduated  and  returned  to  my  father 
determined  to  make  theology  my 
study.  I  went  in  the  fall  for  that 
purpose  to  live  with  Dr.  Bellamy 
with  three  of  my  college  friends,  Da- 
vid Fuller,  Seth  Swift  and  Adoniram 
Judson.  I  had  during  my  college  life 
many  serious  impulses  and  many  stir- 
rings of  peace.  I  was  disposed  to 
quarrel  with  the  doctrines  of  election, 
divine  decrees,  fore-ordination  and 
free  agency.  I  prayed  for  divine  di- 
rection. The  study  of  theology  was 
my  delight  but  I  thought  my  heart 
was  not  right.  In  the  midst  of  these 
conflicting  feelings,  I  had  an  invita- 
tion to  teach  the  grammar  school  in 


0f  an   lEarlg  Ammran  Uittratnr 


THE  SCHOOLHOUSE  OF  A  GENERATION   AGO 


my  native  town.  I  had  an  offer  of 
handsome  wages.  I  consulted  my 
father,  who  had  been  at  some  consid- 
erable expense  in  my  education  and 
felt  himself  straightened.  The  Revo- 
lutionary war  had  commenced.  The 
British  were  in  possession  of  Boston. 
My  father  thought  I  had  better  un- 
dertake to  teach  the  school  and 
accordingly  I  began  in  the  winter  of 
1776  and  kept  the  school  till  some 
time  in  the  following  May.  There, 
unthought  of  and  unsolicited,  I  hal 
an  ensign's  commission  sent  to  me 
from  the  Legislature  of  the  State  to 
go  on  a  tour  for  six  months  to  New 
York.  This  appointment  threw  me 
into  a  painful  situation.  I  still  meant 
to  pursue  the  study  of  divinity.  I 
asked  Dr.  Bellamy's  advice  and  he 
said  that  our  country  was  in  peril  and 
my  father  had  property  to  defend. 
It  was  a  dull  time  for  preachers.  We 
were  all  in  an  uproar.  The  doctor 
told  me  that  his  son,  Jonathan,  my 
friend  and  companion  in  college  was 
going,  and  I  had  better  accompany 
him.  I  accordingly  followed  his  ad- 
vice, with  the  consent  of  my  father, 
meaning  to  resume  my  studies  the  en- 
suing fall  if  I  lived  to  return. 


I  went  to  New  York  with  a  com- 
pany of  men,  was  in  the  battle  of 
Long  Island  on  the  27th  of  August, 
was  in  the  retreat  from  Long  Island 
in  the  night,  when  our  army  made  a 
safe  retreat  to  New  York.  Was  in 
the  battle  of  York  Island  the  I5th  of 
September.  Was  in  the  battle  of 
White  Plains.  The  captain  and  lieu- 
tenant of  the  company  to  which  I  be- 
longed were  taken  sick  and  the  com- 
mand of  the  company  devolved  upon 
me.  The  army  retreated  from  White 
Plains  to  Newcastle  and  General 
Washington  crossed  the  North  River 
into  New  Jersey.  My  time  of  en- 
gagement expired  in  December  but  a 
commission  of  a  second  lieutenancy 
had  been  sent  me  from  Congress. 
The  soldiers  told  me  that  if  I  would 
accept  they  would  enlist.  On  the 
first  day  of  January  I  had  a  commis- 
sion sent  me  of  a  first  lieutenancy.  I 
finally  consented  to  enter  service  dur- 
ing the  war  and  I  enlisted  between 
thirty  and  forty  men,  more  than  half 
the  company.  During  the  winter  of 
1777  I  lived  in  Litchfield  in  the  re- 
cruiting service  and  received  an  or- 
der to  superintend  the  hospital  in  the 
town  for  the  inoculation  of  all  the 

720 


ifr  §>torg  nf  3Jam*H 


?Bnm  in  1T52 


soldiers  who  had  not  previously  had 
small  pox.  Nearly  two  hundred  of 
them  were  inoculated.  In  June,  1777, 
I  marched  with  the  men  I  had  en- 
listed and  joined  the  army  at  Peeks- 
kill.  In  September,  General  Wash- 
ington moved  the  army  into  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  on  October  3rd  the  army 
had  orders  to  march  to  Germantown. 
I  left  my  baggage  and  my  Bible, 
which  my  father  bought  for  me  when 
I  was  six  years  old,  in  my  trunk.  I 
marched  with  only  my  military  suit 
and  my  implements  of  war,  without 
even  a  blanket.  The  memorable 
battle  of  Germantown  began  on  the 
morning  of  October  4th.  Our  army 
was  apparently  successful,  but  by  the 
misconduct  of  General  Stephens  the 
success  of  the  day  turned  against  us. 
I  was  in  the  first  column  at  the  head 
of  our  company.  What  began  the 
attack  on  the  enemy  was  accordingly 
the  last  to  retreat.  I  marched  with 
a  few  men  nearly  ten  miles  but  was 
finally  captured.  I  was  left  without 
refreshments  from  break  of  day  till 
night.  Then  I  was  taken  back  to 
Germantown  after  performing  a 
march  of  nearly  forty  miles  from  the 
evening  before  at  six  o'clock.  I 
reached  Germantown  a  prisoner  of 
war  and  much  exhausted.  I  was  the 
last  officer  captured.  After  sundown 
I  asked  if  I  might  see  the  commander 
of  the  regiment.  The  sergeant  es- 
corted me  to  the  house  where  the 
commander  was  quartered  and  after 
waiting  about  fifteen  minutes  the 
Colonel  came  out  and  asked  me  many 
questions  respecting  my  motives  go- 
ing to  war,  rising  in  rebellion  against 
my  lawful  sovereign.  I  answered 
him  pleasantly  and  as  evasively  as  I 
could  with  decency.  He  asked  me 
what  I  wanted.  I  told  him  I  had  no 
blanket.  I  wished  for  liberty  to  sleep 
in  the  house  and  that  I  stood  in  need 
of  food.  The  colonel  ordered  his 
servants  to  get  me  some  victuals. 
They  politely  spread  a  table,  set  on 
some  good  old  spirits  and  a  broiled 
chicken  with  excellent  bread  and  but- 


ter. This  was  really  the  best  meal  of 
victuals  I  ever  ate  in  my  life.  I  was 
told  that  I  must  sleep  under  the  eye 
of  the  guard.  I  then  asked  if  I  could 
have  a  blanket  and  a  large,  clean  one 
was  given  to  me.  I  went  out  into  the 
field  and  lay  down  among  the  sol- 
diers who  were  prisoners.  The  ser- 
geant observed  that  I  had  a  watch 
and  silver  knee  buckles.  He  said  if 
I  would  give  them  to  him  he  would 
return  them  to  me  for  the  soldiers  of 
the  guard  would  probably  rob  me.  I 
accordingly  committed  them  to  him 
and  he  very  honorable  returned  them 
in  the  morning.  Near  the  setting  of 
the  sun  on  the  5th  of  October  the 
prisoners  were  ordered  to  Philadel- 
phia, a  distance  of  about  six  miles. 
We  were  taken  to  the  new  jail  and  I 
was  locked  in  a  cold  room  destitute 
of  everything  but  cold  stone  walls 
and  a  bare  floor.  Not  a  seat  to  sit 
on,  not  a  morsel  to  eat  or  water  to 
drink.  I  groped  about  my  cell  and 
found  two  or  three  persons  asleep  on 
the  floor.  I  stood  on  my  feet  and 
leaned  my  back  against  the  wall  and 
sometimes  moved  about  the  room. 
Then,  to  change  my  position,  I  sat 
down  on  the  floor.  It  was  a  long  and 
dreary  and  most  gloomy  night.  I  re- 
flected on  the  miseries  of  the  damned 
in  that  eternal  prison  of  despair.  But 
still  Hope  hovered  around  my  soul 
that  I  should  see  another  morning. 
Morning  at  length  arrived  and  we 
were  furnished  with  some  hard  sea 
bread  and  salt  pork  and  given  some 
water  to  drink.  Being  without  money 
I  could  purchase  nothing  for  my  com- 
fort. I  soon  sold  my  watch  for  half 
its  value.  With  this  money  I  was 
able  to  purchase  some  food  pleasant 
to  my  taste.  At  this  time  seven  hun- 
dred prisoners  of  war  were  in  the  jail. 
A  few  small  rooms  were  sequestered 
for  the  officers.  Each  room  must 
contain  sixteen  men.  We  fully  cov- 
ered the  floor  where  we  lay  down  to 
rest  and  the  poor  soldiers  were  shut 
into  rooms  of  the  same  magnitude 
with  double  the  number.  The  sol- 


nf  an   lEarlg  Am^riran  l&nratnr 


THE  SCHOOLROOM  OF  THE  LAST   GENERATION 


diers  were  soon  seized  with  jail  fever, 
and  in  the  course  of  three  months  it 
swept  off  four  hundred  men  who  were 
all  buried  in  one  continuous  grave 
without  coffins.  Such  a  scene  of 
mortality  I  never  witnessed  before. 
Death  was  so  frequent  that  it  ceased 
to  terrify;  it  ceased  to  warn;  it 
ceased  to  alarm  survivors.  I  made 
a  contract  with  a  family  in  Philadel- 
phia to  furnish  me  two  meals  a  day  at 
$2.00  per  week,  and  by  the  means  of 
this  good  family  I  obtained  the  priv- 
ileges of  the  public  library  in  the  city. 
My  time  was  devoted  to  reading  and 
thus  I  endeavored  to  prevent  my 
mind  becoming  soured  by  the  severi- 
ties of  misfortune.  When  the  British 
left  Philadelphia  I  was  put  on  board 
a  vessel  and  sailed  to  New  York. 
Being  put  on  my  parole  of  honor  I 
boarded  with  a  Dutch  family  at  the 
west  end  of  Long  Island.  At  Flat- 
bush  I  became  acquainted  with  a  Mr. 
Clarke  who  owned  the  most  extensive 
library  I  had  ever  known  in  the 
United  States.  Mr.  Clarke  made  me 
a  welcome  visitor  to  his  home  and 
gave  me  access  to  his  library.  In  the 
two  years  and  six  months  that  I  was 
a  prisoner  at  Flatbush  I  completed  a 
course  in  ancient  and  modern  history. 
My  exercise  was  hard  labor  and 


walking.  I  was  treated  with  great 
kindness  by  the  family  and  endeav- 
ored to  be  always  on  the  pleasant 
side  with  them.  Here  I  learned  that 
the  little  nameless  civilities  and  atten- 
tions were  worth  a  great  deal  more 
than  they  cost.  The  3rd  of  January, 
1781,  after  a  captivity  of  three  years 
and  three  months,  I  was  taken  to 
Elizabeth,  New  Jersey,  and  there  set 
at  liberty.  I  procured  assistance  to 
carry  me  and  my  baggage  to  Peekskill 
and  from  there  I  marched  to  the 
Highlands  to  join  the  army.  In  1778 
I  was  appointed  Captain.  I  directed 
four  men  to  procure  a  band  and  take 
me  down  the  river  to  Peekskill  where 
I  had  left  my  chest  of  clothing.  The 
river  was  frozen  near  the  banks.  I 
landed  on  a  very  dark  evening  and 
by  making  a  misstep  near  the  shore, 
where  the  ice  had  been  cut  away  for 
the  boat  to  enter,  I  fell  into  the  river 
and  could  find  no  bottom.  I  seized 
the  edge  of  the  ice,  calling  for  help, 
till  the  men  came  to  my  assistance. 
A  few  seconds  more  would  have  land- 
ed me  in  eternity. 

In  the  forepart  of  the  campaign  of 
1781  the  army  was  stationed  near 
White  Plains.  Several  companies 
had  skirmishes  with  the  enemy  near 
Kingsbriclge.  I  was  personally  in 

721 


of 


iHnrria  —  Snm  in  1T52 


several  severe  actions,  but  still  I  was 
preserved. 

Near  the  close  of  the  month  of 
August  our  regiment  received  orders 
to  march  to  Virginia.  I  marched 
with  the  regiment  at  the  head  of  my 
company  to  the  head  of  Chesapeake 
Bay.  We  sailed  down  the  bay  and 
landed  at  Williamsburg.  Here  Gen- 
eral Washington  with  his  army  en- 
camped a  few  days.  From  there  we 
marched  to  Yorktown.  On  the  i6th, 
at  evening,  the  light  infantry  was  or- 
dered to  take  a  fort  by  storm,  which 
was  situated  near  the  mouth  of  York 
River.  I  had  command  of  the  first 
company  at  the  head  of  the  column 
which  supported  the  forlorn  hope. 
Not  a  man  was  killed  in  the  forlorn 
hope.  They  were  so  near  the  enemy 
before  they  were  discovered  that  the 
enemy  overshot  them.  The  forlorn 
hope  commanded  by  Colonel  Alexan- 


der Hamilton  were  successful  in  tak- 
ing the  fort.  The  French  army  made 
an  attack  on  a  fort  on  our  left  at  the 
same  time  we  made  an  attack  on  the 
fort  on  the  bank  of  York  River. 
When  we  had  possession  of  these 
forts  we  had  possession  of  the  guard 
overlooking  Yorktown.  Our  artil- 
lery began  their  play  upon  the  town. 
On  the  1 7th  the  British  requested  a 
cessation  of  hostilities  for  twenty-four 
hours.  General  Washington  replied 
that  he  would  grant  them  two  hours 
only.  The  moment  the  two  hours 
expired  the  whole  artillery  of  our 
Army  and  of  the  French  discharged 
upon  Yorktown.  Before  another  dis- 
charge could  be  made  the  British  sent 
another  request  that  articles  of  capit- 
ulation for  a  surrender  might  be 
agreed  upon. 

On  the  i8th  our  soldiers  were  or- 
dered to  wash  and  appear  clean  the 


MILL  AND  SCHOOLHOUSE  HAVE   DEVELOPED  SIMULTANEOUSLY 


7»3 


nf  an   lEarlg  Amrriran  Simratar 


next  day.  On  the  iQth  our  army 
assembled  on  the  right  and  the  French 
army  on  the  left,  each  line  reaching 
more  than  a  mile  on  an  extended 
plain.  The  British  army  marched 
out  between  our  two  armies,  with 
colors  muffled,  and  after  passing  in 
review  they  piled  their  arms  on  the 
field  of  submission  and  returned  back 
in  the  same  manner  with  Yorktown. 
On  the  2Oth  General  Washington 
issued  his  orders  for  a  general  par- 
don for  all  culprits  of  the  army.  He 
ordered  the  army  to  assemble  for 
divine  service  and  give  thanks  to  God 
for  our  success,  chaplains  to  do  their 
duty  praying  and  preaching  to  their 
several  brigades  discources  suitable 
to  the  occassion.  Here  General 
Washington's  character  shone  with 
true  lustre  in  giving  God  the  glory. 
After  this  I  marched  with  my  men  to 
the  Highlands  on  the  east  side  of  the 
Hudson  in  New  York.  In  December 
I  received  a  furlough  for  a  few  weeks' 
visit  in  Litchfield.  While  on  this  fur- 
lough I  married  Elizabeth  Hubbard 
of  Middletown.  I  returned  to  the 
army  and  continued  with  it  until  No- 
vember, 1782,  when  I  was  released 
from  service. 

At  this  time  I  was  thirty  years  of 
age.  I  felt  a  desire  to  resume  my 
studies  in  theology  and  pondered  on 
the  subject.  My  father  had  become 
infirm  from  a  wound  he  had  received 
from  an  axe.  My  mother  was  sev- 
enty years  old  and  sunk  down  in  her 
dotage.  My  parents  were  both  un- 
willing that  I  should  leave  them  and 
I  myself  was  still  doubting  and  fear- 
ing my  heart  was  not  right  with  God. 
I  lived  with  my  parents  during  the 
winter  of  1782-3  attending  to  their 
domestic  concerns.  My  friends  and 
neighbors  united  in  saying  that  ^1 
must  live  in  South  Farms  and  be  their 
Justice  of  the  Peace.  In  May,  1783, 
I  was  appointed  to  this  office  and 
chosen  by  the  people  as  selectman. 
Thus  situated,  and  notwithstanding 
my  heart  had  from  early  youth  de- 
vised the  way  to  be  a  minister  of  the 
Gospel,  yet  God  designed  it  should 


not  be  so,  but  had  otherwise  directed 
my  steps.  In  May,  1783,  I  moved 
my  wife  from  Middletown  and  set 
up  housekeeping  in  my  father's  house. 
I  repaired  the  house  and  barn  and  as 
the  saying  is,  I  slicked  up  the  place. 
In  my  office  of  Justice  of  the  Peace  I 
was  often  called  on  to  do  business. 
Courts  were  often  held.  Sometimes 
large  numbers  of  people  would  attend 
and  we  often  had  company  to  visit  us. 
My  parents  chose  retirement.  My 
mother  could  not  be  broken  of  her 
rest.  Our  visitors  would  sometimes 
stay  till  after  nine  o'clock  and  some 
noise  would  be  made  in  conversation 
or  when  they  bid  us  good-night.  In 
the  morning  my  mother  would  com- 
plain that  I  should  send  off  my  com- 
pany before  nine  o'clock.  I  finally 
consulted  with  my  father  and  with 
his  consent  decided  to  purchase  the 
house  and  land  where  I  now  live. 
At  the  same  time  he  informed  me 
that  I  must  pay  for  it  myself,  as  he 
had  no  loose  money  to  spare.  Every- 
thing respecting  the  purchase  was  di- 
rected by  a  kind  providence,  and  the 
bargain  was  made  in  December,  1784. 
I  was  elated  with  the  idea  that  in  the 
spring  I  should  set  up  housekeeping 
in  my  present  home.  But  God  did 
not  design  that  I  should  have  alto- 
gether so  smooth  a  passage.  At  the 
end  of  February  I  was  cast  on  a  bed 
of  severe  sickness  with  the  bilious 
colic.  I  was  seriously  ill  for  thirty 
days  and  my  life  was  despaired  of. 
But  by  this  sickness  and  distress  the 
door  was  opened  for  the  people  to 
show  me  kindness  and  they  became 
friendly  to  me.  Hence  the  way  was 
opened  for  what  God  had  designed  I 
should  do  for  this  people.  About 
1780  Sabbath  breaking,  profanity  and 
drunkenness  were  not  uncommon 
among  professors  of  religion.  The 
young  children  were  ignorant  and 
uncivil.  In  1783  and  1784  they  were 
taught  by  ambitious  teachers  with 
whom  I  soon  became  acquainted.  It 
was  agreed  that  at  the  close  of  the 
schools  in  spring  that  the  children 
should  gather  at  the  meeting  house 


iCtfr  S>t0rg  nf  3lam*0 


—  Born  in  1T52 


SCHOOLROOM  IN  MIDDLE  OF  LAST  CENTURY 


and  that  the  eight  scholars  in  each 
school  who  performed  the  best  should 
have  a  book.  I  procured  two  dozen 
of  Webster's  new  spelling  books,  the 
first  that  were  introduced  into  this 
society,  and  presented  them  to  the 
scholars  as  proposed.  From  this 
time  forward  I  occasionally  visited 
the  schools.  I  exerted  myself  to  se- 
cure able  teachers,  and  I  found  there 
was  a  promising  class  of  youth  com- 
ing forward.  At  this  juncture  the 
news  spread  that  the  officers  of  the 
army  had  a  commutation  of  five  years 
pay  for  service  during  the  Revolu- 
tionary War.  This  fired  the  minds 
of  the  community  and  I  became  ob- 
noxious to  the  mass  of  people  because 
I  was  an  officer  of  the  number. 
When  I  had  any  severe  sickness  they 
hoped  I  would  die.  One  noisy  old 
man  said  he  hoped  I  would  die  and 
that  they  would  take  my  skin  for  a 
drum  head  to  drum  other  officers  out 
of  town. 

In  June  1789  my  dear  father  died. 
A  considerable  sum  of  money  and 
cattle  was  placed  in  my  hands  by 
which  I  was  able  to  free  myself  from 
debt.  I  was  at  this  time  thirty  eight 
years  old.  During  my  early  life  I 
had  adopted  a  variety  of  maxims, 
such  as  these.  Never  to  be  wanting 
in  integrity;  never  to  contend  in 
things  unessential;  adopt  an  inde- 
pendent mode  of  thinking;  never 
promise  more  than  I  can  perform ; 
honor  and  please  the  aged.  As  to 


my  head  I  was  a  Christian  while  my 
heart  was  estranged  from  holiness. 
My  mind  was  anxiously  impressed 
with  the  idea  that  soon  I  should  be 
forty  years  old,  and  if  I  sinned  away 
the  day  of  grace  till  after  that  period, 
my  crime  would  be  sealed  in  the  book 
of  God  against  me.  On  November 
7th,  1790,  I  made  a  public  profession 
of  religion  and  joined  the  church  in 
this  place.  About  this  time  the  chil- 
dren to  whom  I  had  presented  books 
in  1783-4  began  to  look  to  me  for 
further  instruction.  I  gave  them 
access  to  my  library  and  the  best  ad- 
vice I  could  as  to  what  line  of  con- 
duct it  was  best  for  them  to  pursue. 
I  informed  them  I  would  give  them 
instruction  in  grammar  and  geogra- 
phy if  they  would  attend  to  it.  I 
took  more  pains  with  the  young  ladies 
in  the  outsetting  than  I  did  with  the 
others,  for  experience  has  taught  me 
that  in  every  place  where  there  was  a 
chaste  and  virtuous  set  of  young 
ladies  there  was  a  decent  class  of 
young  men.  It  was  a  new  thing  for 
ladies  to  have  any  more  education 
than  could  be  obtained  in  the  public 
schools.  Reading,  writing  and  spell- 
ing were  taught.  It  was  often  said 
girls  need  not  learn  to  write.  It  was 
sufficient  if  they  could  ^write  their 
own  names.  The  mode  of  instruc- 
tion I  employed  with  the  young  peo- 
ple met  with  opposition.  It  was  said 
I  was  making  an  innovation  on  the 
manners  and  customs  of  youth.  I  was 


nf  an   lEarlg  Am^rtran 


blowing  up  their  pride.     A  stop  must 
be  put  to  it.     In  January  1793  I  was 
made  a  deacon  in  this  Church.     The 
opposition  to  me  increased  and  I  hes- 
itated  whether   I   should   take   upon 
myself  so   important  an  office.     But 
after  consulting  with  friends  and  tak- 
ing the  subject  into  prayerful  consid- 
eration I  accepted  the  office,  I  hope 
with  meekness  and  fear.     But  the  op- 
position    to     my     school     increased. 
Some  men   were   envious  because   I 
was  appointed  Justice  of  the  Peace  at 
the  age  of  thirty  and  deacon  at  the 
age    of    forty.      Religion    was    made 
the  shouting  horn.     I  was  disturbing 
the  peace  of  the  church.     I  was  too 
familiar  with  the  ladies  in  my  school. 
A  church  meeting  was  held  in  July 
1794  and  a  committee  was  appointed 
to   look   into   the   reports    respecting 
me.      One    of    the    brethren    of    the 
church  charged  me  with  a  violation  of 
the  Christian  peace  and  enumerated 
sundry  items  of  my  conduct  to  that 
effect.      It  was   unanimously  agreed 
to  refer  the  complaints  to  a  church 
council.       The    churches    of    South- 
bury,    Woodbury,    Bethlehem,   Judea 
and  Warren  were  sent  to  for  their 
minister  and  delegate  and  on  August 
27th,  1794,  I  had  a  public  hearing.    A 
great  collection  of  people  assembled 
as  the  hue  and  cry  was  to  see  the  vil- 
lain  fall.     I   viewed   this   trial   as   a 
chastisement    in    the    Providence    of 
God  to  prepare  me  for  what  he  would 
have  me  do.     After  a  long  hearing 
and  mature  deliberation  the  council 
decided   that  the   complaint   brought 
against  me  by  the  church  was  by  no 
means   supported.      The  church  was 
then   asked   whether   it   would   abide 
the  decision  of  the  council  and  voted 
in  the  affirmative.     The  question  was 
then  put  to  me  and  I  said  I  would 
acquiesce.     My  persecutors  were  ex- 
ceedingly   appalled.     Some    of    them 
soon  moved  out  of  the  Society,  some 
were  taken  away  by  the  immediate 
hand  of  God,  and  one  of  the  brethren 
who    was    violently    opposed    to    me 
joined    the    Episcopalians    and    was 
finally  excommunicated. 


All  this  persecution  turned  out  to 
my  advantage.  My  school  had  hith- 
erto been  confined  mostly  to  the  youth 
of  this  society,  but  from  1794  to  1803 
I  had  as  many  pupils  as  I  could  at- 
tend to,  summer  and  winter.  In  1803 
sundry  good  people  united  and  built  a 
large  school  house  and  called  it  the 
Academy.  In  November  1804  I  pro- 
cured an  assistant.  More  than  1500 
pupils  have  attended  the  school  com- 
ing from  all  the  New  England  states 
excepting  Rhode  Island,  also  from 
New  York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsyl- 
vania, Maryland,  Virginia,  South 
Carolina.  Georgia  and  from  the 
islands  of  St.  Thomas  and  Bermuda. 

Soon  after  I  began  to  teach  my 
school  in  1790  I  began  a  course  of 
lectures  on  morals  which  I  delivered 
weekly  for  twenty  years.  Thus  God 
in  His  providence  has  directed  me  to 
spend  my  life  in  the  place  of  my  na- 
tivity. If  I  have  ever  done  any  good 
to  my  fellow  men,  let  the  praise  be 
to  Him  who  hath  directed  my  steps. 
I  have  held  an  office  of  one  kind  or 
another  in  the  gift  of  the  town,  for 
thirty  one  years.  Twenty  nine  years 
I  have  held  an  office  in  the  gift  of  the 
Society.  Thirty  years  I  have  held  an 
office  in  the  gift  of  the  State.  In  the 
year  1798  I  was  chosen  representative 
from  the  town  to  the  General  Assem- 
bly and  continued  to  represent  the 
town  for  the  greater  part  of  the  time 
till  1806.  I  then  declined  election. 
I  have  had  my  share  of  worldly  hon- 
ors. I  have  had  my  share  of  happi- 
ness in  domestic  life.  I  have  been 
blessed  with  obedient  and  affection- 
ate children.  I  have  had  a  numerous 
circle  of  friends  and  have  shared 
largely  in  the  affections  of  my  pu- 
pils. I  have  many  times  been  ready 
to  exclaim,  Why  have  I  been  made 
the  subject  of  so  much  goodness  from 
the  hand  of  God? 

In  September  1814  my  wife  Eliza- 
beth died.  Her  funeral  sermon  was 
preached  by  Rev.  Mr.  Lyman  Beecher 
from  Job  14,  14.  In  1815  I  married 
Rhoda  Farnum  a  lady  possessing  all 
qualities  to  make  domestic  life  happy. 

7*6 


An  Ammran'H  H-xprronr?    in 

Armg 


AatraBrript  of  (Cnlonrl  &trubrn  lamia,  Vortt  in  1756. 
Urnruluw  Ihr  £it>  of  the  Cogaiista  uihn  ftrftiBrfc 
to  Urmuuirr  thrir  Allrgiaurr  to  the  lung  anb  3FonoJ|t 
to  &aw  tiff  ttrBtrrn  (Eotttinrnt  to  tyr  British  tnuiirr 


ORIGINAL  MANUSCRIPT  NOW  IN  POSSESSION  OF 

HONORABLE    CHARLES    MAPLES    JARVIS 

DESCENDANT  or  COLONEL  JARVI*  AND  MEMBER  or  MANY  AMERICAN  LEARNED  AND  PATRIOTIC  SOCIETIES 

ton,  "do  you  ever  take  a  morning 
'bitter'?" 

"No,"  replied  the  colonel,  "not 
as  a  regular  thing,  but  on  this  par- 
ticular occasion  I  shall  be  gratified 
to  join  my  esteemed  cousin  in  a 
friendly  libation." 

Noah  led  him  into  the  parlor. 
Hanging  between  the  windows,  in 
the  place  of  honor  on  the  wall,  ele- 
gantly framed  and  in  large,  bold 
letters  was  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence. Pointing  his  finger  at  it 
he  chuckled:  "There,  my  royal 
cousin,  I  think  is  a  dram  bitter 
enough  for  you!" 

The  colonel  looked  at  it  and  then 
retorted:  "You  rebel.'" 

Colonel  Jarvis'  manuscript,  as 
stated  in  the  introductory  to  the 
first  installment,  is  the  remarkable 
story  of  an  American  in  the  British 
ranks  during  the  American  Revolu- 
tion and  is  probably  the  most  im- 
portant documentary  evidence  of  its 
kind  in  existence.  The  first  part 
was  presented  in  the  preceding  issue 
of  this  journal  and  covered  the  first 
years  of  the  Revolution,  leaving 

on  beme  "rebels."  Jarvis  near  Charleston  (which  he  fre- 
quently writes  Charlestown),  South 
Carolina.  The  great  story  is  con- 
cluded in  these  pages,  just  as  he 
told  it,  preserving  his  quaint  orthog- 
raphy. 


are  many  interest- 
ing  anecdotes  told  of  the 
Americans  who,  while 
devoted  to  their  country, 
were  opposed  to  the 
Declaration  of  Independ- 
ence, and  believed  that 
this  country  could  not  exist  without 
the  protection  of  the  British  Crown. 
It  was  the  first  great  political  prob- 
lem in  America,  and  divided  many 
families.  The  Jarvis  family  in  New 
England  differed  in  their  opinions 
but  their  sense  of  justice  and  loyalty 
to  kin  as  well  as  country  was  such 
that  they  did  not  allow  it  to  disrupt 
their  domestic  harmony. 

Colonel  Stephen  Jarvis,  whose  re- 
markable life  story  has  recently  been 
discovered  in  manuscript,  and  is  be- 
ing presented  in  these  pages,  disa- 
greed with  some  of  his  relatives  as 
to  the  holiness  of  the  American  Rev- 
olution. After  seven  years'  service 
in  the  King's  army,  he  preferred  not 
to  remain  in  the  new  Republic, and  re- 
moved to  Canada.  The  colonel  fre- 
quently visited  his  relatives  in  the 
United  States  and  good-naturedly 
taunted  them  on  being  "rebels." 
While  the  guest  of  his  cousin,  Noah 
Jarvis,  he  arose  early  one  morning 
and  began  his  good-natured  banter. 
"Colonel,"  interrupted  Noah,  who 
was  almost  an  idolater  of  Washing- 

727 


af 


SfartrtB  —  Itont  in  1756 


Relating  the  remarkable  experiences  as  a  recruit  In  the  lines  of 
the  British  army — Accurate  transcript  from  the  original  manuscript 
which  was  lost  for  many  years  and  has  been  recently  recovered 


proceeded  as  far  as 
the  Combahee  (South 
Carolina)  River. 
This  was  a  foraging 
party  to  procure  rice, 
etc.,  for  the  hospitals, 
and  after  completing 
the  object  intended  we  commenced 
our  march  back  and  we  halted  at  Colo- 
nel Haines'  Plantation  the  night  after 
he  was  brought  home  and  buried  in 
his  garden.  I  saw  his  grave.  In  the 
afternoon  of  the  next  day  we  left  his 
plantation,  and  as  we  had  got  intelli- 
gence that  General  Marion  was  col- 
lecting a  body  of  Troops  to  give  us 
annoyance  on  our  route,  the  order 
of  march  was  changed,  the  Infantry 
and  Artillery  in  front,  and  the 
Cavalry  in  the  rear.  We  marched 
in  this  order  until  we  came  to  a  long 
swamp,  a  mile  or  so  from  Parker's 
Ferry,  when  we  heard  some  few  shots 
in  front,  and  Major  Fraser  ordered  the 
Cavalry  to  advance,  and  seeing  some 
Troops  at  a  long  distance  off,  and 
supposing  them  to  be  the  enemy, 
charged  over  this  long  causeway  and 
fell  into  an  ambuscade,  laid  by  the  en- 
emy, and  we  received  the  most  gall- 
ing fire  ever  Troops  experienced. 

An  American  Fighting  His 
Brothers  for  Conscience'  Sake 

We  only  saw  the  flash  of  the  pieces 
the  enemy  was  so  complete  hid  from 
our  view,  and  we  had  only  to  push 
forward  men  and  horses  falling  be- 
fore and  behind.  We  lost  one  hun- 
dred twenty-five  killed  and  a  great 
many  wounded,  and  the  enemy  re- 
tired without  the  loss  of  a  man.  All 
our  Artillery  were  killed  or  wounded 
before  they  could  bring  their  guns  to 
bear  upon  the  enemy — we  halted  at 
Parker's  Ferry  that  night,  dropped 
our  wounded,  and  the  next  morning 
collected  our  dead  and  buried  them, 
and  then  proceeded  on  our  route  until 


we  reached  Dorchester  without  any 
molestation  from  the  enemy. 

The  day  after  our  arrival  at 
Dorchester,  Major  Fraser  went  to 
Charleston,  South  Carolina,  to  make 
a  report  of  our  sad  disaster,  and  he 
returned  at  midnight  with  the  news  of 
the  battle  at  the  Eretan  Springs,  and 
we  were  ordered  immediately  to 
mount  and  march.  We  passed 
Monks'  Corner  during  the  day,  and 
after  marching  all  night  came  up  with 
the  Army,  where  they  had  made  a 
halt  after  burrying  their  dead  at  the 
Eretans.  The  Army  retired  as  far  as 
Monks'  Corner  for  some  time  send- 
ing out  patrols  far  beyond  the  Ere- 
tans. The  Americans,  after  the  Brit- 
ish retired  from  the  field  of  battle, 
came  and  buried  their  dead  and  then 
retired  to  invest  one  other  outpost, 
but  our  people  had  abandoned  it,  and 
joined  the  Army,  which  became  so 
reduced  that  we  were  obliged  to  re- 
treat, and  in  moving  from  Monks' 
Corner  and  crossing  Goose  Creek  we 
took  the  route  to  Dorchester,  and  en- 
camped at  Sir  James  Wright's  Planta- 
tion, a  few  miles  this  side  of  Dorches- 
ter. We  had  a  few  Militia  quartered 
in  Dorchester.  We  had  hardly  taken 
up  our  ground  before  some  of  our 
Militia  from  Dorchester  came  run- 
ning into  Camp,  some  of  them  much 
wounded.  A  large  body  of  the  en- 
emy had  charged  into  Dorchester  and 
surprised  the  Militia  and  retired 
again  some  miles  from  Dorchester. 

Waging  the  Revolution  in 
the  States  of  the  South 

The  Cavalry  was  ordered  to  march, 
and  we  proceeded  to  Dorchester.  I 
was  ordered  with  two  Dragoons  and 
a  few  Militia  forward  in  order  to 
decoy  the  enemy,  and  bring  them  on, 
whilst  Major  Fraser,  with  the  Cav- 
alry well  disposed  for  an  attack,  kept 
some  distance  in  my  rear.  The  Amer- 

7a8 


An  Ammran'fi  lExprranr*  in  %  Unite!?  Armg 


icans,  who  were  ignorant  of  our 
Army  being  in  that  neighborhood, 
had  the  same  design  with  myself,  and 
made  several  feint  charges,  and  then 
retired  until  they  had  drawn  me  a 
sufficient  distance  to  make  a  succes- 
ful  charge.  They  had  a  body  of  In- 
fantry in  their  rear.  They  at  last 
charged  me  in  earnest.  I  retreated 
and  made  the  signal  to  Major  Eraser. 
He  advanced  and  met  the  enemy,  who 
pulled  up  their  horses  within  a  very 
short  distance,  when  Major  Eraser 
gave  the  word  and  we  dashed  in 
among  them,  and  slashing  work  we 
made  great  havoc  amongst  them,  cut- 
ting them  down  and  taking  many 
prisoners — an  Officer  in  his  retreat 
took  a  foot-path  that  foot-passengers 
use  in  that  hot  country,  and  there  is 
a  row  of  trees  between  that  and  the 
main  road.  I  pursued  this  Officer 
and  had  got  so  near  as  to  touch  his 
horse  with  the  point  of  my  sword.  I 
saw  their  Infantry  with  trailed  arms 
endeavoring  to  flank  us.  I  wheeled 
about  and  called  to  Major  Fraser, 
giving  him  this  information,  who  or- 
dered the  Troops  to  retire,  which  we 
did  with  the  loss  of  only  one  man,  he, 
poor  fellow,  was  hung  the  next  morn- 
ing as  a  deserter  from  their  Army. 
As  we  had  no  Infantry  to  support  us, 
we  were  obliged  to  retire,  which  we 
did  with  a  good  many  prisoners — how 
many  we  killed  is  uncertain — cer- 
tainly several. 

Cavalry  Charge  against  Fellow 
Countrymen  as  •'Enemies" 

The  next  day  the  Army  retired 
below  the  Quarter  House,  and  this 
was  our  outpost.  In  a  short  time 
after  this  a  Captain  Armstrong  of 
the  American  Army,  took  a  Cap- 
tain Keen  of  ours  with  his  whole 
Patrol.  This  gave  him  a  degree 
of  temerity,  and  caused  him  to 
fall  into  our  hands.  He  one  day 
drove  in  our  Sentinels  at  our  out 
piquet.  Major  Coffin,  who  had  been 
attached  to  our  Regiment,  with  his 
mounted  Infantry  of  the  York  Volun- 


teers, was  on  this  day  our  Command- 
ing Officer — we  pursued  the  enemy 
for  some  time  on  the  Dorchester  road, 
but  not  falling  in  with  them,  we 
crossed  the  country  over  the  road 
leading  to  Goose  Creek.  The  Troops 
commanded  by  Captain  Campbell  was 
in  the  rear,  and  observing  some 
Troops  following  our  track,  and 
dressed  in  dark  jackets,  like  those  of 
the  York  Volunteers,  I  rode  forward 
and  asked  Major  Coffin  if  he  had  de- 
tached any  of  his  Troops  from  the 
squadron.  He  replied,  "No."  Then 
Sir  it  is  the  enemy,  and  they  are  close 
by  in  our  rear.  We  wheeled  about 
and  this  brought  Captain  Campbell's 
Troop  in  front  of  the  squadron.  The 
enemy  formed  and  for  a  few  seconds 
seemed  disposed  to  give  battle,  but 
soon  wheeled  and  fled.  We  pursued 
them  in  full  charge ;  we  had  them  be- 
tween us  and  Charleston,  on  a  fine 
level  road  that  would  admit  of  about 
eight  horses  abreast.  We  charged  the 
best  horse  foremost,  and  I  soon  led 
the  charge,  no  horse  could  run  with 
mine. 

"If  You  Touch  this  Prisoner 
I'll  Blow  Your  Brains  Out!" 

In  the  distance  of  about  a  mile  the 
Commanding  Officer  of  the  enemy's 
(Armstrong)  horse  plunging  into  a 
stone  in  the  middle  of  the  road  fell 
and  threw  his  rider  over  his  head.  I 
had  hold  of  him  in  an  instant,  he 
asked  quarters;  I  gave  it  him,  and 
asked  his  name.  He  said,  "Arm- 
strong.'' Give  me  your  hand  Cap- 
tain Armstrong,  I'll  protect  you,  and 
took  him  back  to  the  rear.  Some  of 
our  men  made  a  blow  at  him,  and  one 
came  near  taking  off  his  scalp.  I 
drew  my  pistol  and  said,  "If  you 
touch  the  prisoner  I'll  blow  your 
brains  out."  I  took  him  and  deliv- 
ered him  to  the  Officer  of  the  rear 
guard,  and  reported  him  to  Major 
Coffin,  and  then  again  pursued  the 
enemy,  and  soon  gained  the  head  of 
our  Troops.  By  this  time  the  enemy 
had  taken  the  woods  and  endeavored 


of  GUtlmttl  Marina — Hunt  in  175K 


to  gain  the  road  to  Dorchester,  sep- 
arating themselves  as  much  as  possi- 
ble from  each  other.  I  saw  two 
Dragoons  at  some  distance  in  front, 
and  I  said  to  Captain  Campbell, 
"Now,  Sir,  if  your  horse  can  run  with 
mine,  and  he  holds  his  speed,  we  will 
take  those  two  fellows,"  and  we  set 
off  in  full  speed,  and  I  soon  left  him 
in  the  rear,  and  did  not  halt  until  I 
had  taken  one  of  the  two.  The  others 
made  their  escape,  and  here  we  gave 
up  the  chase,  and  returned  to  Camp 
with  our  prisoners.  I  think  alto- 
gether eight,  and  one  was  killed  by 
an  Officer,  whose  name  was  Walker 
of  the  New  York  Volunteers,  after  he 
had  been  made  prisoner  by  one  of  our 
Regiment,  and  gave  in  charge  to  his 
servant.  We  proceeded  to  our  sta- 
tion and  took  Captain  Armstrong  to 
our  mess  for  refreshment — by  the 
time  we  had  arrived  at  our  quarters, 
the  enemy  had  escaped  had  reached 
their  encampment,  for  at  this  time  the 
Armies  were  not  a  great  distance 
apart,  and  the  American  Officers  in 
making  their  report  to  their  Com- 
manding Officer,  represented  that 
Captain  Armstrong,  when  he  fell  into 
our  hands  was  treated  in  the  most 
cruel  manner,  and  described  the  Offi- 
cer so  very  distinctly  that  Captain 
Keen  of  ours,  then  a  prisoner  and 
dining  at  the  table,  knew  it  was  me 
who  they  had  described  and  who  said, 
"he  was  sure  there  must  be  some  mis- 
take as  he  knew  the  Officer  they  had 
described  was  too  much  of  a  soldier 
and  a  man  of  honor  to  be  guilty  of  so 
base  a  transaction."  They  still  per- 
sisted that  they  saw  it,  and  vouched 
for  the  truth  of  their  assertion.  The 
result  was  that  a  flag  of  truce  was  dis- 
patched immediately  to  enquire  of 
Captain  Armstrong  himself  the  truth 
of  their  assertion,  and  this  flag  and  a 
letter  to  Captain  Armstrong  was 
handed  to  him  before  we  had  dined, 
and  as  he  read  the  contents  smiled, 
which  induced  us,  or  some  of  us  to 
ask  if  he  was  so  soon  to  be  ex- 
changed. "Not  such  good  luck,  but 
as  it  is  in  some  measure  concerning 


the  officer  who  took  me  prisoner,  I 
will  read  the  communication,"  which 
was  similar  as  above  stated,  and  to 
which  he  sent  the  following  answer, 
which  he  read  before  he  closed  his 
letter.  "Sir,  it  has  become  my  mis- 
fortune this  day  to  become  a  prisoner 
to  the  British  arms,  and  I  am  indebted 
to  the  Officer  who  made  me  prisoner 
for  my  life,  and  I  am  not  a  little  as- 
tonished that  those  gentlemen  should 
have  presumed  to  have  given  you  any 
correct  information,  as  they  were  so 
far  out  of  the  line  of  their  duty  as  to 
know  anything  of  the  circumstance." 

Exchanging  Captured  Officers 
under  a  Flag  of  Truce 

In  a  short  time  there  was  an  ex- 
change between  Captain  Keen  and 
Captain  Armstrong  and  they  returned 
each  to  their  respective  Armies.  Cap- 
tain Keen's  account  of  the  matter  after 
Captain  Armstrong's  letter  was  read 
in  the  American  Camp,  I  shall  forbear 
to  mention,  and  I  regret  being  obliged 
to  say  so  much  of  myself  in  relating 
this  transaction.  The  next  time  our 
Regiment  was  engaged,  Captain 
Campbell  was  killed,  and  it  was  said 
purposely  threw  away  his  life  in  this 
action.  I  was  not  with  the  Regiment. 
I  was  detached  on  James  Island  with 
a  Troop  of  Dragoons,  under  the  com- 
mand of  Major  Craig.  (Afterwards 
Sir  James  Craig.) 

After  I  again  joined  the  Regi- 
ment, we  had  another  brush  with 
the  Americans  at  Monks'  Corner, 
where  we  got  completely  defeated. 
It  was  an  attempt  to  surprise  a 
party  at  this  post,  but  they  got 
intelligence  of  our  approach,  and  gave 
us  a  complete  drubbing.  We  lost  one 
Captain  killed,  one  Captain,  two  Sub- 
alterns and  several  men  wounded, 
without  injuring  a  single  man  of  the 
enemy.  They  had  so  completely  for- 
tified themselves  that  having  no  In- 
fantry with  us  we  could  not  approach 
them  and  had  to  receive  their  fire 
without  being  able  to  return  it,  and 
we  returned  to  our  encampment  not 

730 


An  Am*rtran'0  Expmenr*  in  %  SrittHlf  Armg 


very  well  satisfied  with  our  defeat, 
altho  no  disgrace  to  either  Officer  or 
soldier. 

Plundering  Rich  Plantations 
in  the  Southern  States 

About  this  time  a  Colonel  Thomp- 
son (afterwards  Count  Rumford) 
arrived  from  England  on  his  way  to 
join1  his  Regiment  at  New  York.  He 
was  ordered  to  take  command  of  the 
whole  Cavalry,  and  we  had  one  severe 
brush  with  the  enemy  under  his  com- 
mand. We  surprised  a  party  in  the 
evening,  killed  and  took  a  good  many 
prisoners,  and  the  next  morning  fell 
in  with  another  large  body  of  the  en- 
emy, which  we  defeated,  and  drove 
many  of  them  into  the  Santee,  where 
both  men  and  horses  were  drowned. 
We  returned  to  Camp  with  (I  think) 
upwards  of  seventy  prisoners.  I  do 
not  again  recollect  of  being  engaged 
with  the  enemy  during  the  war.  We 
did  indeed  after  make  excursions  into 
the  country  for  the  purpose  of  plun- 
dering the  plantations  of  those  rich 
planters,  who,  after  Charleston  fell 
into  our  hands,  had  received  their 
Oath  of  Allegiance,  and  again  had 
joined  the  American  Army. 

Difficulties  of  British  Soldiers 
in  Getting  their  Pay 

Our  Regiment  had  been  now  nearly 
a  year  on  actual  service  without  re- 
ceiving any  pay,  and  those  of  Captain 
Campbell's  Troop  had  not  received  all 
their  bounty,  and  consequently  it  fell 
to  my  lot  to  make  out  the  Abstract  of 
the  Troop,  receive  the  money  and  set- 
tle with  the  men,  some  of  which  were 
much  in  my  debt  for  necessaries 
found  them,  as  Captain  Campbell  in 
his  lifetime  imposed  that  duty  on  me. 
Major  Fraser,  who  was  a  knowing 
chap,  was  sensible  that  from  death 
and  other  casualties,  there  would  be  a 
good  deal  of  pukings  (an  Army 
phrase)  and  he  was  resolved  to  take 
that  himself,  and  had  given  orders  to 
Paymaster  Hatton  to  pay  Officers 
commanding  Troops  agreeable  to 


their  present  strength  only.  Hatton 
and  myself  were  on  the  best  footing 
and  he  gave  me  this  information,  con- 
trary to  the  directions  he  had  received 
from  Major  Fraser.  I  only  request- 
ed of  Hatton  to  let  me  know  when  he 
went  to  the  pay  office  for  the  money, 
and  not  to  go  when  I  was  on  duty,  so 
as  not  to  be  able  to  attend  him  imme- 
diately on  his  return  with  the  money. 
This  he  did,  and  immediately  on  his 
arrival,  and  before  the  Major  got  in- 
telligence of  it  I  had  my  Abstract 
ready  and  as  Commanding  Officer 
and  Paymaster  of  the  Troop  demand- 
ed the  amount  of  the  whole  Abstract, 
and  as  he  knew  it  was  my  right,  paid 
me  the  whole  amount,  which  I  took 
and  secured  in  my  trunk.  I  soon  had 
a  visit  from  the  Major,  but  as  he 
found  I  was  as  old  a  soldier  as  him- 
self, and  knew  how  far  I  could  resist 
a  claim  that  would  not  expose  me  to 
Military  control,  he  left  me  to  my  re- 
pose and  contented  himself  in  duping 
the  rest  of  the  Officers  in  what  was 
their  right,  and  robbing  them  of  about 
;£8oo.  We  were  not  so  good  friends 
after,  altho  he  did  not  show  any  great 
resentment. 


I  should  be  glad  that  I  could  throw 
a  veil  over  the  rest  of  my  Military  ca- 
reer, but  justice  demands  that  I 
should  give  a  minute  detail  of  all  my 
future  transactions.  Know  then,  that 
I  fell  into  all  kinds  of  dissipation, 
gambling  the  most  prominent,  and  I 
continued  in  that  dissipated  course  of 
life  as  long  as  my  money  lasted,  which 
amounted  to  upwards  of  three  hun- 
dred guineas.  I  was  left  at  the  close 
of  the  war  as  destitute  of  money  as 
when  I  entered  the  Army,  except  my 
half  pay,  at  the  reduction  of  the  Regi- 
ment in  1783.  Towards  the  end  of 
1782  the  South  Carolina,  the  North 
Carolina  and  Georgia  Regiments  were 
ordered  to  Saint  Augustine  in  East 
Florida  to  garrison  that  place  and  to 
release  a  Battalion  of  the  6oth  Regi- 


JHanuarrqrt  0f  QUtkmcl  Sarufe — Unrtt  in  1T5B 


ment,  and  soon  after  our  arrival  I,  as 
the  eldest  subaltern  of  our  Regiment, 
and  as  our  Regiment  was  first  for  a 
Command,  I  was  ordered  by  General 
McArthur  to  take  possession  of  a 
small  fort  twenty  miles  from  St. 
Augustine,  and  to  defend  it  to  the  last 
moment  if  I  should  be  attacked  by 
the  Spaniards,  as  was  expected  at  that 
time.  I  took  three  pieces  of  ord- 
nance with  me,  with  Artillery  men 
sufficient  to  man  them,  with  the  assist- 
ance of  the  soldiers  of  the  Regiment, 
which  amounted  to  twenty-five  rank 
and  file,  two  officers,  who  were  pris- 
oners on  parole,  a  Lieutenant  Corn- 
well  of  our  Regiment,  and  a  Lieuten- 
ant Campbell  (afterwards  Fort  Major 
at  Niagara)  went  with  me  as  compan- 
ions. I  found  some  difficulty  in 
mounting  my  cannon  for  the  want  of 
spars,  and  finding  two  old  masts  on 
the  shore,  I  made  use  of  them,  and 
mounted  my  cannon,  and  finding  they 
were  private  property  I  returned  them 
to  the  place  I  found  them,  and  re- 
mained satisfied  that  I  had  done  noth- 
ing wrong.  The  two  gentlemen  re- 
mained with  me  for  a  fortnight,  and 
we  spend  the  time  very  agreeably  un- 
til one  morning  in  our  sporting  Lieu- 
tenant Campbell  received  a  wound 
from  a  fish  called  Simgarie,  some- 
thing like  a  turtle,  except  a  long  tail, 
the  end  of  which  is  barbed,  and  you 
often  find  many  of  these  at  low  water. 
Mr  Campbell  placed  his  foot  on  one 
of  them,  when  he  received  a  wound  in 
the  ankle  bone  from  a  stroke  of  this 
fish,  and  the  barb  remained  in  his  an- 
kle, by  which  he  was  a  long  time  con- 
fined. 

Warriors  Fishing  In  Florida 
while  Revolution  waged  in  North 

I  remained  at  this  post  for  a 
month,  when  I  was  relieved  and 
joined  my  Regiment,  at  St.  Augus- 
tine, where  the  morning  after  my 
arrival  I  had  a  visit  from  the  Sheriff 
in  an  action  of  damages  for  taking  the 
spars  as  above  related.  The  Owner, 
however,  did  not  think  proper  to  pur- 


sue his  action  and  I  heard  nothing  of 
it  afterwards.  During  the  rest  of  my 
stay  in  this  garrison  our  duty  was 
light,  and  balls,  plays  and  gallanting 
the  ladies  took  up  the  greatest  part 
of  my  time,  for  I  had  to  live  very  eco- 
nomically to  refund  the  money  I  had 
spent  belonging  to  the  soldiers  in 
gambling.  This  I  succeeded  in  do- 
ing, but  it  left  me  moneyless  at  the 
close  of  the  war.  In  the  month  of 
April,  1783,  peace  was  declared,  at 
St.  Augustine,  and  I  obtained  a  leave 
of  absence  and  sailed  for  New  York, 
where  I  arrived  on  the  Qth  of  May, 
and  made  application  to  Commander- 
in-Chief  (now  Lord  Dorchester)  to 
visit  my  friends  in  Danbury,  and  to 
fulfill  my  engagement  with  Miss 
Glover,  which  had  been  unavoidably 
prevented  for  the  last  seven  years. 
His  Lordship  refused  me  leave  until 
I  could  obtain  permission  from  the 
American  government,  as  some  of  our 
Officers  had  gone  into  the  country, 
and  had  been  very  injuriously  treated. 
I,  therefore,  wrote  to  my  Father,  who 
made  application,  and  obtained  a  per- 
mit for  me,  which  was  signed  by  all 
the  respectable  inhabitants  of  Dan- 
bury,  and  one  of  my  Brothers  came  to 
New  York  for  the  purpose  of  accom- 
panying me  back.  Our  meeting  was 
such  as  you  may  conceive  between 
Brothers  who  had  been  separated  for 
so  many  years.  We  left  New  York 
and  arrived  at  my  Father's  on  the 
2Oth  of  April,  1783,  Danbury,  Con- 
necticut. It  is  impossible  to  de- 
scribe my  feelings  on  again  embrac- 
ing those  who  had  always  been  so 
dear  to  me.  Immediately  on  my 
arrival,  my  Father  sent  for  Miss 
Glover,  who  happened  to  be  in  town. 

Soldier's  Joy  when  the 
War  is  Over—  Going  Home 

I  shall  leave  the  reader  to  judge  of 
the  extacy  and  the  joy  that  filled  our 
breasts.  Immediately  preparations 
were  set  on  foot  for  our  marriage. 
We  were  to  have  been  united  at  the 
altar  of  an  Episcopal  Church,  by  a 


An  Am*riran'0 


in  %  Srittalf  Armg 


clergyman  of  that  Church,  an  Uncle 
of  my  Mother's,  but  in  this  we  were 
disappointed,  for  the  next  day  all  our 
happiness  was  marred.  The  day 
after  my  arrival  an  old  servant  of  my 
Father's,  who  in  my  youth  had  la- 
bored in  the  fields  with  me  (he  was  a 
warmhearted  Irishman)  his  name  was 
Wilson;  he  came  to  inform  me  that 
a  body  of  men  were  coming  to  mob 
me,  and  urged  me  to  be  on  my  guard. 
I  treated  this  information  lightly, 
but  soon  after  an  American  soldier  re- 
quested to  see  me  and  gave  the  same 
account.  This  alarmed  me  a  little, 
and  I  began  to  think  of  the  best  mode 
of  defending  myself.  At  this  mo- 
ment another  person  announced  him- 
self as  the  Brother  of  a  Lieutenant 
Hunt  of  our  Army,  and  wished  me  to 
convey  a  letter  to  his  Brother  of  my 
return  to  New  York.  Nothing  could 
be  more  pleasing  to  me;  Lieutenant 
Hunt  was  a  particular  friend  of  mine. 
We  had  fought  in  the  same  field  to- 
gether, and  we  had  spent  many  pleas- 
ant hours  with  each  other.  I  was  all 
politeness  to  this  stranger,  shook  him 
cordially  by  the  hand,  asked  him  to 
take  a  glass  of  wine  (we  had  dined). 
He  then  asked  me  if  I  did  not  remem- 
ber him.  I  answered  in  the  negative. 
He  said  that  he  had  been  my  prisoner ; 
I  asked  him  where.  He  said  at 
Pound  Ridge  at  such  a  time  and  place. 
I  replied,  yes,  I  remember,  I  came  up 
at  a  critical  moment.  "Yes,  you  no 
doubt  saved  my  life,  but  your  men 
had  robbed  him  of  his  baggage,  and  I 
expect  you  to  pay  me  for  it."  Oh. 
your  most  obedient,  I  find  your  rela- 
tionship to  my  friend  Lieutenant  Hunt 
(which  you  say  is  your  name) 
amounts  only  to  the  price  of  your 
baggage.  Good-bye  to  you  Sir,  I  am 
much  engaged,  you  will  excuse  me, 
and  left  the  room,  and  retired  to  mine 
above  stairs,  and  began  to  prepare 
for  action.  Whilst  I  was  engaged 
with  Hunt,  my  Father  had  walked 
out  into  the  street.  It  was  a  day  of 
muster  day  with  the  Militia,  who  were 
just  dismissed.  My  Father  soon  re- 


turned much  agitated,  and  said,  "Son, 
they  are  really  coming  and  God  knows 
what  will  be  the  result."  I  then  de- 
sired every  person  to  leave  the  room. 
Miss  Glover,  good-bye,  I  can  die — in 
no  place  more  honorably  than  this — 
you  shall  see  that  I  can  die  bravely; 
I  have  lived  honorably  and  I  will  die 
gloriously;  remember  me  to  my 
Brother  Officers.  I  thrust  them  all 
out  of  the  room  and  shut  the  door. 

Home-coming  of  American  who 
Fought  in  the  British  Lines 

In  a  moment  the  house  was  filled 
with  armed  men,  who  demanded  to  see 
me.  They  said,  "they  did  not  intend 
injurying  me,"  but  I  must  "show  my- 
self." This  was  joy  to  my  family.and 
one  of  my  sisters  ran  to  my  room  (now 
Mrs.  Hitchcock)  desiring  me  to  come 
down.  I  desired  her  to  retire  and 
leave  me — during  this  bustle  and  con- 
fusion my  Brother  had  informed  a 
Colonel  Jamison  (he  had  a  squadron 
of  Dragoons  under  his  command)  of 
the  perilous  situation  in  which  I  was 
placed,  but  in  the  meantime  I  had 
complied  with  the  request  of  my 
family  and  went  down  amongst  the 
assembled  mob,  some  of  which  spoke 
in  mild  and  peacable  language ;  others 
in  a  very  threatening  and  hostile  man- 
ner. I  however  showed  a  determined 
and  resolute  spirit  and  replied  to  their 
demands,  that  from  their  declaration 
I  had  placed  myself  in  their  hands, 
and  that  I  was  now  in  their  power, 
and  if  they  presumed  to  injure  me 
that  a  tenfold  retaliation  would  be 
made  on  some  of  their  friends  who 
were  then  in  New  York  enjoying  the 
protection  of  the  British  Army,  and 
pursueing  their  private  business 
agreeable  to  the  Treaty  of  Peace,  and 
under  the  Treaty  I  demanded  the 
same  protection  from  them.  By  this 
time  Colonel  Jamison  had  sent  a  Sar- 
geant  and  twelve  Dragoons  with  or- 
ders to  protect  me  from  every  insult. 


733 


iiHanu0rript  nf  (Eohmtl  Slanrta — IBnrn  in  175& 


Loyalist  Mobbed  by  Townsmen 
on  Night  of  His  Wedding 

This  circumstance  rather  checked 
their  hostile  disposition,  and  the  au- 
thority arriving,  I  was  under  no  ap- 
prehension of  immediate  danger,  yet 
nothing  would  satisfy  them  but  an 
immediate  departure  from  the  town, 
and  if  I  remained  during  the  night  I 
must  abide  the  consequence.  The 
greatest  part  of  the  rabble  left  the 
house,  yet  there  was  several  who 
seemed  determined  to  watch  my 
movements,  as  if  determined  to  do  me 
some  injury.  It  was  at  last  proposed 
to  my  Father  that  the  best  mode  to 
quell  the  mob  would  be  to  have  our 
marriage  take  place  that  evening,  and 
after  some  urgency  with  Miss  Glover, 
she  at  last  consented.  A  clergyman 
was  sent  for,  we  retired  to  a  room 
with  a  select  party  of  our  friends,  and 
we  were  united,  after  which  the  mob 
dispersed  and  had  left  us  (with  our 
guard  of  honor)  to  our  night's  repose. 
In  the  morning  however  I  was  again 
disturbed  by  a  visit  from  the  Sheriff. 
Hunt  had  procured  a  warrant  against 
me  for  the  price  of  his  portmanteau, 
and  the  Sheriff  had  made  a  forcible 
entry  into  my  bedchamber.  I  met 
him  with  such  a  determined  and 
threatening  attitude  that  in  his  retreat 
he  tumbled  from  the  head  of  the 
staircase  to  the  bottom.  He  then  se- 
lected a  posse — and  surrounded  the 
house.  My  guard  had  after  daylight, 
returned  to  their  quarters,  but  were 
ordered  again  to  return  but  they 
again  assumed  their"  station  inside  the 
house  at  a  proper  time  for  rising.  I 
made  my  appearance  at  the  window  of 
my  bedchamber,  spoke  to  the  persons 
outside,  who  seemed  to  look  rather  ill- 
natured.  I  threw  them  a  dollar,  de- 
sired they  would  get  something  to 
drink  the  Bride's  health,  which  they 
did,  and  before  they  had  finished  the 
bottle  I  had  won  them  all  to  my  side. 

Quelling  Irate  Patriots  by 
Drinking  Health  to  Bride 

"I  was  a  d — d  cleaver  fellow;  I  had 
got  one  of  the  best  of  women  for  a 


wife  in  the  world ;  that  I  was  deserv- 
ing of  her,  and  that  they  would  de- 
fend us  as  long  as  they  had  a  drop  of 
blood  in  their  veins."  Mr.  Sheriff 
seeing  this,  retired  and  left  me  in 
peace,  and  we  sat  comfortably  down 
to  our  breakfast;  soon,  however,  the 
mob  began  to  collect  in  the  lower  part 
of  the  street,  and  it  was  advisable  that 
I  should  leave  the  place.  I,  therefore, 
exchanged  my  uniform  coat  for  one 
of  my  Brother's,  stepped  out  of  the 
back  door,  crossed  the  field,  where 
my  Brother  met  me  with  a  horse, 
which  I  mounted  and  rode  out  of 
town,  and  proceeded  to  the  house 
where  I  had  parted  from  Miss  Glover 
seven  years  before,  and  where  she 
joined  me  the  next  day.  I  remained 
here  but  a  short  time,  and  then  re- 
turned to  New  York,  and  made  my 
report  in  writing  to  his  Aid-de-Camp. 

Assaults  Upon  British  Sympa- 
thizers in  First  Days  of  Republic 

Soon  after  this  a  party  of  friends 
from  Stamford,  Connecticut,  and  a 
few  in  New  York,  agreed  to  meet  on 
one  of  the  Islands  between  those 
places  and  spend  the  day.  It  con- 
sisted of  ladies  and  gentlemen  from 
both  places,  and  myself  among  the 
number.  We  were  conveyed  in  one 
of  our  whale  boats  commanded  by 
a  Captain  Hubbell;  we  met  our 
friends,  and  after  spending  the 
day,  we  were  prevailed  on  to  go 
to  Stamford  for  the  night,  assuring 
us  that  we  should  not  be  molested, 
but  in  the  morning  a  mob  collected, 
fell  upon  our  boat's  crew,  beat  them 
unmercifully,  and  threatened  us  also, 
and  particularly  Mr.  William  Jarvis 
(late  Secretary  of  Upper  Canada) 
who  was  a  native  of  that  place.  As 
I  was  a  stranger  to  them  I  took  the 
task  of  appeasing  their  wrath,  and  to 
allow  us  to  go  off  peaceably,  as  it  was 
the  fault  of  the  people  of  the  place 
that  we  had  visited  them,  and  particu- 
larly as  the  ladies  were  much  alarmed, 
and  one  of  them  in  fits.  Our  crew  had 
fell  down  to  the  mouth  of  the  harbor 


734 


An  Am*riran'0  3Exp?rfettr?  in  ilje  SrtttBlj  Armg 


and  we  were  obliged  to  walk,  and  in 
many  places  to  carry  the  ladies  in  our 
arms,  sometimes  in  mud  and  water  up 
to  our  knees.  Soon  after  we  had  left 
the  town,  they  found  out  that  my 
name  was  Jarvis  also,  and  Cousin  to 
the  other  Jarvis,  and  they  swore  ven- 
geance at  me  and  set  off  after  us. 
We  saw  them  coming;  we  placed  the 
ladies  on  a  dry  piece  of  ground,  and 
prepared  for  battle.  There  were  five 
gentlemen  of  us,  Captain  Hubbell, 
two  British  Officers  besides  my 
Cousin  and  myself.  We  drew  up  in 
battle  array  and  waited  the  attack. 
They  came  within  about  one  hundred 
yards,  when  their  hearts  failed  them 
and  they  retired.  We  gained  our 
boat  and  after  being  out  all  night 
reached  New  York  the  next  morning 
at  sunrise,  but  we  took  care  not  to  let 
this  be  known  at  Headquarters. 

An  American  Soldier's  Farewell 
to  his  Comrades  off  for  England 

In  a  few  weeks  after  this  my 
wife  joined  me,  and  I  got  quar- 
ters in  a  house  at  Brushwick, 
where  we  remained  for  about  three 
weeks.  I  applied  for  my  rations, 
but  as  that  was  contrary  to  the 
established  rules  of  the  Army,  and 
not  receiving  any  letters  from  the 
Paymaster  of  the  Regiment  as  to  how 
I  should  draw  on  him  for  my  pay,  I 
made  up  my  mind  to  join  my  Regi- 
ment. My  wife  wished  me  to  take 
her  with  me,  but  I  had  witnessed  too 
much  distress  of  other  Officer's  wives, 
and  however  painful  it  was  to  again 
be  separated,  I  positively  refused.  I 
wrote  to  my  Father,  who  came  down 
to  New  York  and  took  her  home  un- 
der his  care,  and  I  embarked  for  St. 
Augustine.  Had  I  remained  one 
week  longer  I  might  have  saved  my- 
self the  trouble  and  expense  of  a  very 
long  and  boisterous  voyage,  as  a  gen- 
tleman arrived  at  New  York  with  my 
despatches  necessary  for  every  pur- 
pose which  was  contemplated  on  my 
leaving  the  Regiment.  After  a  pas- 
sage of  five  weeks,  and  the  whole  time 

735 


a  gale  of  wind — I  had  only  to  encoun- 
ter the  danger  of  the  sea — I  was  the 
only  passenger  on  board.  The  Mas- 
ter was  a  very  pleasant  fellow  and  the 
ship  was  well  found,  and  we  weath- 
ered the  gale,  and  at  last  got  safe  on 
shore,  and  when  I  landed  the  fleet 
was  in  sight  to  take  the  Troops  on 
board,  as  by  the  Treaty  of  Peace,  St. 
Augustine  was  to  be  given  up  to  the 
Spaniards.  Every  preparation  was 
now  making  for  our  departure,  and 
about  the  beginning  of  October  we 
sailed  for  Halifax  in  Nova  Scotia, 
where  we  arrived  after  a  passage  of 
fifteen  days;  boisterous  weather  the 
whole  passage.  Here  the  Regiment 
was  disbanded  and  their  place  of  des- 
tination for  the  Regiment  was  Coun- 
try Harbour,  to  the  Eastward  of  Hal- 
ifax, somewhere  in  the  Girt  of  Canso. 
Here  I  took  leave  of  a  set  of  as  brave 
fellows  as  ever  existed,  which  I  had 
led  in  many  hard  fought  battles,  and 
who  were  as  much  attached  to  me  as 
children  to  their  Father.  So  much  so 
when  I  left  them  they  carried  me  in 
their  arms  to  the  vessel  in  which  I 
took  my  passage  for  New  York. 

A  British  Adherent's  Interview 
With  Washington  after  the  War 

I  arrived  at  Sandy  Hook  the  day 
the  British  Army  left  New  York.  The 
question  with  me  was,  shall  I,  or  shall 
I  not  proceed;  or  shall  I  go  back  to 
Halifax?  At  last  I  determined  to 
proceed ;  I  must  go  some  time  and  the 
sooner  the  better.  So  I  proceeded  to 
the  City  and  made  my  appearance  at 
General  Washington's  Headquarters, 
and  reported  myself  to  General  Ham- 
ilton. I  was  directed  to  call  the  next 
morning  at  nine  o'clock.  I  then  be- 
gan to  look  out  for  some  of  my  old 
acquaintances,  but  none  could  I  find. 
All  were  gone.  I  at  last  however  fell 
in  with  two  ladies  of  my  acquaintance, 
one  of  them  a  relation,  and  after  I 
had  engaged  quarters  for  the  night,  I 
went  and  spent  the  evening  with  them, 
and  returned  to  the  lodging  house, 
where  I  found  a  whole  room  of  mer- 


iHmm0rnjrt  xrf 


iartrtH  —  Snm  in  If5fi 


chants  and  other  persons  from  the 
country.  I  took  a  chair  arid  sat  down 
amongst  them.  They  were  comment- 
ing on  the  late  war,  the  conduct  of 
their  several  Generals,  and  frequently 
referred  to  me.  I  gave  my  opinion 
candidly,  which  by  their  reply  did  not 
accord  with  their  sentiments.  I  soon 
called  for  a  servant  to  light  me  to  bed, 
and  in  leaving  the  room  I  said,  "Gen- 
tlemen, I  believe  you  have  mistaken 
my  character,  I  am  a  British  Officer 
instead  of  an  American!!  Good- 
night," and  left  the  room  and  retired 
to  my  chamber;  there  were  two  beds 
and  I  made  choice  of  one,  and  went  to 
bed.  I  had  not  fallen  asleep,  when 
the  door  opened  and  two  men  in  earn- 
est conversation  entered,  one  saying 
to  the  other,  "d — n  the  fellow,  how  he 
twiged  us;  who  the  devil  thought 
him  a  British  Officer ;  how  he  got  into 
all  our  secrets."  "Hush!"  said  the 
other,  pointing  to  my  uniform  at  the 
head  of  my  bed.  They  blew  out  the 
candle  and  went  to  bed  in  the  dark — 
never  spoke  again  to  my  hearing  dur- 
ing the  night,  and  in  the  morning  left 
the  room  before  I  was  awake — I 
never  saw  them  after.  The  next 
morning  at  the  hour  stated  I  made  my 
appearance,  and  was  introduced  to 
the  Great  General  Washington.  He 
asked  me  many  questions  and  re- 
turned mine  with  great  civility.  I 
asked  him  for  a  passport  to  go  into 
the  country.  This  he  refused,  having 
the  day  before  given  up  his  command, 
but  gave  me  advice  how  to  proceed — 
I  made  my  bow  and  retired. 

Strong  Feeling  of  Animosity  against 
those  who  Opposed  Independence 

After  a  day  or  two  residence  in  New 
York,  where  I  was  saluted  by  the  sol- 
diers as  some  General  Officer  of  theirs, 
and  supplying  myself  with  a  stock  of 
tea  and  sugar  for  the  winter,  I  left 
New  York  and  proceeded  into  the 
country,  and  at  Reading  in  Connecti- 
cut I  found  my  wife,  who  had  been  on 
a  visit  at  my  Brother's  for  some  time. 
I  found  her  "as  women  wish  to  be 


who  love  their  Lord."  After  a  short 
stay,  we  went  to  Danbury,  where  I 
took  up  my  quarters  for  the  winter. 
Early  in  the  spring  I  was  again  threat- 
ened. I  took  horse  and  rode  to  Mid- 
dletown  to  see  my  Uncle,  the  late 
Bishop  of  Connecticut,  where  I  re- 
mained for  a  few  days  and  then  re- 
turned, but  kept  myself  rather  con- 
fined. I  paid  a  visit  with  my  Mother 
to  a  Brother  of  hers,  a  Clergyman  of 
the  Presbyterian  persuasion.  Here 
we  stayed  for  some  time  and  then 
returned.  I  was  discovered  return- 
ing to  my  Father's  and  in  the  evening 
I  got  an  order  sent  me  in  writing  to 
depart  or  abide  the  consequence.  A 
few  days  afterwards  a  Cousin,  also  a 
British  Officer,  came  to  pay  a  visit  at 
my  Father's  and  he  was  imprudent  to 
appear  in  his  full  uniform.  We 
walked  out  to  see  a  Sister  of  mine, 
and  after  dinner  he  took  his  depart- 
ure. That  night  my  Father's  house 
was  attacked,  and  forcibly  entered. 
I  rose  from  my  bed,  got  my  drawers 
and  one  stocking  on,  when  I  heard  the 
front  door  give  way.  I  took  my  pis- 
tols and  took  my  stand  in  the  middle 
of  the  floor,  determined  to  kill  the  first 
man  that  should  approach  us.  My 
Father  begged  of  me  to  flee.  I  had 
no  time  to  lose.  I  flew  from  one 
room  to  another,  found  all  the  win- 
dows guarded.  They  had  entered 
the  house.  They  met  my  Father, 
knocked  him  down,  flew  to  my  bed- 
room, turned  my  wife  out  of  bed,  and 
much  injured  her.  I  had  no  place 
left  but  the  cellar  for  safety ;  to  this  I 
fled.  My  Father  recovered  his  feet, 
and  ran  into  the  Street,  he  one  way 
and  my  Sister  another,  calling  out 
Murder!!  Soon  the  town  was 
alarmed  and  relief  obtained.  The 
Magistrates  and  others  assembled, 
and  after  remaining  some  time  in  the 
cellar,  the  mob  dispersed,  and  I  was 
relieved  from  my  unpleasant  situation. 
My  Mother  and  Wife  suffered  much 
in  defending  the  cellar  door  before 
relief  arrived.  They  were  black  and 
blue  from  the  blows  they  received.  I 
dressed  myself  and  went  to  a  friend's 

736 


An  Am*rtran'fi 


in  %  Srittali  Armg 


house  and  went  to  bed.  I  was  much 
indebted  to  a  Major  Lawrence  for  my 
safety.  He  came  armed,  brought 
some  others  with  him,  and  he  had  the 
influence  to  draw  off  the  mob,  and 
afterwards  would  not  go  to  his  house 
until  he  found  where  I  had  retired  to, 
and  having  heard  where  I  had  spent 
the  evening,  he  repaired  to  the  house 
and  found  me  in  a  comfortable  repose 
— he  then  left  me.  I  remained  there 
the  whole  day,  and  the  next  night 
slept  at  a  neighbor's  house  a  few 
doors  from  my  Father,  and  the  evening 
following  moved  out  of  town,  and 
took  lodgings  once  more  at  the  place 
where  I  fled  to  the  year  before,  and 
here  I  remained  until  after  my  wife 
was  confined  with  her  first  child,  now 
Mrs.  Phillips.  It  was  several  months 
before  my  wife  recovered  in  con- 
sequence of  the  injury  sustained  by 
the  mob.  She  came  very  near  losing 
her  life  during  her  illness. 

Encounters  with  Revengeful 
Countrymen  after  Close  of  War 

I  used  frequently  to  ride  over  to  my 
Father's  in  the  night  arid  ride  back  the 
next  evening  after  dark,  and  one  even- 
ing returning  I  had  an  opportunity  of 
revenging  myself  on  one  of  those  fel- 
lows who  had,  during  the  war,  abused 
my  Father.  I  rode  alongside  of  him 
and  with  a  good  hunting  whip  lashed 
him  every  step  to  his  door,  and  then 
rode  on.  He  never  knew  who  was 
the  person,  neither  did  I  mention  it 
until  twenty  years  after,  when  I  paid 
a  visit  to  Danbury,  and  passing 
through  the  street  saw  him  and  men- 
tioned the  circumstance  to  my 
Brother.  As  soon  as  my  wife  had  so 
far  recovered  as  to  be  removed,  I 
took  her  to  my  Father's  house,  where 
I  left  her  and  set  off  for  Long  Island. 
Landed  at  Cold  Spring,  where  I  wait- 
ed for  some  days  for  the  arrival  of  a 
vessel  from  New  York  for  St.  John, 
New  Brunswick,  on  board  of  which  I 
took  passage.  We  put  in  to  Annapo- 
lis to  land  a  Mr.  Young  and  his  fam- 
ily; stayed  two  days  and  then  sailed 
over  to  St.  John,  where  the  Loyalists 

737 


had  already  thickly  hutted  themselves, 
and  here  I  met  with  many  of  my  old 
acquaintances  which  I  had  left  at 
Charleston  when  I  left  there  for 
St.  Augustine,  and  here  again  I  met 
the  Officers  of  the  Queen's  Rangers, 
who  were  about  to  take  up  their  land 
above  Fredericton,  eighty  miles  up  the 
St.  John  River,  to  which  place  I  re- 
paired the  first  opportunity,  which 
was  by  a  boat  belonging  to  Captain 
Whillock,  of  the  Rangers,  who  had 
taken  up  his  residence  at  Gage  Town, 
thirty  miles  below  Fredericton,  from 
this  I  travelled  by  land  most  of  the 
way  in  company  with  a  Mr.  Simmons 
from  Staten  Island.  On  our  arrival 
at  Fredericton  we  put  up  at  a  small 
Inn,  kept  by  one  Berts,  and  in  the 
evening  two  officers  came  in  and  re- 
mained until  a  late  hour.  Mr.  Sim- 
mons and  myself  ordered  supper  and 
something  to  drink.  We  had  some 
moose  stake  which  we  found  very  pal- 
atable, and  went  to  bed.  The  next 
morning  the  landlord  presented  us 
with  a  bill,  charging  us  with  the  sup- 
per for  the  two  others,  besides  all  that 
was  drunk,  and  gave  a  reason  that  we 
had  ordered  supper  and  called  for 
spirits,  etc.  which  was  drunk.  We 
paid  the  bill  and  left  his  house;  be- 
fore leaving  St.  John  a  Lieutenant 
Hoyt,  one  of  my  old  Carolina  ac- 
quaintances, had  given  me  the  keys 
to  his  house,  and  desired  me  to  take 
possession,  and  remain  there  until  his 
arrival.  I  did  so,  and  in  a  day  or  two 
he  arrived;  with  him  I  stayed  until  I 
left  Fredericton.  I  then  set  about 
procuring  a  town  lot,  and  engaged  a 
person  to  build  me  a  house,  and  have 
it  ready  against  the  next  spring.  I 
then  returned  to  St.  John  where  I  re- 
mained for  some  time,  and  whilst 
there  assisted  my  relation  Mr.  Jarvis 
(who  had  a  hardware  store)  until  my 
departure.  In  the  meantime,  I  drew 
for  the  first  time  my  half-pay  bill, 
which  I  got  cashed,  allowing  a  dis- 
count, of  I  think,  nine  per  cent.  As 
this  was  the  first  period,  the  mer- 
chants were  loth  to  pay  cash  for  half- 
pay  bills. 


nf  Qtohmri  Slartris — IBorn  tn  1755 


Loyalists  flee  to  Canada  to 
Escape  Taunts  and  Assaults 

Mr.  Jarvis  and  his  Brother  Sam- 
uel had  a  vessel  going  to  New 
York,  and  after  purchasing  a  few 
quintals  of  codfish  I  embarked  on 
board  of  this  vessel  and  sailed,  and  in 
passing  through  Long  Island  the  ves- 
sel came  to  anchor,  and  landed  me 
and  my  baggage  at  Stamford.  We 
had  made  a  short  stay  at  Rhode  Island 
on  our  way.  I  landed  early  in  the 
morning,  and  after  breakfast  hired  a 
horse  and  set  off  to  find  my  wife.  I 
had  got  in  a  short  distance  of  my 
Brother's  when  my  horse  fell  and 
broke  his  shoulder  blade.  I  took  off 
my  saddle  and  bridle  after  turning 
him  into  a  field  by  the  permission  of 
the  Owner;  took  my  saddle  on  my 
back  until  I  could  procure  another 
horse,  then  rode  to  my  Brother's, 
changed  horses  with  him  and  rode  on 
to  Newtown,  where  I  had  the  happi- 
ness of  finding  both  wife  and  daugh- 
ter in  good  health.  After  visiting  our 
friends  at  Newtown,  and  paying  a 
short  visit  at  Danbury,  I  took  up  my 
winter  quarters  at  my  Brother's  in 
Reading.  Here  I  was  very  politely 
visited  by  all  the  most  respectable  peo- 
ple on  the  place,  and  amused  myself 
by  riding  about  the  country  during 
the  winter  when  I  could  leave  home. 
In  the  Autumn  both  myself,  wife  and 
young  infant  were  nearly  blind  with 
inflammation  in  our  eyes  for  a  long 
time,  which  made  our  situation  ex- 
ceedingly unpleasant,  having  no  ser- 
vants to  attend  us.  In  this  manner 
we  worried  through  the  winter,  and 
when  the  spring  commenced  began  to 
make  preparations  for  removing  to 
New  Brunswick,  and  about  the  ist  of 
May  embarked  on  board  a  vessel 
called  the  Sholdram,  with  several 
other  families  for  the  same  place. 
Some  of  the  passengers  made  it  very 
unpleasant,  but  as  this  is  not  very  in- 
teresting to  the  reader,  I  shall  avoid 
mentioning  them,  and  confine  myself 
to  such  matters  as  concern  myself  and 
family.  On  the  i5th  of  June,  1785,  I 


landed  at  Fredericton  with  a  wife, 
one  child  and  a  guinea  only  in  my 
pocket,  with  one  year's  half-pay  to 
draw  for,  and  with  this  I  had  pro- 
vided for  our  future  existence.  Gov- 
ernment allowed  the  soldiers  and 
refugees  three  years'  rations,  and 
even  with  the  bounty  many  families 
suffered  greatly  for  the  want  of  pro- 
visions, and  had  not  the  forests 
abounded  with  moose,  many  families 
would  have  perished.  I  took  with 
me  from  St.  John  a  small  assortment 
of  goods  advanced  me  by  my  friend 
Mr.  Jarvis,  with  which  I  commenced 
business,  and  with  this  small  supply 
I  arrived  at  Fredericton,  but  found 
that  the  timber  of  which  my  house 
was  to  have  been  built  was  still  grow- 
ing. This  put  us  to  great  inconven- 
ience, and  I  was  obliged  to  hire  a 
small  hovel,  for  which  I  gave  ten 
pounds  rent,  but  here  we  found  it 
impossible  to  remain,  for  the  proprie- 
tor had  during  the  proceeding  winter 
made  a  ceiling  of  slabs  and  bark  over- 
laid with  plaster  of  mortar  or  clay, 
and  which  he  had  disturbed  in  the 
spring  so  that  every  wind  that  blew 
our  floor  was  covered  with  dirt.  In 
this  situation  we  were  obliged  to  live 
for  several  weeks  before  I  could  pos- 
sibly find  another  place  to  shelter  us 
from  the  heat.  The  only  difference 
in  the  two  houses  was  that  we  could 
eat  our  food  without  quite  so  much 
dirt  as  in  our  first  habitation.  I  com- 
menced building,  and  in  October  we 
got  into  our  new  house,  and  thought 
ourselves  as  happy  as  princes. 

Life  of  Exiled  Americans 
under  Flag  of  British  Empire 

Nothing  of  any  particular  interest 
happened  for  many  years.  I  went  on 
a  progressive  way,  building  and  add- 
ing to  my  convenience.  I  was  of  an 
ambitious  disposition  and  fond  of  Mil- 
itary life,  and  held  during  the  time  I 
remained  in  the  Providence,  from  the 
year  1785  until  the  year  1809,  the  fol- 
lowing commissions  in  the  Militia, 
viz.,  Captain,  Major,  Major  of  Bri- 

738 


An  Ammran'a  iExperonr*  in  %  Sritislf  Armg 


gade,  Deputy  Adjutant  General,  and 
Lieutenant  Colonel,  independent  of 
the  office  of  Postmaster,  and  for  six- 
teen years  the  great  part  of  the  sum- 
mer was  employed  in  disciplining  the 
Militia  of  the  county,  without  any 
other  remuneration  than  the  thanks 
of  the  Governor,  with  great  promises, 
but  his  leaving  the  Province  all  those 
expectations  failed,  and  altho  I  made 
a  good  deal  of  money  and  acquired 
some  considerable  property,  I  left  the 
Province  with  the  loss  of  about 
£3,000,  and  only  brought  to  Upper 
Canada  a  little  upwards  of  Seven 
Hundred  Pounds,  with  a  family  of  a 
wife  and  six  children.  About  the 
year  1807  an  action  took  place  be- 
tween one  of  our  ships  of  war  and  the 
American  ship  Chesapeake,  and  it  ap- 
peared to  me  that  war  would  ensue 
between  the  two  Governments,  and  I 
offered  my  services  in  case  the  Militia 
should  be  called  into  actual  service, 
which  offer  was  thankfully  accepted, 
but  when  it  was  found  necessary  to 
embody  the  Militia,  the  command  was 
given  to  another  person.  This  so  far 
excited  my  resentment  that  I  immedi- 
ately made  up  my  mind  to  quit  the 
Province,  and  made  a  visit  to  Upper 
Canada.  I  was  well  received  by  the 
Governor  and  such  promises  held  out 
to  me  that  I  returned  to  New  Bruns- 
wick and  commenced  closing  my  ac- 
counts and  settling  my  affairs  in  order 
for  removal  the  next  spring.  It  was 
with  some  difficulty  that  I  could  pre- 
vail upon  my  family  to  consent  to 
emigrate,  but  after  some  negotiations 
between  the  Secretary  of  the  Province 
and  myself,  at  the  directions  of  the 
Lieutenant  Governor  (Gore)  they  at 
last  consented  and  we  left  Fredericton 
on  the  3<Dth  of  June,  1809. 

We  traversed  the  waters  of  the  St. 
John  in  birch  canoes,  lying  on  the 
beach  where  there  were  no  inhabitants, 
much  disturbed  with  gnats  and  mos- 
quitoes at  night,  and  crossing  the 
portage  from  the  waters  of  St.  John  to 
the  St.  Lawrence,  thirty-six  miles, 
most  up  to  our  knees,  and  black  flies 

739 


to  annoy  us.  We  at  last  encountered 
all  our  difficulties,  and  reached  Quebec 
all  in  good  health,  except  one  daugh- 
ter who  had  become  the  wife  of  Major 
Maule  of  the  104  Regiment,  whom  I 
had  left  behind ;  after  remaining  a 
week,  we  proceeded  to  Montreal 
where  we  remained  one  week  longer, 
providing  ourselves  with  such  neces- 
saries as  would  be  necessary  for  com- 
mencing housekeeping.  We  again  set 
off  in  a  battcase  for  Kingston.  We 
were  fourteen  days  on  our  passage  to 
Kingston.  I  applied  to  the  Quarter- 
Master  General  and  was  ordered  a  pas- 
sage in  one  of  his  Majesty's  armed 
vessels,  and  arrived  at  New  York  on 
the  28th  of  August,  and  took  posses- 
sion of  a  house  which  had  already  been 
purchased  for  me,  and  began  to  make 
ourselves  comfortable.  I  engaged  a 
public  office  at  £100  per  annum  until  I 
could  look  about,  and  get  a  location 
of  land,  for  myself  1200  acres,  and  for 
my  son,  the  only  one  of  age,  400,  on 
which  he  began  to  improve.  The  pur- 
chase of  my  house  and  furniture  and 
the  payment  of  fees  for  our  land  had 
exhausted  all  my  ready  money,  and  I 
had  only  my  £100  and  my  half-pay  for 
the  support  of  my  family  until  the 
Americans  declared  war  against  the 
British  Government  and  invaded  Can- 
ada. 

Experiences  during  the  Second 
War  with  England  in  1812 

There  was  a  young  man  by  the 
name  of  Thomas  (I  dined  with  him  in 
New  York  in  August  1830)  who  had 
been  at  York  for  two  or  three  years  as 
a  merchant,  and  who  wished  to  accept 
of  General  Brock's  proclamation  and 
return  to  the  States.  I  was  recom- 
mended to  him  as  a  fit  person  to  take 
charge  of  his  property,  for  which  he 
was  to  allow  me  £125  out  of  the  pro- 
ceeds, and  with  which  and  the  other 
commission  business  I  was  enabled  to 
support  my  family  comfortably  dur- 
ing the  war.  I  was  again  appointed 
Adjutant  General  of  the  Militia,  and 


JHanuarrtjrt  of  (EnlnnH  Sarma — Bunt  ftt  1T5G 


was  employed  as  such  until  York  was 
taken  by  the  enemy.  A 
were  also  in  the  service,  one\  volun- 
teer in  the  4yth  and  the  othe^  at 
head  of  the  Waggu^ 
The  volunteer  was  taken  prisoner  a 
the  battle  of  Queciistown,  where 
lal  Brock  fell.  My  son  was  ex- 
changed in  a  few  days  and  soon  afier 
cUained-  his  commission  in  the 
Regiment,  in  which  he  served  during 
the  war.  Went  home  with  the  Regi- 
ment and  was  reduced  to  half-pay. 
He  was  afterwards  placed  on  full  pay 

in    r"du^.i    to    half-pay.      He    is 
wver  and  settled  at  Con 


sioa.       .  .    anajru^nted  my  income  to 
»X»Ai  ^&<;  r,:.«-  youngest  son 
got  into  the  Secretary's  Office  at  £100 
afterwa 


5gi  per  annum, 
r  a  little  more 

than  £300  per  annum.     He  purchased 
fcw&i  tot  and  built  a   comfortable 
ind  we  lived  together  until  the 
when  his  health  became 
_          and  it  became  neces- 
sary that  he  .should  change  a  mode  of 
fc.      I,  therefore,   consented  to  re- 
f^  my  office  in  his  favor,  but  this 
was  objected  to,  and^ie  afw^ 


J 


of  Ameri 


I  r«  "iy  officeand  my  son 


After  York  was  taken  and. 
<"«or,er,    I    was  dismissed' 
Military  duty  and  applied  myself  to 
i  tiiiness  as  a 

iii  this  I  succt  <>x  " ' 'V7"wcnramJ "fiat 
[   continued  in  that  busit 

!?'d  have  done  verysiv  svf 
ing  myself  in  possession  of  £500 
money,  I  was  advised  to  go 
treal  and  open  corresp» 
commence  business  on  my  own  ac- 
count, and  if  the  war  had  ;cd  I 
should  have  done  well.  ^ 
tainct!  a  credit  for  any,^^^ 
should  order.  The  Peace  oTi£i5  left 
a  very  large^  supply  of  eoodsjan  hand, 
and  i 

was  obliged   to  sell  my 

house  a; if}  all  my  real  properg^^gf^ 

and  at  the  close  of  war  I 

was  rcchvc'l  to  my  half-pay  only  for 

;>ort  of  my  large  family.     At 

the  de-pa  i 

the  Province,  Cofoner'Sfnim;  an  ol 
friend  d  ;me  to  ' 

t ration  of   ;    \^^ 
Registry  of  t  ^fr 

acant,  he  gav*  me  the  commij 


o   a  worthy 
arge  family.     My 
is  now  with  her 
France.        Her 
Brother,  the  Sheriff,  allows  her  the 

self%  Rse    i  arried    a 

\coit;  \  \    v 

V$yw   »    sv«Xv^    ^\  v> 

J 

to  a;     •  \  ^  'r  w^  a 

s^S^N^^WoitwKSnd  alth, 

and  I  hope  mak;  for 

another  and  !•• 

There  my  f^r^>      T\v     ^iave  R^ven 
Si^S  <-U^Wteti«SWn  c&liwjventful  life, 

\\  \    \      \     WYVxC          >^. 

.     nf    miglit     r 

many  circumstances  .which  were  very 
ttfetciftafeRg  jb   WJ^Qilf,   bui   in   which 
you  would  take  no  interest,  and  I 
your  patience  will  be  exh., 
you  get  through 

••N 

'v  %.  th>s  in 

A 


Nature's  dratthrur  in  Ammra 


THE    MONARCH    "NIAGARA1 


Natnrr'a  (Sranfrrur  in 
Amrrtra— Niagara 


Naturr'a  C&ran&rur  in 
Amrrira— Niagara 


•Xatnrr'a  (Sran&r  nr  in 
America — Niagara 


Jfftrat  3farttm*0  in  Ammran 


Crttrra  of  a 

Sankrr  mlin  Ijrlprb  to  Establish 

ihr  <£r*btt  of  Antrrtrau  Suaturaa  ^auara  in  lljr 

fflarkrt  J*  OJrrat  (Cummrrr  ial  Uruturra  in  tb.  f  JTroptra  J* 
Unuanra   ll1   Cijina  -*  @p*ntng  traffic  mt  thr  &t.  Hatorrnrr 

Hiurr  and  Calir  (Ontario  -•*  (itirrrouuiuVurr  of  Damb  pariah,  and  laarpif  Eoaarrl 


BT 

FRANK  R.  ROSSBEL 

BUFFALO,  NEW  YORK 
GRANDSON  or  JOSEPH  ROMEKL,  THE  FINANCIAL  AGENT  OP  THE  PARISH  ESTATE 


3N  March,  1906,  a  large  col- 
lection of  old  letters,  of 
great  historic  value,  was 
found  stored  away  in  a 
chest  in  the  attic  of  the 
library  building  in  Og- 
densburg,  New  York. 
They  were  written  from  1805  to  1865, 
but  chiefly  from  1807  to  1816,  and 
tell  of  adventures  by  land  and  sea;  of 
wars  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic; 
of  great  commercial  ventures  in  the 
Tropics;  of  trading  voyages  to  China 
in  1807  and  to  the  West  Indies  and 
France  in  1808;  of  pirates  and  ship- 
wreck and  capture  at  sea.  They  tell 
of  the  opening  up  and  settlement  of 
Northern  New  York  and  the  starting 
of  the  tides  of  commerce  on  Lake  On- 
tario and  the  River  St.  Lawrence, 
when  Utica  was  a  village  on  the  out- 
skirts of  civilization  and  all  north  of 
it  a  vast  wilderness.  They  all  bear 
on  the  history  of  David  Parish,  the 
founder  of  the  great  Parish  estate  in 
northern  New  York,  of  whom  little  is 
known  in  the  United  States  to-day, 
although  he  was  a  prominent  figure 
in  the  American  financial  and  social 
world  in  the  early  part  of  the  past 
century.  He  was  an  associate  of 
Gouverneur  Morris,  General  Stephen 
Van  Rensselaer,  "the  Patroon,"  John 
Randolph  of  Roanoke,  Albert  Galla- 
tin,  General  Jean  Victor  Moreau, 
Archibald  Gracie,  the  New  York 
banker,  and  Alexander  Baring,  of  the 
great  English  banking  house  of  Bar- 

745 


ing  Brothers  &  Company.  He  repre- 
sented both  Baring  Brothers  and 
Hope  &  Company  of  Amsterdam,  Hol- 
land, in  the  handling  of  business  of 
vast  importance  in  the  Western  Hem- 
isphere. He  entertained  and  was  en- 
tertained by  Joseph  Bonaparte,  ex- 
king  of  Spain ;  he  was  one  of  the 
largest  subscribers  to  the  United 
States  government  loan  of  sixteen 
million  dollars  in  1813,  along  with 
Stephen  Girard  and  John  Jacob  Astor, 
who  shared  seven  million  dollars. 

These  recently  discovered  letters 
reveal  the  secrets  of  the  men  who 
helped  to  establish  the  credit  of 
American  business  houses  in  the 
European  markets.  They  are  also 
of  timely  interest  in  comparing  the 
methods  of  establishing  the  first  for- 
tunes in  America  with  the  financial 
conditions  of  just  one  century  later. 

The  Parish  family  was  a  prominent 
one  in  Europe  when  David  Parish 
came  to  this  country  in  1806  and  took 
up  his  residence  in  Philadelphia, 
where  he  was  at  once  recognized  as  a 
man  of  influence  and  ability.  He  was 
then  head  of  the  banking  and  com- 
mission house  of  David  Parish  & 
Company  of  Antwerp  and  closely  re- 
lated to  Parish  &  Company  of  Ham- 
burg, Germany,  a  house  established 
many  years  previously  by  his  father, 
John  Parish,  an  Englishman,  who,  in 
1806,  was  retired  and  living  luxuri- 
ously in  a  beautiful  homestead  in 
Neuensteddin,  a  suburb  of  Hamburg. 


nf 


Ammran 


The   ample   means   at   David's   com- 
mand  and   his   connection   with   the 
great  banking  houses  of  Europe,  en- 
abled him  to  go  into  large  ventures, 
and  these,  owing  to  his  sagacity  and 
attention  to  business,  proved  success- 
ful, adding  greatly  to  his  wealth  and 
reputation.     Mr.  Parish's  father  was 
the  first  American  Consul  at   Ham- 
burg.     Three    of    David's    brothers 
were     associated     in    the     Hamburg 
house.     One  of  their  sisters  was  mar- 
ried to  Hercules  Ross,  of  Rossie  Cas- 
tle, in  Scotland.     All  these  men  were 
in  daily  touch  with  people  high  in  the 
service  of  various  European  govern- 
ments and  all  were  excellent  corre- 
spondents.    From  them  came  several 
hundred    of    the    old    letters.      They 
gave  David  prompt  and  remarkably 
full  details  of  every  political  and  mil- 
itary move  made  in  Europe  during  the 
Napoleonic  wars.     Most  of  them  suf- 
fered in  their  own  fortunes,  and  some 
of  them   in   their   own   persons,   the 
losses  and  privations  of  those  trying 
days,   for  the   Parish   family  fled   in 
haste  from  Hamburg  on  the  sudden 
appearance  of  the  French   Army  in 
November,  1806,  and  the  business  of 
the  house  was,  for  a  time,  paralyzed. 

Difficulties  of  First  American 
Financiers  in  Europe 

The  war  measures  of  first  one  na- 
tion and  then  another  prevented  ships 
with  American  cargoes  from  entering 
Hamburg,  and  for  some  time  the  busi- 
ness of  the  house  was  done  at  Heligo- 
land, from  which  place  his  brother 
Charles  wrote  David,  August  19, 
1809,  saying:  "I  have  been  here  since 
March  and  pretty  busily  employed. 
American  ships  come  in  by  droves 
and  which,  through  your  and  Baring's 
interest,  mostly  are  to  our  consign- 
ment." 

As  the  agent  of  Hope  &  Company, 
David  Parish  managed  the  difficult 
enterprise  of  transferring  a  large 
amount  of  credits  to  Europe  from 
Spanish  colonies  in  Mexico.  The 
European  wars  and  the  consequent 


restrictions  upon  commerce  which 
then  existed  rendered  the  navigation 
of  the  Atlantic,  with  valuable  cargoes 
from  Spanish  or  French  possessions 
in  the  Western  Hemisphere,  destined 
to  European  ports  on  the  continent, 
extremely  perilous.  American  car- 
goes, however,  could  cross  the  sea 
and  enter  certain  ports  with  little 
danger.  The  European  credits  were 
brought  to  the  United  States  in  Span- 
ish coin  and  here  invested  in  Amer- 
ican produce  and  shipped  to  Europe. 
A  pood  share  of  these  cargoes  appear 
to  have  found  their  way  to  the  Euro- 
pean markets  through  the  house  of 
Parish  &  Company.  This  business 
necessitated  the  securing  of  the  specie 
from  blockaded  ports  by  means  of 
smart  ships  and  plucky  crews. 

In  the  enterprises  in  which  he  co- 
operated with  Baring  Brothers  & 
Company,  a  different  course  seems  to 
have  been  pursued,  the  specie  being 
transferred  to  England  in  British 
frigates.  An  idea  of.  these  operations 
may  be  obtained  from  the  following 
extracts  from  correspondence  ad- 
dressed to  David  Parish : 

From  Baring  Brothers  &  Company, 
London,  7th  of  March,  1807. 

The  "Resistance"  frigate  arrived  safe  at 
Portsmouth  on  the  26th  of  February,  bring- 
ing, it  is  said,  four  millions  of  dollars,  ob- 
tained under  the  license  granted  to  Messrs. 
Gordon  and  Murphy. 

Private  letter  from  Alexander  Bar- 
ing, May  1 8th,  1807. 

I  enclose  a  letter  from  our  mutual 
friends,  Messrs.  Hope  &  Company,  cover- 
ing another  for  Mr.  Villa  Nueva  at  the 
Vera  Cruz,  to  both  of  which  I  request  your 
particular  attention,  as  also  to  ours  to  the 
same  gentleman,  which  I  likewise  enclose. 
.  .  .  It  is  our  present  intention  to  effect 
the  extraction  of  the  sum  ceded  to  us  by 
British  ships  of  war  in  the  same  manner 
as  was  done  by  "The  Resistance."  .  .  . 
It  has  occurred  to  me  that  a  couple  of 
your  fast  sailing  vessels  may  be  useful  to 
us  in  our  correspondence  between  Jamaica 
and  the  Spanish  ports,  and  that  perhaps 
they  may  be  useless  to  you,  or  at  least,  that 
you  can  spare  them  for  some  time.  If  so, 
you  will  send  them  to  our  friends,  Atkin- 
sons, Hambury  &  Company  at  Kingston. 
I  sincerely  congratulate  you,  my  dear  sir, 
on  your  success.  You  have  certainly  been 

746 


a  3utrtwt?  in  Ammra  inn  $?ars  Agn 


fortunate,  but  good  fortune  in  this  in- 
stance, as  it  almost  always  does,  accompa- 
nied sound  judgment  and  intelligent  meas- 
ures. ...  At  present,  we  are  going  on 
with  the  receipt  of  American  remittances 
in  defiance  of  decrees. 

From  Alexander  Baring,  London, 
May  8th,  1807. 

We  are  now  completely  ready  with  our 
operations  and  expect  to  start  in  about  a 
week.  My  cousin,  Mr.  Charles  Baring, 
junior,  goes  out  in  the  vessel.  ...  I 
confirm  my  request  that  you  will  write  to 
him  and  give  him  any  information  you 
may  think  of  service,  without,  however, 
scattering  over  the  seas  any  useless  corre- 
spondence. 

Magnitude  of  American  Business 
Abroad  a  Century  Ago 

He  then  refers  again  to  the  sailing 
vessels  to  assist  in  the  operations  and 
to  the  necessity  for  greatest  care 
and  secrecy  in  handling  the  matter. 
Referring  to  the  magnitude  of  the 
American  business,  he  says  he  hardly 
knows  of  any  house  but  his  own  "at 
present  equal  to  transacting  with  ease 
the  large  American  operations." 

A  suggestion  of  Mr.  Parish's  part 
in  this  particular  matter  is  given  in 
two  letters,  written  evidently  by  him 
though  unsigned.  They  are  on  large 
sheets  of  coarse  paper,  written  in  a 
sprawling  hand,  with  great  pen  eras- 
ures, dated  Philadelphia,  July  iQth, 
1807,  and  plainly  addressed,  one  to 
Atkinson's,  Hamburg  &  Company, 
Kingston,  Jamaica,  and  the  other  to 
Charles  Baring,  junior,  esquire,  at  the 
same  place,  advising  both  that  the 
"pilot  boat  schooner  'Champlin,'  by 
the  hand  of  whose  captain  the  letters 
would  be  delivered,  was  at  Mr.  Bar- 
ing's service,  by  order  of  her  owner, 
Mr.  Archibald  Gracie,  of  New  York, 
and  that  another  vessel  of  the  same 
class,  'The  Brothers,'  Captain  Smith, 
would  promptly  follow."  He  advised 
Charles  Baring  of  the  fact  that  the 
"Thames"  frigate  had  not  been 
allowed  to  remain  in  Vera  Cruz,  but 
was  to  return  next  month,  "when  the 
bills  of  which  she  is  the  bearer  fall 
due,"  and  suggests  that  Mr.  Baring 
keep  his  frigate  away  from  Vera  Cruz 

747 


until  his  bills  fall  due,  when  she  would 
appear  off  the  port,  relying  upon  the 
pilot  boats  to  bring  the  specie  out  to 
her.  He  also  says  that  "R.  and  I.  Oli- 
ver of  Baltimore  may  direct  Mr.  Villa 
Nueva  to  ship  a  considerable  sum  of 
money  at  the  same  time,  provided  Mr. 
Baring  is  at  liberty  to  receive  it 
aboard  the  frigate." 

Alexander  Baring  wrote  a  long 
private  letter  to  David  Parish  from 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  dated  September 
9,  1809,  in  the  course  of  which  he 
says: 

I  should  have  expressed  to  you  earlier, 
my  dear  sir,  my  sense  of  the  very  masterly 
manner  in  which  the  whole  of  this  busi- 
ness appears  to  have  been  conducted  .  .  . 
and  I  can  assure  you  that  my  experience  of 
the  past  will  always  make  me  see  with 
great  satisfaction  every  opportunity  of  re- 
newing and  extending  my  connections  with 
you. 

Fortunes  Founded  in  Early 

Real  Estate  Transactions  in  America 

Soon  after  his  arrival  in  America 
Mr.  Parish  began  to  consider  the  pur- 
chase and  development  of  a  large 
tract  of  wild  land.  The  proprietor- 
ship of  a  large  landed  estate  was  then 
thought  by  many  to  carry  with  it  more 
honor  than  the  possession  of  an  equal 
fortune  invested  in  manufacturing  or 
other  commercial  business.  Wealthy 
and  titled  Frenchmen,  who  had  fled 
from  France  during  the  Revolution, 
had  taken  up  an  immense  tract  in  St. 
Lawrence  and  Jefferson  counties  in 
northern  New  York,  with  the  inten- 
tion of  building  there  beautiful  homes 
for  themselves.  One  of  the  earliest 
of  these  was  James  Le  Ray,  Comte 
de  Chaumont,  known  as  Le  Ray  de 
Chaumont,  whose  place  was  in  Jeffer- 
son county,  near  Chaumont  Bay,  at 
the  eastern  end  of  Lake  Ontario. 
Gouverneur  Morris  and  his  nephew, 
General  Lewis  R.  Morris,  and  the 
Ogden  family  were  among  those  ear- 
liest interested  in  northern  New  York 
lands.  Gouverneur  Morris  was  agent 
for  the  Antwerp  Company  in  1800,  a 
company  controlling  an  immense 
acreage,  and  the  general  purchased 


nf  3ftr0i  Ammran 


50,000  acres  in  1804.  The  home  of 
the  latter  was  in  Springfield,  Windsor 
county,  Vermont,  near  the  Connecti- 
cut river,  and  his  villa  on  the  northern 
New  York  property  was  at  the  Ox 
Bow  on  the  Oswegatchie  river  in  St. 
Lawrence  county.  Joseph  Bonaparte 
purchased  150,000  acres  in  1818  and 
began  to  clear  for  an  establishment. 

In  1807,  Joseph  Rosseel,  then 
twenty-five  years  of  age,  left  his  na- 
tive town  of  Ghent,  Belgium,  and 
came  to  America,  bearing  letters  of 
introduction  and  credit  from  Hope  & 
Company  to  prominent  people  in  this 
country,  among  whom  was  David 
Parish.  He  appeared  on  the  scene 
just  when  Mr.  Parish  needed  a  young 
man  of  character  and  intelligence, 
who  was  able  and  willing  to  endure 
the  hardships  incident  to  exploring 
the  wilderness  of  Pennsylvania  and 
New  York  on  horseback,  on  foot  and 
by  canoe,  and  make  thereon  reports 
that  would  enable  him  to  compare  one 
section  with  another  and  determine 
where  to  establish  his  estate. 

Sixty-Six  Days  Crossing    the 
Atlantic  in  Coming  to  America 

Rosseel's  journal  shows  that  he  ar- 
rived in  Baltimore  and  put  up  at  Foul- 
ton's  Globe  Inn,  July  30,  1807,  after 
sixty-six  days  on  the  ship,  which  had 
been  held  up  three  times  by  British 
men  of  war.  Ten  days  later  he  went 
to  Philadelphia  and  put  up  at  the 
Mansion  House,  kept  by  Renshaw,  re- 
moving later  to  Mrs.  Kamerer's,  104 
Arch  street.  He  said  five  thousand 
people  were  afflicted  with  influenza  in 
Philadelphia.  He  seems  to  have  been 
kindly  received  and  entertained  there, 
meeting  David  Parish,  esquire,  among 
others,  on  September  26.  They  soon 
entered  into  an  agreement  whereby 
Mr.  Rosseel  undertook  to  explore  the 
"back  country,"  as  he  expressed  it,  in 
Mr.  Parish's  interest.  The  coming 
of  these  two  men  to  the  United  States, 
their  meeting  and  the  interesting  parts 
they  bore  in  the  development  of  the 
country,  are  all  told  most  entertain- 
ingly in  the  old  letters  to  which  refer- 


ence has  been  made,  supplemented  by 
the  journal  of  Joseph  Rosseel.  Some 
four  hundred  of  these  letters  were 
written  by  Mr.  Rosseel  to  Mr.  Parish, 
covering  the  explorations  and  his  in- 
tercourse with  prominent  men  of  the 
day  incident  thereto,  and  the  succeed- 
ing years  when,  as  Mr.  Parish's  trust- 
ed agent  and  highly  esteemed  friend, 
he  managed  the  latter's  affairs  in 
northern  New  York,  from  the  time  of 
the  first  purchase  of  land  in  1808  and 
the  establishment  of  the  commercial 
house  of  Joseph  Rosseel  &  Company 
on  the  River  St.  Lawrence  at  Ogdens- 
burg. 

Exploring  Wilds  of  Pennsylvania 
on  Horseback  in  1807 

Mr.  Rosseel  started  out  from  Phila- 
delphia on  his  first  tour  of  explora- 
tion December  27,  1807,  on  horse- 
back, riding  in  company  with  Dr. 
Robert  H.  Rose,  who  about  that  time 
purchased  120,000  acres  of  wild  land 
in  what  was  then  a  part  of  Luzerne 
county,  Pennsylvania,  now  included 
hi  Susquehanna  county — a  prominent 
man  who  did  much  for  the  develop- 
ment of  that  part  of  the  state.  This 
Dr.  Rose  and  Joseph  Dennie,  editor  of 
"The  Portfolio,"  were  fellow-board- 
ers at  Mrs.  Kamerer's.  This  trip  car- 
ried him  through  eastern  Pennsylva- 
nia, as  far  north  as  Wilkesbarre, 
where  deep  snow  turned  him  back. 

On  the  first  of  February,  1808,  Mr. 
Parish  wrote  to  Mr.  Rosseel,  enclos- 
ing a  letter  of  introduction  to  Gouv- 
erneur  Morris  and  requesting  him  to 
call  at  the  Morris  Castle,  Morrisiania, 
just  north  of  New  York,  where  he 
said  he  would  spend  a  few  days  with 
pleasure  and  profit  and  meet  the  gov- 
ernor's nephew,  General  Morris,  who 
had  lands  for  sale  in  northern  New 
York.  Mr.  Rosseel's  journal  for 
February  9  says:  "Crossed  Hudson's 
river  and  landed  in  New  York.  Took 
the  stage  for  Harlem  Bridge;  pro- 
ceeded to  Morrisiania,  the  seat  of 
Gouverneur  Morris.  .  .  .  Delivered 
my  credentials.  .  .  .  Introduced 
to  James  Le  Ray  de  Chaumont  and 

74« 


Iff 0mti>tng  a  Sfartim*  in  Ammra  Iflfl  $?ar0  Agn 


his  son  Mr.  Vincent  Le  Ray;  likewise 
to  the  General  Morris  a  nephew  of  the 
governor's — his  style  of  living — ro- 
mantic ideas  which  haunted  my  imag- 
ination on  my  approach  of  his  castle." 
Referring  to  this  visit,  Mr  Rosseel 
wrote:  "I  was  honored  with  attention 
from  all.  I  took  notice  of  the  furni- 
ture of  the  castle — rooms  lined  from 
top  to  bottom  with  expensive  glass 
and  a  profusion  of  costly  chairs,  all 
French  articles,  and  more  especially 
the  plate,  on  which  I  noticed  the  arms 
of  the  'Ferme  de  Paris.'  Someone 
to  whom  I  related  what  I  saw  at  Mor- 
risiania  remarked  in  explanation  that 
the  proprietor  of  that  chateau,  who 
was  embassador  at  Paris  in  the  time  of 
Terror,  had  placed  in  his  care  for  refu- 
gees most  of  their  valuables  and  the 
owners  thereof  suffered  the  guillotine." 
He  left  the  castle  on  the  twelfth  and 
after  three  days  in  New  York  started 
north  with  General  Morris  on  a  long 
tour,  which  took  him  to  the  lands  of 
Mr.  Le  Ray  as  well  as  to  those  of  the 
general  in  northern  New  York  and  to 
the  estate  of  the  latter  in  Vermont, 
where  he  was  entertained  for  ten  days. 
Mr.  Moss  Kent  of  Albany  and  Mr. 
Egbert  Ten  Eyck  of  Watertown  trav- 
eled with  them  from  Albany  to  Cham- 
pion, north  of  Utica.  Mr.  Rosseel's 
comments  on  people,  customs,  towns, 
taverns  and  scenery  are  very  enter- 
taining. Of  Poughkeepsie,  he  said: 
"A  little  town  of  five  hundred  houses, 
fiv  thousand  inhabitants;  very  thriv- 
ing; supplies  this  state  with  East  and 
West  India  produce."  In  Utica  he 
"dined  with  Mr.  Van  Rennselaer,  in 
1790  the  only  habitation  in  the  vil- 
lage. Trade  of  Utica  in  European 
and  India  goods  alone  is  $200,000  per 
annum."  Deerfield,  Massachusetts, 
was  "neatly  cultivated,  almost  in  the 
European  style." 

Traveler's  Comments  on  American 
Cities  One  Hundred  Years  Ajro 

A  fellow-traveler,  to  whom  he  re- 
fers as  "a  polite  gentleman,"  said  of 
Washington:  "The  city  has  the  ap- 
pearance of  poverty  and  misery  and 

T49 


Congress  there  does  not  contain  one 
single  man  qualified  for  the  seat  he 
holds." 

In  July  he  started  north  again  from 
Philadelphia  for  the  Oswegatchie 
country,  swinging  a  bit  to  the  west  on 
the  way.  He  met  Dr.  Rose  in  the 
wilderness  of  eastern  Pennsylvania 
and  inspected  a  portion  of  the  doctor's 
lands.  Mr.  Rosseel's  native  tongue 
was  French  and  while  he  had  gained 
the  ability  to  express  himself  quite 
freely  in  English  with  the  pen,  he  still 
spoke  the  language  with  hesitation 
and  uncertainty.  Regarding  this  trip, 
Mr.  Rosseel  wrote:  "Dr.  Rose  be- 
came very  taciturn.  His  horse  had 
lost  a  shoe  and  he  rode  miles  without 
saying  a  word.  I  had  learned  to  keep 
silence,  too,  when  he  was  in  such  a 
mood,  finding  that  to  be  a  sort  of  look- 
ing-glass for  him  to  see  himself  and 
turn  away.  We  ever  rode  Indian  file 
and  he  led.  The  way  he  would  break 
the  silence  was  often  thus:  'Rosseel, 
do  you  see  those  brakes?  Well,  they 
indicate  cold,  strong  soil.'  And  anon 
he  was  as  amiable  and  communicative 
as  ever.  We  parted  at  Tioga  Point 
and  now  I  reduced  to  practice  his  in- 
structions about  making  inquiries,  be- 
ing frequently  at  a  loss  which  way  to 
or  what  distance  from  such  a  spot  in 
the  woods.  Generally,  I  dismounted, 
hitched  Bonaparte  to  the  fence  and 
walked  up  to  the  log  cabin,  arranging 
as  I  went  the  order  of  words  in  which 
I  should  inquire  the  road  or  distance, 
which  I  had  stereotyped  thus:  'Mad- 
ame, will  you  be  so  kind  to  tell  me 
which  is  the  road  to  ...  ?' 
These  words  I  uttered  the  moment  I 
passed  the  threshold  of  the  cabin. 
The  woman  stares  at  me  and  says, 
'Eh?'  So  I  had  to  go  over  all  those 
words  again — to  me  a  mountain  in 
those  days.  Dr.  Rose,  to  whom  I  re- 
lated it,  said:  'Rosseel,  always  go  in 
and  walk  up  to  the  fireplace  without 
saying:  a  word  to  anyone  there,  wait- 
ing till  they  begin  to  stare  at  you  and 
there  is  perfect  silence  in  the  room. 
Then  say,  Madame,  which  is  the 
road  to  '  ?'" 


Ammratt 


Experiences  on  a  Trip  Through  £  jj 
New  York  State  in  1807 

Not  far  from  Ithaca,  New  York,  he 
was  lost  in  the  woods  and  overtaken 
by  a  hurricane  that  uprooted  the  larg- 
est trees.  Of  Ithaca,  he  said:  "This 
village  contains  but  a  small  number  of 
houses,  in  the  building  of  which  noth- 
ing has  been  omitted  but  the  com- 
fortable and  the  agreeable."  The  fol- 
lowing description  of  a  stretch  of 
country  between  Ithaca  and  Milton 
of  the  "Ferme  de  Paris."  Someone 
shows  that  the  "back  country,"  even 
in  1808,  was  not  all  wilderness.  "I 
now  traveled  on  the  highlands,  com- 
manding two  fine  prospects  of  a  very 
extensive  wild,  intersected  with  a  few 
clearings  to  the  east,  the  levelness  of 
which  is  like  the  surface  of  the  lake 
to  the  west.  The  highlands  are  beau- 
tiful, rich  and  healthy,  along  the  very 
best  of  roads.  There  is  hardly  an 
acre  of  unimproved  land  visible.  It 
is  but  one  continual  garden.  Noth- 
ing is  to  be  seen  here  but  fields  of 
every  kind  of  grain  the  earth  pro- 
duces; fine  farms  succeeding  each 
other  verv  closely,  well-stocked  with 
cattle,  horses  and  pigs,  besides  fine 
and  large  orchards  of  fruit  and  nu- 
merous springs  of  delectable  water 
are  scattered  along  the  way."  There 
is  no  mention  of  a  village  called  Syra- 
cuse, but  he  describes  the  pumping 
and  evaporation  of  salt  water  at  the 
"Salina,"  and  says  the  product  was 
exported  "even  to  Pittsburg."  A 
three  hundred  pound  barrel  sold  at 
the  works  for  two  dollars.  The  bar- 
rel cost  half  a  dollar  and  the  state 
collected  four  cents  per  bushel.  It 
seems  that  there  were  times  when  he 
could  not  say  "No,"  for  he  writes :  "I 
stopped  at  Oneida  Castle  and  was 
much  annoyed  by  the  Indians.  They 
would  have  me  drink  whiskey  and  gin 
with  them,  nor  was  it  in  my  power  to 
deny  them."  There  was  but  one 
white  family  who  entertained  travel- 
ers. Having  supped  with  them,  Mr. 
Rosseel  sat  beside  the  door  smoking 
his  pipe,  when  a  circle  of  Indians  and 


squaws  gathered  about  him  talking 
loudly.  After  his  host  had  explained 
what  they  said,  he  handed  over  his 
pipe,  which  was  passed  around  the  cir- 
cle, each  one  taking  a  few  puffs.  It 
was  then  that  they  would  have  him 
drink  with  them.  From  August  8  to 
September  18,  he  was  inspecting  the 
north  country,  sometimes  alone  and 
sometimes  with  a  guide.  A  Dr. 
Townsend  owned  the  village  of  Gouv- 
erneur  in  St.  Lawrence  County,  where 
he  resided.  Having  a  severe  tooth- 
ache and  there  being  no  other  physi- 
cian nearer  than  Sackett's  Harbor  or 
the  Garrison  (Ogdensburg),Mr.  Ros- 
seel went  to  Gouverneur,  meeting  the 
doctor  about  a  mile  from  the  village, 
carrying  a  log  chain  on  his  shoulders. 
His  appearance  and  his  awkwardness 
in  handling  the  forceps,  when  they 
arrived  at  his  house,  were  anything 
but  inspiring,  and  when,  after  a  sav- 
age pull,  the  tooth  broke,  Mr.  Rosseel 
fainted.  The  doctor  then  "killed  the 
marrow"  with  oil  of  vitriol,  the  pain 
from  which  was  "indescribably  acute 
for  a  time,"  but  which  effectually  pre- 
vented further  trouble. 

Society  in  America  in  the 
First  Years  of  the  Republic 

The  Morrises,  the  Ogdens,  Mr. 
Constable  and  Mr.  Pierpont  were  all 
in  that  country,  hovering  between 
Le  Ray's  place  and  General  Morris's. 
Mr.  Parish,  who  had  been  on  a  trip 
to  Niagara  Falls,  with  his  friend, 
General  Moreau,  arrived  on  Septem- 
ber 7.  Several  days  were  then  de- 
voted to  entertainment,  hunting  and 
racing,  with  music  and  fireworks  at 
night.  Mr.  Le  Ray's  wife  and  daugh- 
ter and  General  Morris's  wife  contrib- 
uted to  the  pleasure  of  these  festivi- 
ties. Mr.  Rosseel  participated  in  the 
entertainment  but  did  hard  woods 
work  also,  as  the  following  quota- 
tions from  his  journal  will  show: 
"September  I5th  took  my  old  guide, 
Mr.  Rockwell,  and  started  in  the 
woods  again  exploring  Indian  River. 
1 6th,  built  a  raft;  crossed  the  river; 
difficulties;  encamped;  out  of  bread; 


Jtauttittttg  a  JFnriun*  in  Ammra  10fl  frara  Agn 


no  water ;  collecting  of  the  rain  ;  three 
times  our  fire  extinguished ;  cold  un- 
comfortable night;  sat  squatted  under 
my  blanket;  i/th,  hungry,  thirsty, 
cold  and  wet;  proceed  in  the  explora- 
tion; fell  in  with  an  immense  swamp; 
every  step  knee  deep;  the  weather 
still  boisterous  with  heavy  rain.  At 
2  in  the  afternoon  came  to  a  camp; 
found  bread  but  no  water;  proceeded 
much  annoyed  with  thorns  and  briars ; 
made  a  creek;  arrived  at  Morristown 
(10  miles  above  Ogdensburg  on  the 
St.  Lawrence)  and  met  Mr.  Parish 
who  was  on  a  hunting  trip."  The 
next  day  Mr.  Parish  and  Mr.  Ros- 
seel  visited  Ogdensburg,  accompa- 
nied by  the  two  Morrises,  and  tenta- 
tive plans  were  made  for  an  establish- 
ment there. 

First  Land  Speculations 
Along  American  Frontier 

Mr.  Parish  purchased  large  tracts 
of  land  in  St.  Lawrence  and  Jefferson 
Counties  from  Mr.  Le  Ray  and  Gen- 
eral Morris  in  the  fall  of  1808,  to 
which  he  later  added  other  tracts. 
One  of  the  first  purchases  was  72,000 
acres  at  one  dollar  and  fifty  cents  per 
acre.  Final  arrangements  were  made 
between  Mr.  Parish  and  Mr.  Rosseel 
at  the  Tontine  Coffee  House,  in 
New  York,  October  24,  1808,  for  an 
"establishment"  at  Ogdensburg.  Mr. 
Rosseel  and  his  partner,  Mr.  David 
M.  Lewis,  had  David  Parish's  back- 
ing in  the  commercial  house  of  Joseph 
Rosseel  &  Company.  To  bring  their 
large  stock  of  goods  from  "civiliza- 
tion" was  no  light  matter,  and  the 
"no-intercourse"  acts,  which  preceded 
by  several  years  the  War  of  1812,  cut 
off  their  trade  with  Canada.  The 
lands  had  to  be  inspected  and  sur- 
veyed; there  were  roads  and  bridges 
and  saw  and  grist  mills  to  be  built 
and  the  mills  to  be  operated;  but  the 
plans,  to  the  execution  of  which  Mr. 
Parish  requested  Mr.  Rosseel  to  give 
his  first  and  chief  attention,  were  the 
building  at  Ogdensburg  of  a  large 
mansion  for  himself,  a  large  store  and 
warehouse  and  two  schooners  to  ply 


on  Lake  Ontario.  New  York,  Phila- 
delphia, Albany,  Utica  and  Montreal 
were  searched  for  mechanics  and 
laborers  to  go  to  Ogdensburg.  Un- 
der date  of  May  15,  1809,  Mr.  Ros- 
seel said  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Parish: 
"We  have  to  make  great  allowances 
for  the  novelty  of  a  colony  where 
erecting  buildings  is  like  creating  a 
new  world,  where  workmen  are  desti- 
tute of  tools  and  the  country  devoid 
of  materials." 

Overland  Transportation  to 
Canada— «•  Every  Man  for  Himself" 

From  New  York  men  and  materials 
could  come  to  Albany  by  water. 
From  there  a  stage  ran  to  Utica,  in 
which  one  might  ride  if  he  secured 
passage  in  time;  but  from  Utica, 
north,  it  was  "Every  man  for  him- 
self," through  forests  and  streams,  by 
crude  roads,  often  all  but  impassable. 
It  was  probably  well  on  to  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  miles  from  Utica  to 
Ogdensburg  by  the  land  routes  then 
followed.  Freight  usually  went  to 
Oswego  and  thence  to  Ogdensburg 
by  water.  Mr.  Rosseel  made  two 
trips  to  Montreal  for  laborers,  going 
once  in  December,  1808,  by  sleigh, 
down  the  frozen  river,  making  the 
one  hundred  and  twenty  miles  in  three 
days.  At  another  time,  he  sent 
twelve  laborers  from  Montreal  to 
Ogdensburg  in  a  boat  purchased  for 
the  purpose.  They  were  to  receive 
$13.50  a  month  and  a  blanket.  When 
ready  to  return  from  Montreal,  he 
was  fortunate  enough  to  receive  an 
invitation  from  a  "gentleman  of  the 
Northwest  Company"  who  was  "on 
his  departure  for  Michillimacinac"  to 
accompany  him  in  his  canoe  as  far  as 
Ogdensburg.  The  woods  were 
scoured  for  miles  about  Ogdensburg 
for  timber  for  the  schooners.  None 
but  the  best  was  to  be  used  and  many 
trees  were  felled  before  satisfactory 
material  in  sufficient  quantities  could 
be  accumulated.  Good  red  cedar  for 
planking  was  found  among  the  Thou- 
sand Islands  and  rafted  down  to 
Ogdensburg.  If  Joseph  Rosseel  did 


0f  Jtrai  Ammratt 


not  lose  his  temper  while  these  build- 
ing operations  were  on,  he  must  have 
had  remarkable  self-control.  His 
laborers  left  him  for  the  lumber 
woods  in  Canada;  a  great  gale,  with 
unprecedented  high  water,  flooded  the 
foundation  trenches  for  the  big  ware- 
house, and  he  wrote  on  the  fifteenth  of 
May,  1809:  "They  are  now  busy  in 
boiling  the  planks  for  the  vessels.  I 
am  sorry  to  say  that  he  who  sawed 
these  planks,  although  the  best  mill 
attendant,  understand  the  business 
not  very  perfectly.  The  dimensions 
are  very  irregular.  Some  planks  are 
three  inches,  while  others  are  but  one 
and  one-half  inches  thick."  These 
are  but  samples  of  the  difficulties  by 
which  he  was  beset  on  every  hand. 

Establishing  an  American 
Fortune  on  Northeast  Borders 

After  unnumbered  trials  and  delays, 
the  mansion  was  built  of  brick,  made 
for  the  purpose  in  the  village,  and  the 
large  store  and  warehouse  was  con- 
structed of  stone  on  the  bank  of  the 
Oswegatchie,  where  it  empties  into 
the  St.  Lawrence.  The  sails  and  rig- 
ging for  the  schooners,  costing  thirty- 
six  hundred  dollars,  were  brought 
from  New  York.  The  large  one, 
called  "The  Experiment,"  was  of  fifty 
tons,  six  and  one-half  feet  draught; 
the  other,  "The  Collector,"  of  forty- 
four  tons.  The  "Experiment"  was 
finished  first  and  her  launch  was  one 
of  the  features  of  the  Fourth  of  July 
celebration  in  Ogdensburg  in  1809. 

First  Commercial  Enterprises 
Along  the  St.  Lawrence  River 

The  following  is  Mr  Rosseel's  report 
to  Mr.  Parish  of  the  events  of  the 
day:  "The  anniversary  of  the  Fourth 
of  July  was  celebrated  with  much 
more  spirited  rejoicings  and  diver- 
sions of  every  description,  more  bril- 
liancy, and  above  all,  more  decorum, 
than  ever  was  before.  You  will  no 
doubt  hear  of  it  before  long,  for  the 
gentlemen  of  the  committee  have  re- 
solved on  giving  all  publicity  to  the 


celebration.  On  that  day  your  vessel, 
the  'Experiment,'  was  launched  with 
unexpected  success.  It  was  a  beauti- 
ful launch,  witnessed  by  upwards  of 
fcur  hundred  spectators.  There  was 
a  public  dinner  to  which  ninety-six 
persons  sat  down.  The  Honorable 
Judge's  voluntary  toast  was:  'David 
Parish,  esquire.  May  his  commer- 
cial enterprises  be  as  successful  on  the 
St.  Lawrence  as  they  were  on  the 
ocean.'  Three  cheers  and  a  salute. 
I  happened  to  visit  this  table  with 
some  of  our  Canadian  friends,  when 
General  Lewis  R.  Morris,  who  was 
one  of  this  convivial  party,  gave  the 
following  toast:  'Our  neighbors  of 
Canada.  Under  the  liberty  of  a  mild 
government,  may  our  friendship  with 
them  last  as  long  as  the  St.  Law- 
rence.'" 

Early  in  1809,  Mr.  Parish  pur- 
chased the  village  of  Ogdensburg 
from  David  B.  Ogden  for  eight  thou- 
sand dollars.  Only  thirty-eight  lots 
therein  had  been  sold  .up  to  that  time. 
Smuggling  operations,  when  success- 
fully carried  out,  were  very  remuner- 
ative and  the  Collector  of  the  Port 
of  Oswego,  in  which  district  Ogdens- 
burg was  included,  was  suspicious 
that  Joseph  Rosseel  &  Company  in- 
tended to  break  the  law.  He  held 
up  a  shipment  of  three  hundred  and 
fifty  barrels  of  salt  for  them  until  Mr. 
Gallatin  wrote  him,  at  Mr.  Parish's 
request.  The  latter  soon  succeeded 
in  getting  Ogdensburg  made  a  port 
of  entry. 

Development  of  Traffic  on 
the  Great  Lakes 

Other  schooners,  built  a  little  later 
in  Ogdensburg,  joined  the  "Experi- 
ment" and  "Collector"  in  the  traffic 
with  Lake  Ontario  ports,  encounter- 
ing the  opposition  of  vessels  owned  in 
Kingston,  at  the  foot  of  the  lake  on 
the  Canadian  side,  and  others  owned 
by  Porter,  Barton  &  Company  of 
Lewiston  on  Niagara  river.  Those 
of  the  last-mentioned  firm  would 
carry  one  thousand  barrels  each. 
Ogdensburg  was  the  foot  of  naviga- 

75« 


3Fnmtbtttg  a  3f  attune  in  Amrrira  100  $eara  Agn 


A  PIONEER  IN  TRADE  WITH  CANADA- 
Joseph  Rosseel  who  came  to  America  from  Belgium 
in  1807  and  became  one  of  the  leading  Business 
Men  of  the  New  Republic -Old  Photograph  now  in 
possession  of  his  descendant.  Frank  K.  Rosseel  of 
Buffalo,  New  York— Reproduced  by  permission 

tion  for  lake  vessels  and  produce  was 
there  transferred  to  smaller  vessels, 
"scows"  or  "arks,"  for  shipment  to 
Montreal.  In  1810,  freight  was  one 
dollar  per  barrel  on  flour  from  any 
Lake  Ontario  port  to  Montreal. 

Early  in  1809,  Mr.  Rosseel  began 
to  report  on  the  scarcity  of  flour, 
wheat  and  other  agricultural  prod- 
ucts, the  settlers  having  neglected 
agriculture  to  make  staves  and  potash 
for  the  Montreal  market.  In  No- 
vember of  that  year,  the  situation  had 
grown  serious.  Winter  had  shut  in 
unusually  early  and  severe  and  Og- 
densburg  and  all  the  surrounding 
country  was  in  a  state  of  famine. 
The  schooner  "Experiment"  was 
known  to  be  on  her  way  down  Lake 
Ontario  loaded  with  provisions  for 
Ogdensburg.  On  November  24,  Mr. 
Rosseel  wrote :  "\Ye  have  no  wheat  at 
all.  Most  people  live  on  Indian  corn. 
Should  the  schooner  now  be 


taken  on  the  ice  in  some  bay  or  harbor 
on  the  Ontario,  and  not  be  able  to 
proceed  with  her  cargo  to  this  place, 
in  that  case  Ogdensburg  and  its  vi- 
cinity will,  during  this  rude  winter, 
offer  a  dismal  picture  of  human  mis- 
eries. People  now  come  twenty  and 
thirty  miles  after  flour,  wheat  and 
pork.  All  the  stores  are  unsupplied 
and  the  barns  empty.  They  all  de- 
pend on  the  schooner  for  their  sup- 
plies. 

Money  also  was  scarce  and  Mr. 
Rosseel  was  considering  a  horseback 
trip  to  Albany  for  a  supply.  His 
funds  often  came  to  him  from  Mr. 
Parish  in  Bridgeport  bank  notes,  by 
the  hands  of  whatever  trustworthy 
person  happened  to  be  coming  North 
recently.  To  add  to  the  misery  of 
the  people,  "the  worst  storm  ever 
known  on  the  St.  Lawrence"  visited 
them  early  in  December.  It  is  safe 
to  say  that  the  "Experiment"  received 
a  hearty  welcome  when  she  arrived 
December  22d. 

The  country  settled  slowly.  In 
November,  1809,  there  were  five  reg- 


AN  EARLY  AMERICAS  BANKER -David  Par- 
ish who  came  to  America  from  Antwerp  in  1806  and 
established  a  great  foreign  trade  with  the  New 
American  Republic- Minature  painted  on  Ivory 
by  Spornberg  tn  Cheltenham,  Ei. gland  during  1810 


nf  Jftrat  American 


George  Parish,  the  second,  afterwards  Baron  Von 
Senftenbersr  of  Austria,  who  occupied  the  Parish 
Mansion  in  America— Photograph  presented  bv  the 
baron  to  an  intimate  friend  residing  in  New  York 

ularly  established  stores  in  Ogclens- 
burg.  In  July  of  the  next  year,  eight 
new  houses  were  building  there,  be- 
sides Mr.  Parish's  mansion,  and  in 
May,  1811,  the  number  of  houses  in 
the  village  did  not  exceed  fifty. 

Other  villages,  Antwerp,  Parish- 
ville,  Rossie,  developing  on  Mr.  Par- 
ish's land,  necessitated  the  appoint- 
ment of  sub-agents,  responsible  to 
Mr.  Rosseel.  At  Parishville  a  sheep- 
farm  was  established,  where  merino 
sheep  were  tried  in  1813  and  1814. 
Iron  ore  had  been  found  on  Mr.  Par- 
ish's land  and  a  furnace  started  at 
Rossie  under  the  supervision  of  Wil- 
liam Benbow,  in  time  to  make  it  pos- 
sible for  Mr.  Parish  to  bid  on  cannon 
balls  for  use  in  the  War  of  1812-14. 
Mr.  Parish  had  furnished  the  money 
to  start  the  firm  of  Borrekens  &  Hoy- 
larts  in  Sodus,  on  the  southern  shore 
of  Lake  Ontario,  expecting  they 
would  work  in  conjunction  with  the 
Ogdensburg  house. 


The  Canadian  side  of  the  St.  Law- 
rence, opposite  New  York  state,  had 
been  settled  by  Tories  from  the  states 
previous  to  the  settlement  of  the 
south  shore.  When  the  first  Ameri- 
cans came  they  were  welcomed  by 
their  neighbors  across  the  river  and 
the  best  of  feeling  existed  when  the 
hostilities  of  1812  began.  The  war 
was  unpopular  along  the  river.  Some 
of  the  troops  sent  to  Ogdensburg 
were  of  such  a  character  that  the  in- 
habitants feared  and  hated  them 
almost  as  much  as  they  did  the  Indian 
allies  of  the  British,  who,  while  doing 
sentry  duty  on  the  frozen  St.  Law- 
rence between  the  villages,  frequently 
landed  on  the  American  side,  com- 
mitting depredations  and  keeping  the 
women  in  a  state  of  panic.  Ogdens- 
burg people  felt  relieved  when  the 
American  soldiers  departed  and  when 
more  appeared  a  large  part  of  the 
population  always  prepared  to  "take 
to  the  woods."  In  a  letter  written 
in  April,  1809,  Mr.  Rosseel  referred  to 
the  troops  then  in  Ogdensburg  as  "a 
banditti  of  rapscallions,  who,  by  noc- 
turnal excursions  in  our  village,  carry 
off  pigs,  geese,  chickens,  potatoes, 
onions  and  every  other  eatable  they 
can  come  at."  This  garrison  con- 
sisted of  two  companies  sent  there  to 
enforce  the  embargo  law.  When 
they  left  town  for  another  station,  the 
villagers  were  so  delighted  that  they 
saw  them  away  with  tin  horns  and 
cowbells,  and  a  free  fight  was  nar- 
rowly averted. 

A  party  from  Ogdensburg  raided 
the  Canadian  village  of  Brockville, 
twelve  miles  up  the  St.  Lawrence,  on 
the  night  of  February  6,  1813,  for 
the  purpose  of  releasing  prisoners. 
In  retaliation,  seven  hundred  British 
troops  attacked  Ogdensburg  a  few 
days  later,  crossing  the  St.  Lawrence 
on  the  ice,  early  in  the  morning  from 
Prescott.  They  captured  Fort 
Rensselaer  easily  and  drove  the  ill- 
disciplined  little  garrison  back 
through  the  village.  About  the  close 
of  the  fight,  Indians  and  roughs  ran- 


MANSION  BUILT  IN  THE  "WILDERNESS"  OF  NEW  YORK  IN  iSop-Built  at  Ogdensburg  by  Joseph 
Rosseel  f  >r  David  Parish- Ancient  photograph  shows  George  Parish,  md  at  the  left,  talking  with  John  F. 
Rosseel,  financial  agent,  and  Judge  William  C.  Brown- The  (Id  gentleman  with  the  tall  white  hat  is  Ed  ward 
Beaty,  the  mansion  cook,  conversing  with  William  Houston,  gardener— Original  owned  by  Prank  R.  Rosseel 


sacked  all  houses  from  which  the 
owners  had  fled.  Mr.  Rosseel  and  a 
few  others  sent  their  families  away 
but  stayed  by  their  homes.  The 
marauder's  seized  some  of  Mr.  Ros- 
seel's  property  and  were  dragging 
him  away  when  a  British  officer  with 
whom  he  was  acquainted  came  along 
and  released  him.  All  the  public 
property  was  taken.  Many  houses 
were  badly  shattered ;  the  barracks, 
the  old  garrison,  the  vessels  in  the 
harbor  burned  and  Fort  Rensselaer 
was  destroyed.  Comparatively  few 
lives  were  lost.  Mr.  Parish's  prop- 
erty was  not  molested  but  all  the  win- 
dows in  the  mansion  were  broken  by 
concussion.  This  little  unpleasant- 
ness did  not  interfere  with  the 
"neighboring"  of  old  friends  and 
acquaintances  across  the  river  and 
the  British  officers  spent  considerable 
money  in  Ogdensburg  stores. 

Early     in     November,     1813,     the 
American   army   composing   Wilken- 


son's  expedition  against  Montreal 
passed  down  the  St.  Lawrence.  On 
account  of  the  danger  of  passing  Fort 
Wellington  in  Prescott,  the  men  were 
landed  about  three  miles  above  Og- 
densburg and  marched  to  a  point 
about  the  same  distance  below,  in  the 
night,  the  ammunition  and  other  sup- 
plies going  in  wagons.  Meanwhile, 
the  three  hundred  boats  were  silently 
slipping  by  in  single  file,  and  although 
discovered  by  the  enemy  and  sub- 
jected to  a  furious  cannonade,  little 
or  no  damage  was  done  to  the  flotilla. 

During  the  war  Ogdensburg  was 
shelled  several  times.  Mr.  Parish's 
influence  was  always  exerted  in  the 
direction  of  maintaining  good  rela- 
tions with  the  opposite  shore  and  he 
bitterly  opposed  the  petty  raiding  and 
what  he  considered  rash  conduct  of 
some  of  the  American  officers. 

In  1812  Mr.  Parish  sent  Mr.  John 
Ross,  a  nephew,  to  live  for  a  time  in 
Ogdensburg.  Ross  brought  with 


753 


ONE  OF  FIRST  WAREHOUSES  ON  ST.  LAWRENCE  RIVER— Constructed  by  the  Pioneer  Joseph  Rosseel  for 
the  shipping  interests  of  David  Parish— Old  Lithograph  in  possession  of  the  descendants— The  ancient  "stone  store"  is 
still  conducting  trade  with  Lake  Ontario  and  Montreal — Reproduced  by  permission  of  Frank  R.  Rosseel,  Buffalo,  N.  Y. 


HOMESTEAD  OF  A  PIONEER  ON  THE  ST.  LAWRENCE  RIVER— Built  by  Joseph  Rossee),  the  financial 
a*ent  of  David  Parish  whose  mansion  stord  on  the  opposite  side  of  old  Washington  Street  in  Ogdenburg,  New  York- 
Painting  by  Frank  R.  Rosseel,  grandson  of  the  builder—  1  his  *iews  shows  the  back  piazza  which  faced  the  St.  Lawrence 

75« 


Jnunbtng  a  Jnrtmt*  in  Ammra  Iflfl  f  ears  Arjn 


him  from  Philadelphia  a  blooded 
mare  of  Mr.  Parish's,  riding  the  ani- 
mal from  Philadelphia  to  New  York 
and  from  Albany  to  Ogdensburg. 
He  had  an  eye  over  Mr.  Parish's  do- 
mestic affairs,  his  horses  and  dogs; 
but  I  suspect  his  chief  duties  were  of 
a  secret  and  quite  different  character. 
At  any  rate,  he  was  a  diplomat.  He 
secured  the  confidence  and  good-will 
of  the  British  Colonel  MacDonnell, 
in  command  across  the  river,  and 
often  dined  with  him,  meeting  other 
officers,  all  of  whom  he  cultivated. 
Mr.  Parish  gradually  came  into  the 
acquaintance  and  soon  they  could 
ask  favors  of  the  British  officers  with 
an  assurance  of  their  being  granted. 
It  all  led  up  to  the  protection  of  Mr. 
Parish's  property  from  British  attack. 
That  favors  were  asked  and  granted 
in  return  is  shown  by  the  following 
extract  from  one  of  Mr.  Ross'  letters 
to  Mr.  Parish:  "General  Drummond 
sends  his  compliments  and  will 
acknowledge  it  a  very  particular  favor 
if  you  will  exert  your  powerful  influ- 
ence with  the  government  to  get  his 
aide-de-camp,  Captain  Loring,  re- 
leased, exchanged  or  paroled."  Very 
soon  thereafter  Lieutenant  Webster,  a 
severely  wounded  American  officer, 
on  his  way  to  Quebec  as  a  prisoner  of 
war,  was  voluntarily  sent  across  the 
St.  Lawrence  to  Ogdensburg,  on 
parole,  until  authority  could  be  ob- 
tained to  do  more,  as  a  token  of  appre- 
ciation of  Mr.  Parish's  kindness. 
Many  of  the  American  vessels  on 
Lake  Ontario  and  the  St.  Lawrence 
river  were  bought  by  the  American 
government,  armed  and  re-named  and 
put  into  active  service  as  war  vessels. 
Among  them  were  the  "Experiment" 
and  "Collector,"  re-named  "Growler" 
and  "Pert." 

Mr.  Parish  visited  Ogdensburg  fre- 
quently, spending  considerable  time 
there  and  living  in  grand  style,  with 
many  servants,  horses  and  dogs;  but 
continued  his  headquarters  in  Phila- 
delphia, which,  in  1808,  were  at  153 
Walnut  street.  Here  Joseph  Rosseel 
visited  him  in  the  spring  of  that  year, 

757 


Mr.  Parish  making  his  stay  very 
pleasant.  Writing  of  it,  Mr.  Rosseel 
said  Mr.  Parish  took  him  to  Mr. 
Hamilton's  on  the  Schuylkill,  where 
he  and  the  elite  of  the  city  were  in  the 
habit  of  dining  on  certain  days  of  the 
week.  In  January,  1812,  Mr.  Parish 
wrote  from  Albany  that  he  was  so  far 
on  his  way  to  Ogdensburg,  coming  in 
a  sleigh  behind  his  own  horses,  accorrr 
panied  by  a  friend  and  two  servants. 
In  his  story  of  that  north  country  in 
1813,  entitled  "Dri  and  I,"  Mr.  Irving 
Bacheller  tells  of  David  Parish's  driv- 
ing through  that  region  at  high  speed 
with  frequent  relays  of  horses. 

A  billiard  table  arrived  in  Ogdens- 
burg for  Mr.  Parish  in  1815  and  Mr. 
Rosseel  was  compelled  to  send  to 
Montreal,  one  hundred  and  twenty 
miles,  for  a  man  to  set  it  up. 

Strong  Character  of  an 
Early  American  Money-maker 

About  a  hundred  letters  were  from 
David  Parish  himself  to  Joseph  Ros- 
seel. They  show  he  possessed  a  thor- 
ough knowledge  of  all  that  transpired 
in  the  development  of  his  affairs  on 
the  St.  Lawrence  and  that  he  took  a 
keen  and  kindly  interest  in  the  wel- 
fare of  all  of  his  employees  and  set- 
tlers, advising,  commending,  encour- 
aging, advancing  money  and  extend- 
ing time  to  those  overtaken  by  misfor- 
tune, though  not  easily  imposed  upon, 
patient  when  the  execution  of  his 
plans  were  delayed  or  foiled  by  the  in- 
numerable difficulties  under  which  Mr. 
Rosseel  labored,  liberal  in  his  contri- 
butions for  the  public  good;  keenly 
interested  in  the  development  of  the 
country  and  quick  to  see  and  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  course  of  events  politi- 
cal and  commercial.  Through  his 
letters  to  Joseph  Rosseel  the  inhabi- 
tants of  Ogdensburg  received  their 
first  news  of  many  of  the  important 
political  moves  on  both  sides  of  the 
Atlantic.  In  many  ways  he  was  a 
father  to  the  north  country  and  as 
such  was  held  in  high  esteem.  He 
was  a  broad-gauge,  kind-hearted,  lov- 
able man,  evidently  possessing  great 


0f 


Ammratt 


business  capacity  and  keenly  enjoying 
the  making  of  money ;  but  his  wealth, 
power  and  influence  did  not  make  him 
hard-hearted  or  grasping  or  indiffer- 
ent. With  all  his  vast  interests  he 
found  time  continually  to  do  favors 
both  great  and  small  for  all  kinds  of 
people.  His  employees  loved  and  re- 
spected him;  his  younger  sister  idol- 
ized him  and  with  him  his  dear  old 
father  shared  all  his  confidences,  ad- 
dressing him,  "My  dear  and  ever 
dearest  David." 

Diplomatic  Society  in 

National  Capital  at  Washington 

Mr.  Parish  had  many  acquaintances 
among  public  men  in  Washington, 
where  his  influence  was  very  great. 
For  many  months  during  the  years 
1813-4-5,  Edward  Ross,  a  wide-awake 
and  winning,  but  at  times  dissipated 
young  friend  of  Mr.  Parish's,  resided 
in  Washington  and  kept  David  contin- 
ually informed  regarding  what  was 
transpiring.  He  was  very  intimate 
with  General  Armstrong  and  Colonel 
Monroe  while  each  was  in  turn  Sec- 
retary of  War;  also  with  Secretary 
Dallas  and  with  the  families  of  all. 
He  acted  as  private  secretary  to  Gen- 
eral Armstrong  and  dined  daily  with 
senators  and  congressmen.  He  had, 
and  conveyed  promptly  to  Mr.  Parish, 
advance  and  private  information  of 
many  important  matters.  Mr.  Par- 
ish's letters  to  him  were  eagerly  read 
by  members  of  the  cabinet,  who  de- 
pended much  upon  them  for  the  lat- 
est and  most  reliable  news  from  the 
north  and  from  Europe.  He  was 
"one  of  the  family"  wherever  he  chose 
to  be  in  Washington.  Even  Presi- 
dent Madison's  wife  interested  herself 
to  secure  for  him  a  commission  in  the 
army.  He  was  a  younger  brother  of 
John  Ross,  "the  diplomat"  at  Ogdens- 
burg. In  1807-8  he  acted  as  super- 
cargo on  ships  trading  from  the 
United  States  to  China  and  to  Euro- 
pean and  West  Indian  ports  and  from 
him  came  the  letters  telling  of 
"pirates,  shipwreck  and  capture  at 
sea."  This  was  in  the  days  when  lit- 


tle sailing  vessels  cruised  half-way 
round  the  world,  carrying  a  fortune 
in  gold  or  silver  coin,  with  which  to 
purchase  a  return  cargo  of  teas,  silks, 
nankeens  and  other  interesting  prod- 
ucts of  the  far  East.  They  were  all 
armed,  but  trusted  chiefly  to  speed  and 
good  seamanship  to  escape  pirates  and 
vessels  of  war.  I  give  below  extracts 
from  a  few  of  the  letters  written  by 
Mr.  Parish  from  Philadelphia  to  Mr. 
Rosseel  in  Ogdensburg. 

January  2,  1810. 

You  will  be  astonished  to  hear  that  our 
friend,  Mr.  Gouveneur  Morris  was  mar- 
ried on  Sunday  to  Miss  Randolph  of  Vir- 
ginia, who  had  lived  in  his  house  for  eight 
months  in  the  '  capacity  of  housekeeper. 
She  is  of  a  very  respectable  family  and  I 
sincerely  wish  he  may  enjoy  every  domes- 
tic happiness  and  comfort 

January  29,  1810. 

I  understand  from  Mr.  D.  B.  Ogden,  who 
is  now  in  this  place,  that  the  Federalists 
will  have  a  majority  in  the  council  of 
appointment  and  that  it  is  their  intention 
to  elect  Colonel  Troup.  mayor  of  the  city 
of  New  York,  an  office  now  worth  fifteen 
to  twenty  thousand  dollars  per  annum. 

April  7,  1813. 

Mr.  Gallatin  has  been  here  for  some  days 
past  and  I  yesterday  made  an  arrangement 
with  him  for  the  balance  of  the  loan,  being 
between  seven  and  eight  million  dollars. 
If  I  had  not  calculated  on  an  adjustment 
with  England  I  should  not  have  entered 
into  this  operation. 

He  said  in  the  same  letter  that  by 
order  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Treas- 
ury he  had  written  Commodore 
Chauncey  at  Sackett's  Harbor,  offer- 
ing to  deliver  a  few  hundred  tons  of 
cannon  balls  at  Ogdensburg  at  eighty- 
five  dollars  per  ton. 

April  15,  1812. 

Have  been  for  last  week  and  continue  to 
be  engaged  in  important  business  at  court 
in  an  action  brought  against  me  by  Ferdi- 
nand the  7th,  as  King  of  Spain,  claiming 
a  large  sum  of  money  for  duties  on  ex- 
portations  to  South  America. 

May  3rd,  1816,  he  wrote : 

The  Spanish  suit  was  decided  in  my 
favor  two  days  ago  after  a  most  able 
charge  to  the  jury  by  Judge  Washington. 
The  claim  made  by  the  King  of  Spain 
amounted  to  upwards  of  a  million  dollars. 

73» 


Jnmt&tttg  a  Ifartun*  in  Amerira  mil  feara  Agn 


In  1810  Mr.  Parish  returned  to 
Europe,  remaining  several  months. 
In  Amsterdam  and  Antwerp  he  met 
Mr.  Le  Ray  and  they  held  earn- 
est discussions  on  the  subject  of  road 
building  in  northern  New  York.  It 
was  while  visiting  his  father  in  Chel- 
tenham, England,  on  this  trip  that  the 
miniature  reproduced  on  another  page 
was  painted. 

The  following  letter  was  received 
by  Mr.  Parish  in  1809: 


SIR: 


PARIS,  14  APRIL,  1809. 


I  take  the  liberty  of  introducing  to  your 
acquaintance  the  Chevalier  de  Dashkoff, 
Charge  d'affairs  and  Consul  General  of  His 
Majesty,  the  Emperor  of  All  the  Rus- 
sias  for  the  United  States.  He  proposes 
residing  at  Philadelphia  with  his  amiable 
family.  His  rank  and  situation  and  diplo- 
matic character,  and  above  all,  his  excel- 
lent qualities  and  great  merit  are  sure  to 
gain  him  the  esteem  and  friendship  of  all 
those  who  have  the  satisfaction  of  becom- 
ing acquainted  with  him.  I  take,  there- 
fore, a  peculiar  pleasure  in  recommending 
him  to  your  particular  notice  and  civilities, 
persuaded  that  Mr.  Dashkoff  will  be  kindly 
and  hospitably  received. 

I  should  be  extremely  happy  if  I  could 
be  of  any  use  to  you  in  this  country  and 
beg  of  you  to  dispose  of 'me  in  whatever 
shape  you  may  think  proper. 

I  have  the  honor  to  be  with  great  es- 
teem, Sir, 

Your  obedient  humble  servant, 

HENRY  ESCHER. 
DAVID  PARISH,  ESQ., 
PHILADELPHIA,  PA. 

Personal  Confidence  of  the 
First  Prominent  Americans 

David's  brother,  John,  said  in  the 
course  of  a  letter  dated  Senftenberg 
Castle,  10  September,  1815:  "I  have 
become  the  proprietor  of  a  principal- 
ity of  considerable  extent  and  which 
henceforth  will  have  my  undivided 
attention  an  time  to  make  it  in  some 
measure  what  it  is  capable  of  becom- 
ing. ...  I  have  a  town  and 
twenty  villages,  with  about  fifteen 
thousand  subjects." 

This  was  in  Bohemia,  Austria. 

Mr.  Parish's  young  friend,  Edward 
Ross,  had  relatives  among  the  wealthy 
Virginia  planters.  The  following  ex- 
tract is  from  one  of  his  letters  to  Mr. 


759 


Parish  while  living  among  them.  It 
was  written  from  Mount  Ida,  near 
New  Canton,  Buckingham  County, 
November  23,  1813. 

I  have  to  acknowledge  receipt  of  your 
much  esteemed  favor  of  1st  instant  I 
would  most  certainly  have  answered  the 
same  much  sooner,  but  this  letter  was  kept 
here  with  several  others  until  my  return 
from  Monticello,  where  I  have  been  for 
some  time,  and  was  much  delighted  with 
the  very  friendly 'and  hospitable  reception 
I  met  with  from  Mr.  Jefferson.  What 
strong  impression  his  amiable  granddaugh- 
ter, Miss  Randolph,  has  made  upon  my 
heart  is  impossible  to  describe,  and  between 
you  and  me,  I  have  some  reason  to  believe 
that  she  is  not  altogether  indifferent  to 
what  regards  me.  I  shall  follow  your  good 
advice,  discard  all  foolish  ideas  of  Clara, 
of  returning  to  Philadelphia  and  upon  my 
honor  will  entirely  mend  and  turn  my  mind 
to  more  useful  occupations.  I  shall 
neither  for  the  future  trouble  you  any  more 
with  these  nonsensical  details  of  my  hunt- 
ing parties,  feastings  etc.,  for  I  have  given 
all  this  up  and  my  hounds  run  about  in  the 
yard  neglected,  my  horns  hang  on  the  wall 
without  being  touched  and  even  Powhattan 
I  have  not  rode  ever  since  my  return  from 
Monticello,  where  I  intend  very  soon  mak- 
ing another  long  visit,  as  Mr.  Jefferson 
particularly  begged  me  to  do  so  and  ap- 
peared to  have  taken  a  great  liking  to  me, 
for  he  did  ride  every  day  out  with  me,  did 
show  me  all  his  mills,  farms,  machineries, 
curiosities,  &c.  He  conversed  with  me 
about  politicks  all  day  long  and  about 
Europe  and  many  other  countries. 

In  these  days  of  stenographers  and 
typewriters,  of  haste  and  rush  in  cor- 
respondence, it  is  a  treat  to  read  the 
letters  exchanged  by  Mr.  Parish  and 
Mr.  Rosseel  almost  a  hundred  years 
ago,  personal  letters  written  with  quill 
pens  on  generous  sheets  of  paper.  As 
a  sample,  one  of  Mr.  Parish's  opens: 
"Since  writing  to  you  on  the  2d  in- 
stant, my  dear  sir,  I  am  deprived  of 
the  pleasure  of  hearing  from  you," 
and  closes,  "I  am  always,  with  true 
attachment,  my  dear  sir,  Yours  sin- 
cerely, David  Parish."  The  follow- 
ing quotation  from  one  of  Mr.  Ros- 
seel's  to  Mr.  Parish  might  be  consid- 
ered "a  special  effort."  It  closed  a 
particularly  interesting,  descriptive 
letter,  written  at  Montreal,  December 
30,  1808: 

On  the  occasion  of  the  renewal  of  the 
year,  I  offer  my  compliments  by  anticipa- 


nf  3Ftr0t  Ammratt 


tion,  that  it  may  be  for  you,  dear  sir,  happy 
and  prosperous,  is  the  object  of  my  un- 
feigned wishes,  and  to  find  out  the  oppor- 
tunity of  rendering  my  existence  subser- 
vient to  your  interests  is  the  object  of  my 
solicitude.  I  remain  unreservedly  and  re- 
spectfully, Dear  Sir,  your  most  devoted, 
faithful  servant,  Joseph  Rosseel. 

His  next  letter  from  Ogdensburg 
closed : 

I  have  not  time  to  say  more.  Judge  and 
Major  Ford  present  their  respects  to  you. 
Accept  of  mine  with  the  assurance  of  my 
attachment.  Your  faithful  servant,  Joseph 
Rosseel. 

Mail  Service  in  America 
One  Hundred  Years  ago 

And  the  mail  service  of  those  days 
was  most  remarkable.  In  1809  tne 
government  mails  were  four  weeks  in 
going  from  Philadelphia  to  Ogdens- 
burg, and  the  carrier  started  back  in 
two  hours.  There  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  any  regularly  established 
public  trans-Atlantic  mail  service. 
In  May,  1810,  Mr.  Parish,  who  was 
on  the  eve  of  departure  for  a  trip  to 
Europe,  wrote  Mr.  Rosseel,  saying 
that  he  would  expect  him  to  write 
once  a  month,  addressing  him  care  of 
Baring  Bros,  and  Company,  London; 
"originals"  to  go  to  Messrs.  Archi- 
bald Gracie  &  Co.  New  York,  and 
"duplicates"  to  Mr.  George  Harrison 
in  Philadelphia,  "opportunities  for 
England  being  frequent  in  both 
places."  In  other  words,  the  letters 
were  to  be  sent  by  government  mail  to 
Mr.  Parish's  friends  in  New  York 
and  Philadelphia  who  would  find 
some  private  opportunities  to  get  them 
to  London.  Letters  were  written  to 
friends  across  the  water  and  held  in 
readiness  to  be  entrusted  to  the  care 
of  the  first  traveler  about  to  cross  the 
sea.  It  is  probable  that  most  mer- 
chant vessels  carried  a  mail  bag  for 
the  accommodation  of  friends  of  her 
owners.  Letters  were  written  in  du- 
plicate always  and  sometimes  in  tripli- 
cate, each  being  dispatched  by  a  dif- 
ferent opportunity.  One  letter  from 
his  relatives  in  Scotland  to  John  Ross 
in  Ogdensburg  was  nine  months  on 
the  way,  passing  from  hand  to  hand. 


David's  father  would  write  him,  send- 
ing a  copy  of  the  letter  to  another  son, 
who  would  add  a  few  lines  and  for- 
ward. If  one  letter  failed  to  reach 
destination,  better  fortune  might  at- 
tend the  other.  Neither  envelopes 
nor  postage  stamps  were  then  in  use. 

Difficulties  of 
Communications  in  1807 

Letters  were  folded  snugly  with  one 
end  slipped  into  the  other,  to  about 
three  by  five  inches  and  sealed  with 
wax.  These  passing  through  the 
United  States  government  mails  bore 
a  postmark  as  now,  and  the  amount 
prepaid  for  carriage  was  marked  on 
with  a  pen.  Twelve  and  a  half  cents 
seems  to  have  been  the  minimum 
postage,  as  ours  is  now  two  cents,  and 
it  often  ran  up  to  two  and  three  times 
that  amount. 

The  isolation  felt  by  the  residents 
of  the  St.  Lawrence  may  be  imagined 
from  the  fact  of  their  referring  to  the 
cities  on  the  sea  board  as  "in  the 
states." 

April  19,  1816,  Mr.  Parish  wrote  to 
Joseph  Rosseel: 

Having  entered  into  an  arrangement 
with  my  brother  George,  by  which  he  be- 
comes interested  in  all  my  land  concerns, 
he  will  take  up  his  residence  at  Ogdens- 
burg and  have  the  general  superintendence 
of  all  my  business  in  the  state  of  New 
York.  Your  agency  will  continue,  if  you 
are  so  disposed  and  I  have  no  doubt  the 
same  harmony  and  good  understanding  will 
exist  between  you  and  him  as  has  hitherto 
prevailed  between  you  and  me. 

David  Parish  died  ten  years  after 
he  returned  to  Europe,  that  is,  in  1826, 
and  the  following  year  his  brother, 
George,  came  into  possession  of  the 
entire  estate  which  he  retained  until 
his  death  in  1838  or  1839.  Joseph 
Rosseel  was  the  sole  executor  of  his 
will.  In  1839  the  estate  was  pur- 
chased by  the  "2d  George  Parish,"  a 
nephew  of  the  former  proprietor,  for 
two  hundred  and  twenty-nine  thou- 
sand dollars.  He  was  the  son  of 
Richard  Parish  and  an  Austrian 
baron.  All  three  of  the  Parish  pro- 
prietors were  bachelors. 


Jnunbing  a  Jfarimt*  in  Ammra  Iflfl  f  rare  Agn 


Joseph  Rosseel  continued  to  act  as 
agent  for  the  Parish  estate  until  re- 
tired with  full  pay  for  the  balance  of 
his  life  by  the  "26  George"  in  1859, 
when  he  was  nearly  eighty  years  of 
age. 

Discovery  of  the  Ancient 
Manuscript  in  Old  Mansion 

The  Ogdensburg  Library,  in  the 
attic  of  which  I  found  the  old  letters, 
stands  on  the  foundations  of  the  Ros- 
seel homestead,  built  by  Joseph  Ros- 
seel ;  an  old-fashioned,  wide-spread- 
ing house  with  white,  rough-cast 
walls.  Deeply  recessed  piazzas,  front 
and  back,  with  high  Grecian  columns, 
were  connected  by  a  wide  hallway. 
One  faced  the  St.  Lawrence,  here  a 
mile  in  width,  and  commanded  an  un- 
obstructed view  of  seven  miles  of  the 
Canadian  shore,  the  grassy  walls  of 
old  Fort  Wellington  being  directly 
opposite.  The  other  looked  out  upon 
the  Parish  mansion  across  the  way. 
A  fountain  played  in  the  front  yard 
among  syringas  and  honeysuckles. 
Locusts  and  horse-chestnuts  shaded 
the  house  and  the  sidewalks  in  front. 
Carefully  tended  flower  and  vegetable 
gardens  and  vine-clad  arbors  lay  be- 
tween the  house  and  the  river.  Here 
Joseph  Rosseel  died  in  1863. 

Up  to  about  1880,  when  the  rem- 
nants of  the  estate  were  sold,  the  Par- 
ish mansion  remained  much  as  it  was 


when  occupied  by  the  "2d  George,"  a 
large,  three-story  brick  structure, 
painted  a  deep-red,  standing  in  a  lit- 
tle forest  of  trees  surrounded  by  high 
walls  and  fences  and  facing  upon  a 
circular  grass-plot  in  the  middle,  with 
its  back  turned  to  the  people  of  Og- 
densburg. 

The  Home  of  One  of 
America's  Early  Financiers 

Thus  I  recall  it  when,  as  a  boy,  I 
was  on  special  occasions  allowed  to 
wander  through  the  darkened  rooms, 
over  thick  velvety  carpets,  while  the 
caretaker  opened  here  and  there  a 
shutter,  letting  the  sunlight  stream 
over  costly  furniture  and  rich  hang- 
ings. The  "2d  George"  paid  his  last 
visit  to  it  about  1865. 

The  Rosseel  homestead,  full  of  dig- 
nity and  hospitality,  is  gone,  and  with 
it  the  rows  of  locusts,  the  syringas  and 
honeysuckles,  the  fountain  and  the 
vine-clad  arbors.  Across  the  street, 
the  little  forest  of  trees,  the  high  walls 
and  fences  have  long  since  disap- 
peared, but  the  Parish  mansion,  some- 
what remodeled,  still  stands  and  shel- 
ters one  of  Ogdensburg's  most  prom- 
inent citizens,  who  also  occupies  the 
"old  sfone  store"  on  the  river-bank  for 
the  transaction  of  a  forwarding  busi- 
ness, his  fleets  sailing  on  Lake  Ontario 
and  away  north  to  Montreal  as  did  the 
tiny  schooners  and  the  "arks"  of  1810. 


r 


'Here  is  the  place;  right  over  the  hill 

Runs  the  path  I  took; 
You  can  see  the  gap  in  the  old  wall  still 
And  the  stepping  stones  in  the  shallow  brook. 

*  *  *  * 

And  the  same  rose  blows,  and  the  same  sun  glows, 
And  the  same  brook  sings  as  in  years  ago." 


OHpntgl|t  iti  Ammra 


of  %  Ikjmbltr  10  %  Gutter  of 
•|JubUr    ©pinion  —  %   Crater  anil 


GEORGIA 


LOUISIANA 


AMERICANISM    CALLS    FOR   THE 
GOOD    IN    MAN-NOT   THE    BAD 


AN    AMERICAN    VIEW    OF   THE 
FUTURE    OF    SOUTH    AFRICA 


KDITORIA.L   -WXITEX    IX 
THB   ATLANTA.   OONSTITTTTIOH' 

The  barricades  of  tradition  and  the  stone 
walls  of  revenge  oppose  no  insuperable 
obstacle  to  the  present-day  iconoclast  or 
the  muck-raker.  The  dour-faced  knights 
of  either  of  these  tribes  will  seek  to  lessen 
our  faith  in  the  Scriptures  with  as  blithe 
a  spirit  as  they  tilt  against  the  unhealthy 
methods  of  Packingtown  or  breathe  to  us 
softly  of  the  iniquities  of  Standard  Oil. 
Now  they  have  even  gone  after  George 
Washington,  "the  father  of  his  country." 
There  is  produced  what  seems  tolerably 
a  tax  dodger,  that  the  cherry  tree  inci- 
dent has  been  created  out  of  the  whole 
cloth,  and  that  he  freely  used  intoxicating 
liquors  in  influencing  the  votes  of  the 
bibulous  in  an  election  for  burgess.  Youth 
is  cynical  nowadays.  Much  reading  and  a 
spirit  of  inordinate  curiosity  and  incredu- 
lity have  bred  skepticism  which  extends 
even  to  the  lisper  in  the  Sabbath  school 
kindergarten.  So  that  there  is  no  spirit- 
ual lese  maieste  in  stating  that  the  men 
and  women  of  to-day,  not  to  speak  of  im- 
mature students,  do  not  cherish  the  fond 
notion  that  Washington  or  any  other  of 
the  pre-eminent  figures  of  his  day  were 
metre  than  human.  We  are  quite  sure  they 
had  faults.  We  are  only  glad  that  we  are 
not  sufficiently  near  them  to  bear  witness 
to  these  faults.  And  we  are  also  con- 
vinced that  whatever  their  shortcomings, 
their  virtues,  especially  in  the  case  of 
Washington,  overbalance  far  on  the  other 
side.  That  is  one  of  the  happiest  and  one 
of  the  most  inevitable  tricks  of  time.  The 
dross  in  a  great  man's  composition  is 
burned  away  in  the  furnace  of  the  years, 
and  what  stands  forth  for  the  inspection 
of  posterity  is  pure  gold.  Of  what  use, 
then,  is  the  activity  of  the  jackanapes  icon- 
oclast? We  willingly  concede  that  the 
men  who  loom  large  in  American  history 
are  linked  to  us  by  the  flaws  inseparable 
from  flesh  and  blood.  But  we  do  not  care 
to  be  reminded  of  those  flaws.  What  we 
do  need  in  an  age  given  over  to  encroach- 
ing materialism  is  an  abundant  supply  of 
high  ideals.  Woe  be  to  the  peering  and 
ruthless  ghoul  of  history  who  neglects 
more  immediate  and  healthful  demands  for 
his  activities  to  bring  up  smut  out  of  the 
graves  of  illustrious  men. 


K  IMTOKI  A  i,   \\-HITKK   IN 
THE    NEW   OHLKAXS    PICAY17XE 

Although  defeated  by  the  British  in 
South  Africa  and  compelled  to  accept  the 
position  of  subjects  of  the  British  Empire, 
the  Boers  are  in  a  fair  way  to  accomplish 
by  peaceable  and  even  constitutional  means 
what  they  failed  to  effect  by  force  of  arms. 
It  is  well  known,  despite  the  sympathy  felt 
for  the  Boers  during  the  war  in  the  Trans- 
vaal several  years  ago,  that  the  outbreak 
was  the  result  of  a  well-planned  scheme  to 
establish  an  independent  Boer  confedera- 
tion in  South  Africa,  to  include  all  that 
portion  of  the  Dark  Continent  now  known 
as  British  South  Africa.  Although  the 
Orange  Free  State  and  the  Transvaal  Re- 
public were  independent  as  far  as  their 
internal  administration  was  concerned, 
they  still  remained  under  British  suze- 
rainty. It  is  true  that  President  Kruger 
and  President  Stein  made  light  of  the  Brit- 
ish pretensions,  but  the  London  govern- 
ment never  failed  to  constantly  assert  them 
and  always  resented  any  attempt  on  the 
part  of  the  Boer  republics  to  hold  rela- 
tions with  foreign  countries  except  through 
the  British  authorities.  Confident  of  the 
success  of  their  schemes,  the  Boer  leaders 
had  everything  ready  for  a  successful  ris- 
ing in  Cape  Colony,  and  had  the  Boers 
succeeded  in  driving  out  the  British  and 
making  secure  the  footing  they  obtained 
early  in  the  war  in  Natal  it  is  absolutely 
certain  that  they  proposed  to  proclaim  the 
independence  of  both  Natal  and  Cape  Col- 
ony and  organize  a  greater  Boer  Republic 
to  include  the  whole  of  South  Africa. 
While  the  dream  of  independence  has  been 
dispelled,  the  Boers  have  not  given 
up  hope  of  eventually  creating  a  South 
African  dominion  as  an  integral  part  of 
the  British  Empire,  but  still  under  the  Boer 
control  as  far  as  administration  is  con- 
cerned. After  several  years'  tenure  of 
office,  Dr.  Jameson,  the  Premier  of  Cape 
Colony,  has  been  forced  to  dissolve  the 
Cape  parliament  owing  to  a  legislative 
deadlock  and  appeal  to  the  electors.  With 
the  Boer  element  firmly  established  in  the 
Transvaal  and  in  the  Orange  River  col- 
ony as  well  as  at  the  Cape,  the  task  of  re- 
establishing Boer  rule  in  South  Africa  will 
be  practically  accomplished  with  much  bet- 
ter chances  of  permanency  than  had 
Kruger  succeeded  in  the  recent  war. 


in     Amrrira 


INDIANA 


NEBRASKA 


AMERICA'S    GREATEST    POLITI- 
CAL.   IDOL    AND    HIS    FAILURE 


IT  1)1  TOHI  A  I.   VTKITKX    iv 
THM    miA.XA.fOL.im    JOUHKAL 

The  greatest  popular  idol  in  a  political 
sense  the  country  has  ever  known  was 
Henry  Clay.  Only  one  other  American 
statesman  ever  possessed  the  quality 
called  personal  magnetism  to  the  same  ex- 
tent that  he  did,  and  no  other  ever  had  a 
more  enthusiastic  personal  following.  He 
was  an  aspirant  for  president  from  1824  to 
1848,  but  never  reached  the  goal.  He  re- 
ceived thirty-seven  electoral  votes  in  1824, 
forty-nine  in  1832  and  one  hundred  and 
five  in  1844,  but  never  enough  to  elect  him. 
Clay  was  elected  speaker  of  the  house  of 
representatives  on  the  first  day  of  his 
term  in  that  body  and  was  five  times  re- 
elected.  He  was  twice  elected  United 
States  senator,  once  unanimously  by  the 
Kentucky  legislature,  and  held  several 
other  high  offices.  If  there  was  ever  a 
popular  idol  in  the  politics  of  this  country, 
it  was  Henry  Clay,  but  he  could  not  be 
elected  president 


Oklahoma  will  be  the  first  American 
state  to  have  at  its  beginning  any  large 
part  of  its  voters  of  a  race  other  than  the 
Caucasian.  The  fact  that  Indians  with  full 
rights  of  citizenship  are  a  large  element  in 
Oklahoma's  population  has  given  its  organ- 
ization as  a  state  an  unwonted  interest 
How  would  the  Indians,  there  given  for 
the  first  time  a  powerful  voice  in  govern- 
ment use  their  power?  The  record  of 
Oklahoma's  constitutional  convention 
shows  that  the  Indians  there  need  no  tu- 
toring in  politics.  They  proved  that  they 
knew  what  they  wanted  and  how  to  get  it. 
They  showed  political  efficiency  at  every 
step  along  the  road.  The  Indian  delegates 
controlled  the  convention,  shaped  its  work, 
and  made  the  constitution,  which  it  has 
submitted  to  the  people.  The  Indian  com- 
munities of  Oklahoma  seem  to  have  been 
very  much  more  alive  than  the  white  to  the 
importance  of  the  convention.  All  the 
newspaper  correspondents  agree  that  the 
Indian  delegates  averaged  higher  than  the 
whites.  Most  of  the  white  communities 
seem  to  have  sent  to  the  convention  men  of 
the  mediocre  grade  that  gets  elected  to 
state  legislatures  in  "off"  years.  The  In- 
dian communities  sent  their  best  men, 
those  most  highly  educated  and  experi- 
enced in  affairs.  The  Indian  delegates 
were  strictly  up-to-date  in  their  political 
ideas.  The  constitution  they  framed  calls 
for  about  all  the  "reform"  ideas. 

7«3 


AMERICA  SHOULD  LEAD  WORLD 
TO    UNIVERSAL    PEACE 


EIMTOKIAI.     WKITiru    IV 
THB    I.IVCOX.V    COMMOVKB 

The  Hague  Peace  Conference  has  not 
accomplished  as  much  as  the  friends  of 
peace  had  hoped.  The  nations  represented 
wanted  peace  but  each  one  was  anxious 
that  it  should  be  secured  without  any  sacri- 
fice on  its  own  part  Some  of  the  nations 
wanted  to  discontinue  the  use  of  navies  in 
the  collection  of  private  debts,  and  this 
would  have  been  a  long  step  in  advance, 
but  other  nations  objected  on  the  theory 
that  they  might  want  to  collect  the  debts 
due  some  of  their  citizens.  Various  prop- 
ositions were  presented,  and  some  of  them 
received  considerable  support,  but  the  final 
outcome  is  a  disappointment  It  is  hard 
to  secure  peace  by  agreement  when  so 
many  nations  are  to  be  consulted  and  so 
many  conflicting  interests  are  to  be  har- 
monized. The  peace  movement  will  make 
progress  but  that  progress  is  not  as  rapid 
as  it  ought  to  be.  But  why  should  the 
United  States  wait  for  an  agreement  with 
other  nations?  It  has  it  within  its  sphere 
to  promote  peace  at  once.  It  can  announce 
its  own  policy  and  thus  set  an  example  to 
other  nations.  This  example  may  not  be 
followed  at  once  but  it  will  give  the  friends 
of  peace  in  other  nations  something  to 
work  for  and  an  argument  to  use.  For  in- 
stance, our  nation  could  announce — and  it 
should  do  so— its  determination  not  to  use 
the  navy  for  the  collection  of  private  debts. 
This  would  be  a  beginning.  Other  nations 
would,  one  after  another,  follow  its  exam- 
ple, and  a  public  opinion  would  be  formed 
which  would  in  time  compel  all  nations  to 
abstain  from  wars  for  the  collection  of 
private  debts.  There  is  another  thing 
which  our  nation  should  do,  and  it  should 
do  it  at  once,  namely,  announce  its  willing- 
ness to  enter  into  an  agreement  providing 
for  the  submission  to  an  impartial  tribunal, 
before  the  commencement  of  hostilities  and 
the  declaration  of  war,  of  all  disputes 
which  defy  diplomatic  settlement  If  it 
will  announce  such  a  policy,  it  will  find  a 
number  of  other  nations  willing  to  make 
such  an  agreement,  and  these  will  set  the 
pattern  for  the  rest  of  the  world.  The 
failure  of  the  Hague  Conference  to  accom- 
plish what  it  ought  to  have  accomplished 
gives  our  nation  an  opportunity  to  lead  the 
way  and  become  the  dominating  factor  in 
the  promotion  of  peace. 


<E0ni*mji0rarg 


in     Amertra 


WASHINGTON 


MISSOURI 


WORLD'S    UPBUILDING    IS    IN 
NEED    OF    MORE    MONEY 


KDITOJIIAL  WHITER  TS 
TH*  SEATTLE:  POST-INTELLIGENCER 

M.  Leroy-Beaulieu,  in  Economiste  Fran- 
cois, explains  at  some  length  and  with 
great  lucidity  the  financial  condition  of  the 
world,  causing  the  present  money  strin- 
gency, which  is  felt  elsewhere  to  precisely 
the  same  extent  as  it  is  in  this  country. 
The  explanation  of  this  distinguished 
writer  on  economic  topics  is  precisely  iden- 
tical with  that  which  has  been  given  by 
well-informed  writers  in  this  country,  with 
the  addition  that  the  French  writer  makes 
a  fair  attempt  at  giving  the  figures  of  the 
capital  needed,  and  the  available  supply. 
He  estimates,  for  example,  that  the  savings 
in  France — the  new  capital  available  for  in- 
vestment— reaches  the  amount  of  $300,- 
000,000  one  year  with  another.  In  a  con- 
jectural way,  he  estimates  that  Germany, 
which  is  rapidly  becoming  rich,  has  an 
amount  of  savings  annually  for  investment 
equal  to  those  of  France,  and  that  the 
United  States  annually  accumulates  capital 
for  investment  equal  to  the  combined  sav- 
ings of  Germany  and  France.  Other  fig- 
ures for  all  of  the  other  countries  of  the 
world  are  estimated  in  a  similar  manner, 
with  the  conclusion  that  the  total  new  capi- 
tal of  the  world  available  for  investment 
reaches  an  amount  annually  between 
$2,200,000,000  and  $2,800,000,000,  the  latter 
being  the  extreme  outside  figure.  As 
against  this,  during  1906  the  demands  for 
capital  to  be  invested  in  new  securities 
reached  an  aggregate  of  not  less  than 
$3.250,000,000,  and  promises  to  be  very 
much  larger  during  1907.  This  is  the  situ- 
ation in  a  nutshell.  The  demands  for  cap- 
ital exceeded  the  supply,  and  the  point  has 
been  reached  where  the  undertakings  of 
the  world  must  be  limited  until  more  capi- 
tal becomes  available.  On  the  figures,  the 
prospects  seem  good  for  high  interest  rates 
for  at  least  two  years,  and  possibly  longer. 


The  savage,  many  generations  ago,  saw 
the  wind  blow,  felt  the  force  of  the  air.  In 
course  of  time,  after  many  experiments,  the 
power  of  the  air  was  harnessed  to  sails 
and  the  art  of  navigation  was  developed. 
Consider,  then,  the  power  of  this  earth 
current  which  makes  the  needle  of  the 
compass  move.  Suppose  that  an  investi- 
gator along  this  line  solves  the  secret  of 
the  power;  that  he  or  another  man  find  the 
means  of  harnessing  that  power  to  human 
use.  I  believe  this  power  can  yet  be  con- 
trolled by  man. — New  York  World. 


TREMENDOUS   POWER   HELD   BY 
ONE    AMERICAN    FINANCIER 


KDITORIAL   -WHITKR    IN 
TUB     St.   LOUIS    OLOBE-DEMOOBAT 

The  railroad  and  steamboat  conquests 
of  a  single  American  capitalist  to-day 
cover  a  large  part  of  North  America,  and 
stretch  themselves  off  to  the  hemisphere 
of  Asia.  The  map  which  traces  the  course 
of  his  steamboat  lines  makes  the  Pacific 
look,  not  like  a  Japanese  or  an  American 
sea,  but  like  a  Harriman  lake.  .  .  . 
Mr.  Harriman  may  journey  by  steamship 
from  New  York  to  New  Orleans,  thence 
by  rail  to  San  Francisco,  thence  across  the 
Pacific  to  China.  And,  returning  by 
another  route  to  the  United  States,  he  may 
go  to  Ogden,  by  any  one  of  three  rail  lines, 
and  thence  to  Kansas  City  or  Omaha, 
without  leaving  the  deck  or  platform  of 
any  carrier  which  he  controls,  and  without 
duplicating  any  part  of  his  journey.  This 
looks  like  expansive  language,  but  it  does 
not  soar  nearly  as  much  as  it  could,  while 
still  sticking  to  facts,  for  by  Harriman's 
community-of-interest  pacts  he  can  ride 
across  the  continent  to  New  York  by  either 
one  of  two  rail  routes  without  getting  out 
of  cars  which  obey  his  orders. 


Texas  is  the  biggest  state  in  the  Union. 
.  .  .  The  upper  part  of  the  Pan  Handle 
of  Texas  is  nearer  to  Chicago  than  it  is  to 
Galveston.  Texas  is  as  wide  as  the  dis- 
tance from  Chicago  to  Boston,  or  from  St. 
Louis  to  New  York  City.  That  is  to  say 
that  from  Texarkana  to  El  Paso  it  is  1,100 
miles.  Texas  has  3,000,000  folks,  10,000,- 
ooo  cattle,  12,000,000  sheep  and  3,000,000 
horses.  One  horse,  you  see,  for  every  man, 
woman  and  child  in  the  state.  People  who 
have  not  seen  the  Southwest  during  the 
past  five  years  cannot  by  any  description 
realize  its  progress.  What  is  known  as 
"the  Santa  Fe  country"  can  feed  the  world. 
Six  years  ago  you  could  buy  in  Texas 
1,000  sheep  for  $1,000.  Now  1,000  sheep 
will  cost  you  $8,000.  The  real  crop  in 
Texas,  however,  is  not  wool,  but  cotton. 
The  cotton  crop  in  Texas  for  the  year  1906 
was  worth  over  $200,000,000  in  cold  cash. 
They  raise  a  bale  of  cotton  on  an  acre,  and 
a  bale  of  cotton  is  worth  $60.  Texas  has 
the  second  most  important  shipping  port 
in  America,  and  if  things  continue  going  as 
they  have  for  the  past  five  years,  in  ten 
years  more  the  shipments  from  Galveston 
will  exceed  in  value  the  combined  exports 
of  Boston  and  New  York. 

764 


nf  tlj*  Jfirfit  Unlum* — fHrmuit 

A  CENTURY  OF  STEAM  NAVIGATION — A  series  of  sixteen  of  the  first  steamboats  to 
sail  Inland  waters  from  the  port  of  New  York — With  double-page  natural-color 
reproduction  of  the  modern  "Hendrlck  Hudson" 428 

ACROSS  THE  AMERICAN  CONTINENT  IN  A  CARAVAN— REMINISCENCES  OF  CAP- 
TAIN JOSEPH  ARAM — Recollections  of  a  Journey  from  New  York  through  the 
Western  Wilderness  and  over  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Pacific  In  1846 — Adven- 
tures with  the  Indians — First  discovery  of  gold — First  white  child  born  In  Cali- 
fornia— Early  days  on  the  Pacific  Coast — Experiences  of  Captain  Joseph  Aram — 
Transcript  from  the  Original  now  In  Possession  of  His  Children  In  California 

By  Colonel  James  Tompklns  Watson,  of  Clinton.  New  York  617 

ADVENTURES   IN  THE   AMERICAN   NORTHWEST Life   story   of  a   Pioneer   Fur 

Trader  and  his  experiences  In  the  remote  parts  of  the  New  World — How  Amer- 
ican business  Instinct  led  the  way  for  civilization — Accurate  transcript  from  an 
almost  Indecipherable  manuscript  recently  discovered By  Sir  Peter  Pond  S57 

ADVENTURES  OF  AN  AMERICAN  SEAMAN— Journal  of  Captain  Samuel  Hoyt,  Born 
in  1744.  and  Followed  the  Roving  Life  of  His  Generation — On  a  Fighting  Ship  off 
Havana,  Cuba,  in  1762 — Experiences  as  a  Prisoner  on  a  Privateer — Wanderings 

as  a  Fugitive  along  the  American  Coast — Contributed By  Julius  Walter  Pease 

In  His  Ninety-Third  Year     81 

A  MAN  OF  THE  SOUTHWEST— Poem By  John  Vance  Cheney.  Chicago,  Illinois  290 

AMERICANA  DUBIA— MOOTED  QUESTIONS  IN  HISTORY — Open  Discussions 765 

AMERICAN  CIVILIZATION  IN  THE  GREATER  ANTILLES 

By  Honorable  Beekman  Wlnthrop,  Governor  of  Porto  Rico  232 

AMERICAN  FLAG — THE  EMBLEM  OF  LIBERTY— Story  of  Its  Evolution  from  the 
Discovery  of  the  New  World  to  the  Present  Age  when  the  Sun  Never  Sets  on  the 
Stars  and  Stripes — Accompanied  by  a  Silk  Memorial  Flag  made  by  the  Cheney 
Mills  at  South  Manchester,  Connecticut,  and  seven  Silk  Tissue  reproductions  In 
Original  Colors Mrs.  Henry  Champion  9 

AMERICAN  PROGRESS  IN  THE  GREAT  SOUTHWEST .. By  Hon.  Thomas  M.  Campbell 

Governor  of  Texas  435 

AMERICAN  PROGRESS  IN  THE  MIDDLE  WEST— Voice  of  the  people  as  expressed 
through  the  Governors  of  the  American  Commonwealth  and  "The  Journal  of  Amer- 
ican History" By  Honorable  Albert  B.  Cummins,  Governor  of  Iowa  433 

AMERICAN  PROGRESS  ON  THE  PACIFIC  COAST— Voice  of  the  people  as  expressed 
through  the  Governors  of  the  American  Commonwealth  to  "The  Journal  of  Ameri- 
can History" ^ By  Honorable  Albert  E.  Mead 

Governor  of  Washington  226 

AMERICAN  SCIENTISTS  BELIEVE  JAPANESE  ARE  CAUCASIANS— Editorial  writer 

in  the  "Indianapolis   Star" 676 

AMERICANS — OUR  FUTURE  CIVILIZATION— Excerpt  from  Recent  Public  Utterance 

By  Theodore  Roosevelt,  President  of  the  United  States,  Cover 

AMERICA— THE  RISE  OF  A  STRONG  PEOPLF — Nine  hundredth  anniversary  of 
Thorflnn's  Discovery  of  the  Western  Continent — Four  hundredth  anniversary  of 
the  Christening  of  the  New  World  as  America — Three  hundredth  anniversary  of 
the  Call  of  the  Wilds  to  the  Anglo-Saxons  and  the  daring  men  who  heard 201 

AMERICA'S    TRIBUTE    TO    FRANCE — A    Centennial    Ode    to    Comte    de    Rochambeau 

By  John  Oaylord  Davenport,  D.D.  712 

A  MOTHER'S  LETTER  TO  HER  SON  IN  1789— Transcribed  from  Original  In  Posses- 
sion of Joseph  Alsop,  Descendant  of  Correspondent  96 

AN  AMERICAN'S  EXPERIENCE  IN  THE  BRITISH  ARMY— Manuscript  of  Colonel 
Stephen  Jarvls,  Born  In  1756  In  Danbury,  Connecticut,  Revealing  the  life  of  the 
Loyalists  who  refused  to  renounce  allegiance  to  the  King  and  fought  to  save  the 
Western  Continent  to  the  British  Empire — Original  Manuscript  now  in  possession 
of Honorable  Charles  M.  Jarvls,  New  Britain,  Connecticut  441 

AN  AMERICAN'S  EXPERIENCE  IN  THE  BRITISH  ARMY— Manuscript  of  Colonel 
Stephen  Jarvis,  born  in  1756,  revealing  the  life  of  the  Loyalists  who  refused  to 
renounce  their  allegiance  to  the  king  and  fought  to  save  the  Western  Continent 
to  the  British  Empire — Relating  the  remarkable  experiences  as  a  recruit  in  the 
lines  of  the  British  army — Accurate  transcript  from  the  original  manuscript  which 
was  lost  for  many  years  and  has  been  recently  recovered  now  in  possession  of 
Honorable  Charles  Maples  Jarvis.  Descendant  of  Colonel  Jarvis  and  Member  of 
many  American  learned  and  patriotic  societies 727 

AN  AMERICAN'S  OATH  OF  ABJURATION  IN  1763 — Sworn  to  by  Colonel  Henry  Lud- 
ington  when  appointed  to  the  office  of  Sub-Sheriff — Accurate  Transcript  from 
originals  in  collection  of  Poughkeepsie,  New  York  Literary  Club 501 


tuttlf  iEngrautnga 


ANCIENT  MINIATURE  OP  EBENEZER  JACKSON,  SENIOR,  A  GENTLEMAN  OP  THE 
FIRST  DAYS  OF  THE  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC  —  Original  in  the  possession  of  Mr. 
Charles  Eben  Jackson  ...........................................................  698 

ANCIENT  MINIATURE  OF  CHARLOTTE  FENWICK  —  A  BEAUTY  OF  THE  REVOLU- 
TIONARY PERIOD  IN  AMERICA  —  Original  in  the  possession  of  Mr.  Charles  Eben 
Jackson  ......................................................................  70S 

AN  ANECDOTE  OF  COUNT  ROCHAMBEAU  IN  AMERICA—  "Come,  Haste  to  the  Wed- 
ding" —  An  Old  Song  —  By  the  granddaughter  of  the  heroine  of  this  incident 

Susan  E.  M.  Jocelyn  71S 

AN  ATTEMPT  TO  SOLVE  THE  RIDDLE  OF  THE  PLANETS—  Editorial  writer  In  the 

"Philadelphia     Inquirer"  .........................................................   676 

ANCIENT  AMERICAN  LANDMARKS  —  Two   Illustrations   of   the   first   days   of  Amer- 

ican   industry  ...................................................................   331 

ANCIENT   AMERICAN   LANDMARKS  —  Two    Photo-Engravings  .......................    1«2 

ANCIENT  ENGRAVINGS  OF  EARLY  AMERICA  —  Prints  from  quaint  pictures  of  the 

adventures  of  John  Smith  from  1697  to  1629  in  green  tint  on  Imitation  parchment  193 

AN  EARLY  AMERICAN  FINANCIER  —  General  Robert  Patterson  of  Philadelphia  — 
Born  in  1792  —  He  was  prominent  in  the  development  of  the  Sugar  Industry  of 
Louisiana  and  the  Cotton  Mills  of  the  South  —  An  organizer  of  Railroad  Communi- 
cation with  Baltimore,  a  Financier  of  the  Pennsylvania  Railroad,  and  Steamship 
Transportation  with  the  Southern  ports  and  Europe  —  Portrait  in  possession  of 
his  granddaughter,  Mrs.  Lindsay  Patterson  of  North  Carolina  ....................  652 

ANECDOTE  OF  AN  AMERICAN  REVOLUTIONIST      .............  By  Mrs.  J.  R.  Cozart 

Lamar,  Arkansas     72 

AN  INDIAN  LEGEND  —  "The  Flight  of  Red  Bird"  ........................  By  Joe  Cone  333 

ANNIVERSARIES  OF  THE  AMERICANS  —  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Birth  of 
Whittier  the  Poet  —  Two  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  the  Birth  of  the  Mother  of 
Washington  —  One  Hundredth  Anniversary  of  Washington  Irving's  "Salmagundi" 
and  William  Cullen  Bryant's  "Embargo"  —  The  Half  Century  Anniversary  of  the 
"Atlantic  Monthly"  ..............................................................  «18 

AN  ODE  TO  AMERICA—  THE  BUILDERS  OF  THE  REPUBLIC—  Poem  by  Judge  Daniel 
J.  Donahoe,  Author  of  "A  Message  to  Americans"  in  the  preceding  issue  of  "The 
Journal  of  American  History"  ........................................  ...........  589 

AN  OLD  ENGLISH  PLAY  ON  AMERICA—  The  New  World  in  1607  was  the  Talk  of  the 
Taverns  in  the  Old  World  and  Playwrights  Introduced  it  Into  their  dramas  — 
Extract  from  "Westward  Hoe"  ..................................................  219 

AN  OLD  TAVERN  SONG  —  Transcript  from  Fugitive  Paper  ...........................     79 

ARMS  CONFERRED  FOR  CHIVALRY  —  Accurate  Translations  of  Latin  Memorials 
Issued  to  John  Smith  for  his  heroism  in  the  Wars  of  Hungary  In  1603  —  Embellished 
with  reproductions  of  the  heraldic  order  .........................................  205 

A  TRIBUTE  TO  PEACE  —  Lunette  on  McKinley  Memorial  at  Canton,  Ohio 

By  Charles  H.  Niehaus,  Sculptor  599 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  JOHN  SMITH  —  His  Own  Story  of  His  Birth,  Apprenticeship  and 

Youth  —  Embellished    with    family    arms  ..........................................   204 

A  WEDDING  SUIT  IN  1756  —  Trancribed  from  Ancient  Memorandum 

By  Fannie  M.  Hackett,  Biddeford,  Maine     60 

BAS-RELIEF  OF  CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN,  Father  of  Literary  Trade  in  Amer- 

ica ..........................  By  Dr.  R.  Tait  McKenzie,  Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania  240 

BEGINNINGS   OF   AMERICAN   ARCHITECTURE—  Six    Photo-Engravings    of    Ancient 

Structures  ......................................................................   H7 

BILL  OF  SALE  OF  A  NORTHERN  SLAVE  IN  1721—  Transcribed  from  Original 

By  Eliza  Comstock,  Descendant  of  Slave-Holder     94 

BOOK-LOVERS  OF  1738—  ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  LIBRARIES  IN  AMERICA—  The  Lit- 
erary Inclinations  of  Early  Americans  —  The  Books  They  Read  and  Their  Learned 
Discussions  in  Matters  Intellectual  and  Moral  —  A  Treatise  on  "Physick"  was  the 
Foundation  of  Literary  Culture  in  the  Discriminating  Judgments  of  these  First 
American    Bibliophiles  —  with   Portrait   of   the   First  Librarian   of   the   Phllogram- 
matican  Library  ................................  By  Mrs.  Martha  Williams  Hooker 

Great-Granddaughter  of  the  Founder  177 

BOOK  PLATE  OF  REVEREND  THOMAS  RUGGLES  PYNCHON,  President  of  Trinity 

College,  Hartford,  Connecticut  —  Descendant  of  William  Pynchon,  1630  ............   516 

BOUNDLESS  RICHES  OF  THE  AMERICAN  INTERIOR  ____  By  Hon.  George  L.  Sheldon 

Governor  of  Nebraska  437 

CENTENARY  OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  E.  LEE—  His  Last  Portrait  taken  on  His  Old 
War  Horse  "Traveller"  —  Excerpt  from  Theodore  Roosevelt's  Writing  by  His 
Special  Permission  ..................................................  Supplement  80 


from    Attmnt    inrum*ttt0 


CENTENNIAL  OF  THE  SAVINGS  BANK—  One  hundred   years  ago   the   modern   «ys- 
tem  was  first  outlined  In  the  House  of  Commons  —  Duke  of  Wellington  remarked 
that  If  men  had  money  to  spare  It  was  time  to  reduce  their  pay—  First  savings 
banks  In  America  and  their  marvelous  effect  on  Industry  and  Thrift 

By  Honorable  Norman  White  685 
CIVILIZATION'S    GREAT   WORK    IS   IN   ITS    BEGINNING—  Editorial    writer    In    the 

"Toledo    Blade"  ................................................................  576 

COMPULSORY  MILITARY  TRAINING  IN  AMERICA—  Accurate  transcript  from  origi- 

nal order  Issued  In  New  England  In  1766  and  contributed  .....  By  Benjamin  C.  Lum  110 

CONTEMPORARY  AMERICAN  POETRY—  An  Ode  to  Niagara  Falls—  With  Four  Photo 

Art  Engravings  .....  By  Hon.  Henry  Taylor  Blake,  Now  In  His  Seventy-Ninth  Year  141 

CONTEMPORARY    THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA—  "The    Press    of    the    Republic    Is    the 
Moulder  of  Public  Opinion  —  the  Leader  and  Educator"  ........................... 

American  Municipalities  of  the  Future  ----  By  T.  E.  Stafford  In  "Dally  Oklahoman"  186 

Progress  la  Adjusting  the  Race  Problem  ......................  By  Frank  Johnston 

In  Jackson  (Mississippi)  "Evening  News"  186 
Marriage  and  Divorce  are  Subject  to  Evolution  ....................  By  J.  W.  Spear 

In  Arizona  "Republican"  187 
Will  American  Republic  Outgrow  State  Lines?  ................  By  Gilbert  D.  Paine 

In  Memphis  (Tennessee)  "News  Scimitar"  187 
American  Constitution  Is  in  Advance  of  Times  ............  By  Horatio  W.  Seymour 

In  Chicago  (Illinois)  "Chronicle"  18S 
Shall  America  Limit  Private  Fortunes?  ..........................  By  W.  H.  Merrell 

In  Boston  (Massachusetts)  "Herald"  1S8 
American  Purpose  is  Common  Good  ......  Editorial  Writer  in  New  York  "Tribune"  189 

America  Must  Save  Lives  of  its  Children 

Editorial  Writer  in  Houston  (Texas)  "Chronicle"  189 
America  Extends  Freedom  to  all  Religions 

Editorial  Writer  in  Montgomery  (Alabama)  "Advertiser"  190 
Conquest  for  Pacific  Must  Not  Come 

Editorial  Writer  In  Philadelphia  (Pennsylvania)  "Inquirer"  190 

CONTEMPORARY    THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA—  "The    Press    of    the    Republic    Is    the 

Moulder  of  Public  Opinion  —  the  Leader  and  Educator"  ............................    379 

Must  American  Prosperity  be  Retarded  .........................  By  John  P.  Young 

In  San  Francisco  (California)  "Chronicle"  379 
Are  These  America's  Needs?  —  A  Great  Problem  ..............  By  George  W.  Norton 

In  Portland  (Maine)  "Evening  Express"  379 
Omens  of  the  Fiercest  Conflict  Known  to  History  — 

In  Louisville  (Kentucky)   "Herald"  3*0 
North  and  South  are  United  Forever 

In  Richmond  (Virginia)  "Times-Dispatch"  SSO 
Human  Brotherhood  —  Hands  Across  the  Sea 

In  Charleston  (South  Carolina)  "News  and  Courier"  381 
Man's  Ambition  —  Quest  of  the  North  Pole 

In  Washington   (District  of  Columbia)   "Post"  381 
CONTEMPORARY     THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA—  The    Press    of    the    Republic    Is    the 

Moulder  of  Public  Opinion  —  the  Leader  and  Educator  .............................   575 

CONTEMPORARY    THOUGHT    IN    AMERICA—  "The    Press    of    the    Republic    is    the 

Moulder  of  Public  Opinion,  the  Leader  and  Educator"  .............................   762 

Americanism   calls   for   the   good   in    man.   not    the   bad  —  Editorial    writer    In    the 
"Atlanta    Constitution"  ..........................................................  762 

An  American  view  of  the  future  of  South  Africa  —  Editorial  writer  In   the   "New 
Orleans    Picayune"  ..............................................................   762 

America's  greatest  political  idol  and  his  failure  —  Editorial  writer  in  the  "Indian- 
apolis   Journal"  .................................................................  763 

America  should  lead  world   to   universal   peace  —  Editorial   writer   in    the   Lincoln 
"Commoner"  ....................................................................   763 

World's  upbuilding  is  In   need  of  more   money  —  Editorial  writer  In   the   "Seattle 
Post-Intelligencer"  ..............................................................   764 

Tremendous  power  held  by  one  American  financier  —  Editorial   writer  In    the 

Louis    Globe-Democrat"  ..........................................................   764 

COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  AMERICA—  Series  of  blue-prints  of  summer  landscape  views  ......   569 


<E0ttt*ttia  tuttlf  2En0rautttgH  anii 

COUNTRY  LIFE  IN  AMERICA — Six  Nature  Reproductions 129 

Path  Through  the  Wood — Drawing  by  Daniel  F.  Wentworth 129 

Moonlight — Drawing  by  Daniel  F.   Wentworth 130 

The  Road  Home — Sun  Gravure  by  George  C.  Atwell 131 

The  Old  Mill — Sun  Gravure  by  George  C.  Atwell 13 J 

The  Meadows — Drawing  by  Daniel  F.  Wentworth 133 

The  Brook — Sun  Gravure  by  George  C.  Atwell 134 

DAVID  NOBLE — PATRIOT  OF  PITTSFIELD — He  gave  his  wealth  and  then  his  life  to 

the  cause  of  American  Independence By  Mrs.  Sara  B.  Francis 

Philadelphia,  Pennsylvania  376 

DAWN  OF  THE  NEW  WORLD — First  Permanent  English  Settlement  in  America — 
Foundation  of  the  people  who  in  three  hundred  years  have  stretched  over  domin- 
ions and  millions  across  the  continent  and  whose  influence  permeates  the  earth — 
The  Nations  of  the  World  extend  tribute  on  this  ter-centennlal — With  ten  repro- 
ductions of  rare  engravings  and  paintings Honorable  H.  St.  George  Tucker 

President  of  the  Jamestown  Exposition  209 

ESTATE  OF  A  PROSPEROUS  AMERICAN  IN  1684— "Inventory  of  Lewis  Jones,  lately 
deceased,  of  goods  and  chattel  taken  by  us  whose  names  are  now  written  this 

twentieth  day  of  April,  1684" — Transcript  from  original By  Walter  E.  Jones 

of  Waitsfleld,  Vermont,  a  descendant  of  the  legator  366 

ESTATE  OF  A  "WELL-TO-DO"  AMERICAN  IN  1689— Transcribed 

By  M.  Augusta  Holman,  Leominster,  Massachusetts     80 

ESTATE  OF  "A  WELL-TO-DO"  VIRGINIAN  IN  1674— Transcribed  from  the  Original 
by  Dr.  Joseph  Lyon  Miller,  grandson  of  the  Seventh  Generation,  Thomas,  West 
Virginia 573 

EX  LIBRIS — American  adaptation  of  the  old  art  of  Book  Heraldry  that  originated 
within  half  a  century  of  the  invention  of  printing — Reproductions  of  book  plates 
of  William  Penn  of  Pennsylvania  and  Paul  Revere  of  Massachusetts 304 

EXPERIENCES  IN  EARLY  WARS  IN  AMERICA— Life  Story  of  an  Ambitious  Ameri- 
can Youth  who  at  Sixteen  Years  of  Age  was  Fired  with  the  Spirit  of  Patriotism 
and  against  the  Will  of  his  Parents  Marched  to  the  Battle  Line  in  Defense  of  His 
Country — Original  Journal  of  Peter  Pond,  Born  in  1740 — Transcribed 

By  Mrs.  Nathan  Gillette  Pond,  an  Eminent  Genealogist     89 

EXPERIENCES  OF  AN  AMERICAN  EDUCATOR  IN  FIRST  YEARS  OF  THE  REPUB- 
LIC— Manuscript  of  James  Morris,  born  in  1752,  in  which  he  tells  of  being  charged 
with  violation  of  Christian  peace  and  placed  on  trial  for  conducting  a  private 
school  and  instructing  young  women  in  higher  education — Personal  narrative  of 
an  early  lecturer  on  public  morals — Original  manuscript  in  possession  of  Mrs. 
Washington  Choate,  great-granddaughter  of  James  Morris — Sketches  by  Florence 
E.  D.  Muzzy 717 

FACSIMILE  OF  LETTER  WRITTEN  BY  ROBERT  FULTON  in  which  he  confided  his 
doubts  in  the  problem  of  steam  navigation — Original  in  the  archives  of  Lenox 
Library,  in  New  York 433 

FAIR,  COOLING  SPRAY,  O  LOVELY  SEA! By  Dr.  Frederick  H.  Williams  568 

FATHER  OF  BIBLICAL  CULTURE  IN  AMERICA — Reminiscences  of  the  First  Ameri- 
can Blblicist  who  found  Religious  Thought  under  Dominion  of  Iron-Bound  Meta- 
physics and  Disenthralled  it  from  its  Slavery — First  Contributions  to  Biblical 
Literature  and  First  School  for  Education  to  Ministry — Life  of  Moses  Stuart — 
Born  1780 By  John  Gaylord  Davenport,  D.D.  545 

FIRST  AMERICAN'S  GREETING  TO  THE  WHITE  MAN— Sculpture 

By  Herman  Atkins  McNeil,  National  Society  of  Sculpture  144 

FIRST  CHAMPION  OF  UNIVERSAL  PEACE — Memories  and  Anecdotes  of  Elihu  Burritt, 
an  American  Farmer-lad  who  Rose  from  a  Blacksmith  Forge  and  Through  Self- 
Instruction  Acquired  the  Tongues  of  Fifty  Nations — He  Appealed  to  Christendom 
to  Cease  Warfare  and  Became  Honored  by  the  Master  Minds  of  the  Old  World — 
With  Prophecy  of  Victor  Hugo  and  Last  Portrait  of  Elihu  Burritt 
By  Hon.  David  Nelson  Camp,  M.A.,  Department  of  Education  at  Washington  in  1867  151 

FIRST  COLLECTION  OF  STEAMBOAT  PAINTINGS  IN  THE  WORLD— Blue-print 
reproductions  of  James  Bard's  Famous  Canvasses  of  Early  American  Marine  Archi- 
tecture    413 


(ErattBrrtptH    frnm    Anmttt    inriim*tttB 

FIRST  FORTUNES  IN  AMERICAN  REPUBLIC— Letters  of  a  Banker  who  helped  to 
Establish  the  Credit  of  American  Business  Houses  In  the  European  Market — 
Great  Commercial  Ventures  In  the  Tropics — Trading  Voyages  to  China — Opening 
Traffic  on  the  St.  Lawrence  River  and  Lake  Ontario — Founding  a  Fortune  in 
America  one  hundred  years  ago — Correspondence  of  David  Parish  and  Joseph 

Rosseel By  Frank  R.  Rosseel.  Buffalo.  New  York 

Grandson  of  Joseph  Rosseel.  the  Financial  Agent  of  the  Parish  Estate  745 

FIRST  NEWS  OF  AN  AMERICAN  VICTORY— This  is  an  account  of  the  Joy  that 
reigned  throughout  America  on  the  news  of  victory,  told  by  an  eye-witness.  Stan- 
ton  Sholes,  who  was  born  March  14.  1772,  married  Abigail  Avery  on  March  14.  1793. 
and  died  February  7,  1865,  at  Columbus,  Ohio,  in  his  ninety-third  year — Accurate 
transcript  from  Original  Manuscript — Contributed  by 

Sarah  Elizabeth  Sholes  Nlghman,  great-granddaughter  of  the  narrator 

Bayonne,  New  Jersey  563 

FIRST  PAPER  MONEY  IN  AMERICA  IN  1690 — Actual  facsimile  of  the  First  Paper 
Money  in  America,  which  eventually  led  to  the  American  Banking  System — First 
authorized  to  meet  the  necessities  of  the  Colonial  Treasuries  to  wage  war,  and 
soon  became  generally  established  In  relieving  commercial  and  financial  embar- 
rassment  By  Henry  Russell  Drowne. 

Of  the  American  Numismatic  and  Archaeological  Society  693 

FIRST  PATENT  IN  AMERICA — Granted  in  1646  to  the  Inventor  of  "an  engine  of  mills 
to  go  by  water"  and  recorded  as  "Jenkes  Mopolye". ..  .By  Kmellne  Jenks  Crampton 

Lineal  Descendant  of  the  Patentee  334 

FIRST  PHYSICIANS  IN  AMERICA — Customs  and  practices  of  early  Doctors  as 
revealed  In  correspondence  of  John  Wlnthrop,  born  in  1606 — Dutch,  Quakers  and 
Puritans  consulted  him  regarding  their  physical  ills — The  New  World  is  full  of  his 
praises — Beginning  of  American  medicine — With  eleven  transcripts  of  ancient  let- 
ters, and  reproduction  of  oil  portrait  of  John  Wlnthrop 

By  Walter  R.  Stelner,  M.A.,  M.D.  241 

FIRST  PUBLIC  SCHOOLS  IN  NEW  YORK— Rare  old  print  made  in  1840— The  Lan- 
caster Monitorial  School,  an  educational  idea  Imported  from  England 718 

FIRST  SILHOUETTISTS  IN  AMERICA — Earliest  extant  type  of  Pictoriology — Brown's 
notable  collection  of  portraits  of  distinguished  Americans — With  reproductions 
from  Original  Silhouettes  of  Daniel  Webster  of  Massachusetts,  Andrew  Jackson 
of  South  Carolina..  John  Randolph  of  Virginia,  Bishop  William  White  of  Pennsyl- 
vania   By  Howard  Marshall  367 

FOUR  HUNDRED  YEARS  OF  THE  PANAMA  CANAL— First  White  Man  to  Cross  the 
Isthmus  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific — Futile  attempts  to  find  a  Natural  Water- 
way Connecting  the  two  Great  Oceans — First  Plans  ever  made  to  sever  the  Ameri- 
cas with  an  artificial  strait  by  Cortez  In  1529 — Investigations  by  Dr.  Willis 
Fletcher  Johnson,  of  the  "New  York  Tribune" — Resume  from  his  researches 
recently  presented  after  more  than  twenty-five  years'  study  of  South  American 
affairs  and  Isthmian  Canal  Transit  in  his  book  "Four  Hundred  Years  of  Panama." 
published  by  Henry  Holt  and  Company  of  New  York 633 

GREAT  HEART  OF  THE  AMERICAN  DOMINION— Narrative  of  Journey  In  the  wilder- 
ness of  the  Mississippi  Valley  In  17S9-1790 — The  experiences  in  the  Vast  Region 
that  is  gaining  control  of  the  American  nation  and  now  contains  twenty-two  of  the 
forty-five  United  States — Travel  In  early  days  of  American  Republic — With  repro- 
ductions and  prints By  Major  Samuel  S.  Forman  337 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION — Coat-of-arms  of  Mary  Ball,  the  Mother  of  the  First 
President  of  the  First  Republic  in  the  World — Emblazoned  In  gold,  silver  and 
colors  by Charles  L.  N.  Camp 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION— Coat-of-arms  in  use  by  the  Hooker  Family  in  America 
as  descendants  of  Thomas  Hooker,  emigrant  in  1633,  and  author  of  the  First 
Written  Constitution  in  the  World,  creating  a  government — Emblazoned  In  six 
colors  by Charles  L.  N.  Camp 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION — Coat-of-arms  of  Captain  John  Smith,  of  the  first  perma- 
nent English  settlement  In  America — The  three  Turks'  heads  were  conferred  upon 
him  by  Siglsmundus  Bathor,  Duke  of  Transylvania,  for  bravery  In  the  Wars  of 
Hungary — Emblazoned  In  six  colors By  Charles  L.  N.  Camp 

HERALDIC  ILLUMINATION — Coat-of-arms  of  the  Fulton  Family  In  America— Illumi- 
nated especially  as  a  Memorial  to  Robert  Fulton,  the  promoter  of  steam  naviga- 
tion, on  this  Centenary  of  his  achievement — Emblazoned  In  six  colors 

By  Charles  L.  N.  Camp 


until  Engratnttga  att& 

HERE  LET  ME  DWELL — A  Poem By  Frederic  E.  Snow,  B.D.  145 

HERITAGE  OF  TEARS — Poem By  Howard  Arnold  Walter  508 

HIEROGLYPHIC  NARRATIVE  OF  THE  CAREER  OF  GENERAL  ROBERT  PATTER- 
SON— Reproduction  from  original  made  by  his  son,  Colonel  William  Houston  Pat- 
terson, in  imitation  of  the  character  writing  of  the  American  aborigines 660 

HOME  LIFE  IN  OLD  AMERICA — Eight  reproductions  of  Ancient  Estates   in  photo- 
tone  325 

IN  HONOR  OF  A  VALIANT  ADVENTURER — Loving  lines  inscribed  to  gallant  John 
Smith  by  Compeers — Ter-centenary  statue  to  be  unveiled  in  September  on  the  scene 
of  the  American  explorations By  William  Couper,  New  York  City  225 

IMMUTABILITY — An  Illustrated  Poem By  Frank  Burnham  Bagley  175 

IN  THE  FIRST  HOMES  OF  AMERICA— With  four  exhibitions   of   antique   furniture 

By  Clara  Emerson  Bickford  328 

IN  THE  FIRST  HOMES  IN  AMERICA— With  reproductions  of  antique  furniture 

By  Clara  Emerson  Bickford  494 

I  WHO  HAVE  DRUNK  THE  WATER  BITTER  SWEET— A  Sonnet.. By  Horace  Holley  166 

LAST  LEAF— EDITORIAL  COMMENT 

LETTERS  OF  A  SERGEANT  IN  WAR  OF  1812— Romance  of  John  Burt,  First  Battalion 
Artillery,  and  Persis  Meacham — With  Transcripts  from  Correspondence  and  two 
Ancient  Silhouettes By  William  Burt  Harlow,  Ph.D.,  Now  In  the  Bermudas  147 

LETTERS  OF  EARLY  AMERICAN  WARRIORS — Correspondence  of  the  first  citizens 
of  the  Nation,  revealing  their  Personalities  and  Private  Lives — A  Romance  of  the 
North  and  South  more  than  a  century  ago — Intimate  friendships  of  distinguished 
Americans — Social  relations  of  the  families  of  Officers  in  the  early  wars — Cut  of 
Powder  Horn  presented  to  General  Jackson  in  1782  for  his  Bravery  In  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution — From  original  leters  now  in  possession  of  Charles  Eben  Jackson, 
a  descendant  of  General  Michael  Jackson By  Mabel  Cassine  Holman  697 

LIFE  ON  AN  AMERICAN  TRADING  VESSEL— Adventures  on  the  High  Seas  In  the 
First  Days  of  American  Commerce  when  Privateering  was  a  Prosperous  Occupa- 
tion and  Daring  Men  Chose  the  Hazards  of  Seamanship — Journal  of  Samuel  Hoyt, 
an  Early  American  Sea  Captain,  Born  in  1744 — Transcribed  by  Julius  Walter  Pease  485 

LIFE  ON  GREAT  AMERICAN  PRAIRIES  A  GENERATION  AGO— Two  prints  from  "In 

the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi" By  Wm.  H.  Milburn  336 

LIFE  STORIES  OF  GALLANT  AMERICANS— John   Thomas— Colonel   of  Spartanburg 

and  Jane  Thomas'  Famous  Ride By  Mrs.  Robert  J.  Herndon  373 

LIFE    STORIES    OF    GALLANT    AMERICANS 73 

John  Moor — The  Knight  of  Derryfield — Contributed. By  Mrs.  Lina  Moore  McKenney 

Madison,  Maine     73 
James  Caldwell — Hero  of  Elizabethtown — Contributed. By  Mrs.  Hiram  Price  Dillon 

Topeka,  Kansas     76 

LIFE  STORIES  OF  GALLANT  AMERICANS — The  Lanes— Cavaliers  of  the  South— In 

the  Wars  of  Early  America... By  Mrs.  Louisa  Kendall  Rogers,  Barnesville,  Georgia  565 

MAP  OF  NEW  YORK  A  CENTURY  AGO  when  first  successful  steamboat  in  the  world, 
the  "Clermont,"  sailed  up  the  Hudson  river — The  city  then  had  about  83,000 
inhabitants  and  was  concentrated  below  Spruce  Street — It  was  then  planned  to 
preserve  a  system  of  boulevards  along  the  water-front  and  construct  harbors 
rather  than  piers  for  shipping  purposes — Modern  commerce  made  this  aestheticism 
impractical  and  the  rise  of  steam  navigation  sacrificed  municipal  art  to  the  greater 
demand  of  public  utility 416 

MARRIAGE  CONTRACT  IN  AMERICA  IN  1675 — Transcribed  from  original 

By  Mary  R.  Woodruff  320 

MEMOIRS  OF  A  SOUTHERN  CONGRESSMAN — Ranging  the  Borderlands  with  Daniel 
Boone — Encounters  with  the  Cherokees  In  Command  of  the  Light  Dragoons — 
Electioneering  In  American  Politics  a  Hundred  Years  Ago — On  the  Floor  of  Con- 
gress during  the  Monroe  Administration — Old  Manuscript  left .  By  Hon.  Felix  Walker 

Born  in  Virginia  in  1753     49 

MODERN  AMERICAN  SCULPTURE — The  "Aztecs" By  Louis  A.  Gudebrod 

Member  of  the  National  Sculpture  Society  332 

MUSIC  IN  AMERICA — The  Struggle*  of  the  First  Composers  against  Public  Condem- 
nation . .  By  Clara  Emerson  178 


from    Attmnt    iorum^nta 

NATURE'S   GRANDEUR   IN   AMERICA— The   Monarch   Niagara— Four   Reproductions 

from    Nature    Illustrations 741 

OATH  OF  ALLEGIANCE  TO  KINO  GEORGE  III— Sworn  to  by  Colonel  Henry  Ludlng- 
ton  on  March  12.  1768,  in  Dutches*  County  in  the  Province  of  New  York,  before 
being  allowed  to  take  office  as  Sub-Sheriff — Accurate  Transcript SOI 

OBSERVATIONS  OF  AN  EARLY  AMERICAN  CAPITALIST— "HE  WAS  BORN  A 
KING" — An  Early  Journey  In  the  Mississippi  Valley — Accurate  Transcript  from 
Journal  of  General  Robert  Patterson,  born  in  1792 — An  intimate  friend  of  all  the 
Presidents  from  Jefferson  to  Garfleld,  and  one  of  the  greatest  merchant-magnates 
of  his  generation — Eminent  Americans  and  Europeans  gathered  at  his  mansion  in 
Philadelphia — Original  diary  in  possession  of  his  granddaughter,  Mrs.  Lindsay 
Patterson,  of  Winston-Salem,  North  Carolina 653 

ODD  TO  AMERICA By  Donald  Lines  Jacobus  297 

OLD  PRINT  OF  AN  INFANT  SCHOOL  IN  NEW  YORK  IN  1825 718 

ONE  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  FOUNDING  OF  THE  "SALMAGUNDI" 
IN  1807 — Reproduction  from  an  Old  Engraving  of  Washington  Irving,  after  a 
painting  by  Alonzo  Chappel — Likeness  from  a  daguerreotype  in  possession  of  the 
family  of  the  distinguished  litterateur 615 

ONE  OF  THE  FIRST  INSTANCES  OF  BOYCOTT  IN  AMERICA— Transcript  from  Orig- 
inal Document By  Ella  S.  Duncan,  Keokuk,  Iowa  88 

ON  THE  HILLTOPS By  Josephine  Canning  568 

OPPORTUNITIES  IN  THE  NORTHERN  BORDERLAND By  Honorable  E.  Y.  Sarles 

Governor  of  North  Dakota  236 

PAINTING  IN  AMERICA— The  First  Artists  and  Their  Experiences  on   the  Western 

Continent — With  three  Reproductions  from  Rare  Paintings By  Stuart  Copley  169 

PAINTING  OF  ROBERT  FULTON— By  his  intimate  friend  and  fellow-artist,  Benjamin 
West — Original  now  In  the  possession  of  Fulton's  grandson,  Robert  Fulton  Ludlow, 
of  Claverack,  New  York — Centenary  reproduction  In  sepia-tone  in  "The  Journal  of 
American  History"  by  permission  of  Fulton  family 392 

PERSONAL  LETTERS  OF  PIONEER  AMERICANS — Glimpses  Into  Time-stained  and 
almost  indecipherable  Correspondence  Revealing  the  Strong  Character,  Conscien- 
tious Lives,  Domestic  Customs,  Business  Integrity  and  Courageous  Hardihood  of 
First  Citizens  of  the  Republic — Contributed  by Miss  C.  C.  Thacher  559 

PERSONAL  LETTERS  OF  PIONEER  AMERICANS — Glimpses   Into   Time-stained  and 
almost  Indecipherable  Correspondence  Revealing  the  Strong  Character,  Conscien- 
tious Lives,  Business  Integrity  and  Hardihood  of  the  First  Citizens  of  the  Republic     SI 
Letter  Sent  by  Post-boy  from  William  Prentlss,  during  the  Plague  in  Philadel- 
phia,  to   Dr.   Jeremiah   Barker,   Fallmouth,   Casco   Bay,   Massachusetts,   In    1793 — 

Transcribed  from  Original By  Abble  F.  Carpenter,  Portland,  Maine     61 

Letter  Written   to   Reverend   Chandler   Robblns   of   Plymouth,   Massachusetts,   by 
Reverend  Little  In  Birmingham,  England,  Discussing  the  Moral  Problems  in  1797 — 

Transcribed  from  Original By  Mrs.  Lydla  J.  Knowles,  Bangor,  Maine     62 

Letter   Sent   by  George   Washington,   in    1797,   to   Honorable   Oliver   Ellsworth,   a 
Framer  of  the  Constitution,  Minister  to  France,  and  Chief  Justice  of  the  United 

States — Transcribed  from  Original By  Adaline  B.  Ellsworth  Roberts 

Ollana,  Illinois     61 

PHINEAS  SLAYTON — The  Venerable  Volunteer — He  Fought  In  the  American  Revolu- 
tion and  had  to  be  "Coaxed  to  go  home"  in  the  War  of  1812 — Anecdote  contributed 

By  Carrie  J.  Doane  of  Arlington,  Iowa  378 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  DEATH  IN  EARLY  AMERICA— Manuscript  by  the  Reverend  Joseph 
Webb,  Born  in  1666,  and  an  Intellectual  and  Moral  Leader  of  His  Times — Occa- 
sioned by  the  Demise  of  Major  Nathan  Gold,  In  1693,  who  was  Foremost  in  Politi- 
cal, Military  and  Ecclesiastical  Affairs— Original  Sermon  Transcribed 

By  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Hubbell  Schenck,  Washington,  District  of  Columbia     65 

PHOTOGRAPHIC  REPRODUCTION  OF  THE  TITLE-PAGE  OF  FAMOUS  OLD 
"BISHOP'S  BIBLE" — Published  In  1584,  and  still  in  possession  of  the  Seymour 
Family  In  America — A  survival  of  the  earliest  book-making 616 

PILOT  OF  FIRST  WHITE  MEN  TO  CROSS  THE  AMERICAN  CONTINENT— Identifica- 
tion of  the  Indian  Girl  who  Led  the  Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition  Over  the  Rocky 
Mountains  In  their  Unparalleled  Journey  into  the  Mysteries  of  the  Western  World 
— Recognition  of  Sacajawea  as  the  Woman  who  Guided  the  Explorers  to  the  New 
Golden  Empire — With  nine  reproductions  from  sculpture  and  rare  prints 

By  Grace  Raymond  Hebard,  Ph.D.,  of  the  University  of  Wyoming  467 


TV- 


<E0nt?tti0  rotilf  Ettgrautnga  anb 

PIONEER  LIFE  ON  AMERICAN  FRONTIER— Experiences  of  a  Federal  Justice  on  the 
Trail  of  the  Prairie  Schooners — Carrying  the  Law  Into  the  Western  Wilderness — 
Treaties  with  the  Indians  and  the  Establishment  of  Courts  in  a  New  Land  of  Gold 
and  silver — The  Birth  of  the  Rich  West — Several  Illustrations  bearing  the  lines 
"Old  Prints  In  Possession  of  Judge  Munson"  should  be  credited  to  Hon.  William 
Henry  Milburn's  work  "In  the  Valley  of  the  Mississippi."  Judge  Munson  wishes 
it  fully  understood  that  these  illustrations  are  from  Mr.  Milburn's  original  work,  a 
copy  of  which  was  presented  to  a  member  of  his  family  by  the  author.  The  work 
la  published  by  the  N.  D.  Thompson  Publishing  Company  of  New  York  and  St. 
Louis  and  should  be  read  by  all  who  are  interested  in  American  pioneer  life. 

Judge  Lyman  E.  Munson 
United  States  District  Court  of  Montana  in  1865     97 

PLEA  FOR  PROTECTION  FROM  THE  ENEMY — Accurate  Transcript  from  Original 
letter  written  by  Colonel  Henry  Ludington  after  he  had  espoused  the  cause  of 
American  Independence  and  his  oaths  to  the  King 503 

PLEDGE  OF  THE  PATRIOTS  TO  FREE  AMERICA — Signed  by  Americans  In  1776 — 
Transcript  from  Original  in  Possession  of  the  Misses  Patterson  of  Patterson, 
New  York — Colonel  Henry  Ludington  Renounced  his  former  oaths  and  signed  this 
document  at  the  beginning  of  the  American  Revolution 603 

PRIVATE  LETTER  WRITTEN  BY  GEORGE  WASHINGTON,  Father  of  the  American 

Republic,  to  an  Intimate  friend  in  which  ho  warns  against  impending  dangers ...  Cover 

PROGENY  OF  SAXON  KINGS  IN  AMERICA— Unbroken  Line  of  Descent  from  Egbert, 
First  King  of  all  England — 800-838,  to  William  Tracy  of  Hayles  Abbey  who  came 
to  America  in  1620 — Royal  Lineage  Sustained  through  Thomas  Tracy  of  Connecti- 
cut, 1636 — Illustrated  with  eighteen  Rare  Reproductions  from  Ancient  Documents 

Dwight  Tracy,  M.D.,  D.D.S.  617 

PROSPERITY — Pediment  for  Kentucky  State  Capitol.. By  Charles  H.  Nlehaus,  Sculptor  599 

PUBLIC  CARE  OF  THE  POOR  IN  EARLY  AMERICA— Accurate  transcript  from  rec- 
ords of  Watertown.  Massachusetts By  M.  Augusta  Holman 

Leominster,   Massachusetts  233 

QUAINT  WILL  OF  A  NEGRO  SLAVE  IN  1773— Transcribed  from  Original 

By  Eliza  Comstock     95 

REMINISCENCES  OF  MOSES  STUART— Born  In  1780— By  his  daughter 

Mrs.  Sarah  Robbins,  Newton  Highlands,  Massachusetts  557 

RESOURCES  OF  THE  GREAT  NORTHWEST By  Honorable  Joseph  K.  Toole 

Governor  of  Montana  234 

ROBERT  FULTON  AS  AN  ARTIST — Reproduction  in  sepia-tone  of  his  painting  of  Joel 
Barlow,  the  poet  and  diplomat,  who  was  Fulton's  most  intimate  friend  when  the 
inventor  proposed  to  Napoleon  the  power  of  steam  as  a  destroyer  of  the  navies  of 
the  world  but  met  with  rebuff — Original  Is  now  in  possession  of  the  Barlow  family 
In  New  York  and  a  replica  Is  owned  by  Fulton's  grandson,  Robert  Fulton  Ludlow 
of  Claverack,  New  York 401 

SCULPTURE  IN  AMERICA — A  Symposium  of  the  Finest  Pieces  of  Sculpture  erected 

during  the  year  of  1907 697 

SCULPTURE   IN  AMERICA— The   First   Sculptors   and   Their   Hardships    in    the    New 

World — With  two  Reproductions  from  Early  Sculpture By  Bickford  Cooper  163 

SECRET  SERVICE  OF  AMERICAN  REVOLUTION— Incidents  in  which  Imminent  De- 
feat was  turned  to  Glorious  Victory — Repressing  the  Ravagers  of  Property  on  the 
Outskirts  of  the  Army — Anecdotes  of  Colonel  Henry  Ludington,  Born  1739,  and  the 
Heroism  of  his  Daughters  who  Saved  him  from  Capture  and  Execution — Related 
by Louis  S.  Patrick  497 

SONNET — "Oh  Ye  That  Keep  the  Rule  of  Modern  Town" By  Horace  Holley  366 

SONNET By    Horace    Holley  464 

STRUGGLES  OF  THE  FIRST  CITIZENS  IN  AMERICA— True  Record  from  the  time  of 
departure  from  England  In  1606,  to  the  arrival  in  Virginia  in  1607  and  the  hazard- 
ous beginnings  of  a  World  Power — From  the  Journal  of  William  Simons,  "doc- 
tour  of  divlnltle" 206 

TAVERN  AND  POST  ROAD — With  three  illustrations By  Norman  Talcott  321 


frnm    Anrtrtit 


THE  ACADEMY  OF  AMERICAN  IMMORTALS—  The  Hall  of  Fame  ....................    135 

Bronze  Medallion  of  George  Washington.  First  President  of  United  State*  ........   IS! 

Bronse  Medallion  of  Abraham  Lincoln  —  First  Great  American  Liberator  ...........   1ST 

Bronie  Medallion  of  Daniel  Webster,  First  Great  American  Statesman  ............    138 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  First  Great  American  Diplomat  ..........  lit 

THE  ACADEMY  OF  AMERICAN  IMMORTALS—  The  Hall  of  Fame  ....................   101 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  —  American  Novelist  ....................   SOS 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Washington  Irving  —  An  American  Litterateur  ...............  SOS 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  —  American  Philosopher  ...............   SOS 

Bronze  Medallion  of  Samuel  Flnley  Breese  Morse—  American  Inventor  ............  SOS 

THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  MUST  LEAD  VAN  OF  PROGRESS—  Editorial  writer  in  the 

"Denver    Republican"  ............................................................   676 

THE  AMERICAN  SPIRIT  IN  THE  MISSISSIPPI  VALLEY  .....  By  Hon.  Joseph  W.  Folk 

Governor  of  Missouri  439 

THE  ANNIVERSARY  OF  AMERICAN  COMMERCE  —  Ter-Centenary  of  the  building 
of  the  "Virginia,"  the  First  Ship  Constructed  on  the  Western  Continent  —  Centen- 
nial of  the  "Clermont,"  First  Steamboat  in  the  World  —  The  Rise  of  the  American 
Merchant  Marine  and  the  Development  of  a  Century  of  Navigation  since  Robert 
Fulton  —  Illustrated  with  many  rare  blue-prints  and  engravings 

By  C.  Seymour  Bullock  395 

THE  CENTENARY  OF  AN  AMERICAN  POET—  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow—  Born 
at  Portland,  Maine,  February  27,  1807  —  Died  at  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  March 
24,  1882  —  Four  Sonnets  inscribed  to  His  Memory  and  Centennial  Bas  Relief 

By  Louis  A.  Gudebrod,  National  Society  of  Sculpture     84 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  AMERICAN  FINANCE—  Its  moral  effect  on  American  citi- 
zenship —  Liberty  and  the  mighty  economic  problem  —  The  democracy  of  negotiable 
securities  —  The  Ten  Commandments  in  business  —  By  the  Editor  of  the  "Wall  Street 
Journal"  .........................................................  Sereno  D.  Pratt  687 

THE  FATHER  OF  THE  AMERICAN  NAVY—  JOHN  BARRY—  First  commander  of  the 
first  vessel  to  fight  under  the  American  Flag  —  The  "Lexington,"  named  after  the 
first  battle  in  the  American  Revolution,  captured  the  first  British  ship  In  the  strug- 
gle for  Independence  —  The  story  of  Commodore  John  Barry,  Born  In  1745 

By  Richard  M.  Rellly,  Member  of  the  Pennsylvania  Bar  689 

THE  FIRST  AMERICAN  NOVELIST—  Experiences  of  the  first  writer  in  the  New  World 
to  make  literature  .  his  sole  pursuit  and  to   earn   a  livelihood   by   Pen  —  The  first 
American  Fiction  to  create  a  Literary  market  was  "Wieland,"  the  tale  of  mys- 
tery —  Career  of  Charles  Brockden  Brown  —  By  permission  of  the  author  from  his 
Literary  History  of  Philadelphia  ..............  By  Ellis  Paxson  Oberholtzer,  Ph.D., 

University  of  Pennsylvania  236 

THE  FIRST  AMERICAN  SOLDIERS  —  Call  "To  Arms"  began  with  Arrival  of  First 
White  Men  in  the  New  World  —  Footmen  with  Musket  and  Pike  —  Horsemen  with 
Pistol  and  Carbine  —  Military  Force  Blazed  Path  for  Civilization  —  Heroic  "Trained 
Bands"  and  the  Organization  of  the  Continental  Army..  .By  Hon.  Spencer  P.  Mead 

Of  the  New  York  Bar  ISO 

THE  FIRST  ROMANCE  IN  AMERICA—  The  story  of  the  heroism  and  fortitude  of  Poca- 
hontas  —  Her  marriage  to  John  Rolfe,  the  first  union  of  the  Western  Continent  and 
the  Eastern  Hemisphere  —  With  six  reproductions  from  rare  engravings  and  paint- 
ings ............................................................................  SSI 

THE  FIRST  STEAMSHIPS  TO  CROSS  THE  OCEAN—  Recollections  of  men  who  partici- 
pated in  first  futile  attempts  to  Interest  capital  in  the  Possibilities  of  Communica- 
tion between  the  Continents  by  Steam  —  Opening  the  Gateways  of  the  World  —  His- 
toric Voyages  —  Beginning  of  Commerce  —  With  transcript  of  log  of  the  Savannah 
and  twenty-nine  rare  prints  of  the  development  of  steam  navigation 

By  C  Seymour  Bullock  SCI 

THE  GREETING  TO  THE  NATIONS  —  AMERICA'S  BIRTHDAY—  1607—  1907—  Words 
of  Wisdom  spoken  by  the  Man  who  has  been  chosen  by  the  People  of  our  United 
States  of  America  as  their  Leader  —  Excerpt  from  the  Speech  of  the  President  at 
the  opening  of  the  Jamestown  Exposition  —  Autograph  copy  kindly  presented  to 
"The  Journal  of  American  History"  by  ........................  Theodore  Roosevelt  581 

THE    HISTORIAN—  Poem  .......................................  By    Herbert    Hughes  667 

THE  HOME  OF  MY  CHILDHOOD  —  Illustrated  poem  ..............  By  Anna  J.  Granniss  S8t 

THE  LAST  LEAF—  Editorial  Comment  .......................................  882,  678.  766 


®ranarrtpi0    from    Attmnt    Snrum^nta 

THE  MESSAGE  TO  THE  AMERICANS — Poem By  Judge  Daniel  J.  Donahoe  393 

THE  "MIRACLE"  OF  THE  FIRST  STEAMBOAT — Tragedy  of  an  American  Genius  who 
was  Publicly  Ridiculed  as  a  "Fanatic"  for  Proposing:  the  Propulsion  of  Vessels  by 
Steam  against  Wind  and  Tide — The  Idea  was  Pronounced  "Impracticable"  and  to 
Risk  Life  In  Its  Undertaking:  "Foolhardy" — Eleven  Reproductions  from  Rare 
Prints By  Seymour  Bullock  33 

THE  MILLENIUM  OF  AMERICAN  CITIZENSHIP By  Hon.  Curtis  Guild,  Jr. 

Governor  of  Massachusetts  436 

THE  NOBLER  RACE — Poem By  Frank  P.  Foster,  Jr.  484 

"THE  PASSING  OF  THE  DAY  OF  GREED" — Symbolic  Photograph  by  John  Gudebrod, 
of  New  York — Taken  In  the  Early  Evening  at  Castle  Craig  on  the  Peaks  of 

Meriden 

THE  RISE  OF  A  NEW  SURGICAL  SCIENCE — Evolution  of  a  Personal  Adornment  Into 
the  Self-Protection  of  the  Human  Race — Uplift  of  a  Menial  Trade  to  a  Great 
American  Profession  which  now  bears  the  "Hall  Mark"  of  Culture  and  has  become 
a  part  of  the  American  Educational  System — The  birth  of  Dental  surgery 

By  Dr.  James  McManus, 
Author  of  a  Treatise  on  "History  of  Anaesthesia," 

and  a  Dean  of  American  Dentistry  675 
THE  RISE  OF  THE  BOUNTEOUS  SOUTH — Excerpt  from  speech  by 

Honorable  Claude  A,  Swanson,  Governor  of  Virginia  438 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  THE  CONTROL  OF  AMERICA — THE  GREAT  STORY  OF  THE 
CARIBBEAN  SEA — Ambition  of  the  European  Powers  to  add  the  Western  Conti- 
nent to  their  Empires — America's  fate  in  the  balance  during  the  Great  Battles  on 
the  Spanish  Main — Daring  adventures  of  the  Great  Admirals  of  the  Caribbean  Sea — 
Researches  by  Franklin  Russell  Hart,  Member  of  many  learned  societies  and 
Fellow  of  the  Royal  Geographical  Society  of  Great  Britain — Copyright  assigned 
to  the  author 640 

TO  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE — THE  VOICE  OF  THE  STATES — Expressed  in  Per- 
sonal Messages  from  the  Governors  to  "The  Journal  of  American  History" 

"America's  Greatest  Need  Is  Civic  Virtue" Honorable  George  E.  Chamberlain 

Governor  of  Oregon     17 
"Higher  Standards  of  Public  Service".  .Hon.  George  R.  Carter,  Governor  of  Hawaii     18 

"Future  Mastery  of  the  Pacific  Ocean" Hon.  George  C.  Pardee 

Governor  of  California     21 
"An  Inspiration  for  Worthy  Work". .  .Hon.  Fred  M.  Warner,  Governor  of  Michigan     23 

"Strong,  New  Blood  Elevates  Citizenship" Hon.  Bryant  B.  Brooks 

Governor  of  Wyoming     24 

"The  Native  Honesty  of  the  Nation" Hon.  John  C.  Cutler,  Governor  of  Utah     25 

"American  In  Spirit  and  in  Aspiration".  .Hon.  Andrew  L.  Harris,  Governor  of  Ohio     26 
"Wholesome  Immigration  Is  a  Builder". Hon.  J.  O.  Davidson,  Governor  of  Wisconsin     27 

"Commercialism  Must  Not  Dominate  America" Hon.  Joseph  M.  Terrell 

Governor  of  Georgia     29 
"The  Spirit  of  Patriotism  Still  Lives" Hon.  Wm.  T.  Cobb,  Governor  of  Maine     81 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  GERMAN-AMERICAN  SOLDIER— General  Franz  Sigel— For 

Riverside  Drive,  New  York  City By  Karl  Bitter,  Sculptor  601 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  GREAT  AMERICAN  MATERIALIST — Colonel  John  A.  Roeb- 
ling,  First  Engineer  of  Brooklyn  Bridge — Builder  of  the  Great  Span  across  Niagara 
Falls — For  erection  at  Trenton,  New  Jersey By  William  Couper,  Sculptor  600 

TO   THE    MEMORY   OF   AMERICAN   SACRIFICE— Erected   at    the    old   Andersonville 

Prison  Grounds,  In  Georgia By  Bela  Lyon  Pratt,  Sculptor  603 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  AN  AMERICAN  WARRIOR — General  George  Brinton  McClellan 

Erected  at  Washington,  District  of  Columbia.  .By  Frederick  MacMonnies,  Sculptor  606 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  ROUGH  RIDER  WITH  ROOSEVELT  AT  SANTIAGO— Cap- 
tain "Buckey"  O'Neill,  killed  In  battle — Erected  at  Prescott,  Arizona 

By  Solon  H.  Borglum,  Sculptor  611 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  A  SOUTHERN  WARRIOR — General  John  B.  Gordon — Erected 

at  State  Capitol  Grounds  at  Atlanta,  Georgia By  Solon  H.  Borglum,  Sculptor  609 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SAILOR — For  the  monument  to  Soldiers  and 

Sailors  at  Webster,  Massachusetts By  Finn  H.  Frolich,  Sculptor  605 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  AMERICAN  SOLDIER— For  the  monument  to  Soldiers  and 

Sailors  at  Webster,  Massachusetts By  Finn  H.  Frolich,  Sculptor  604 


tottlf 


TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  DISPATCH  RIDER  OF  THE  WAR  FOR  AMERICAN 
INDEPENDENCE  —  Erected  at  Orange,  New  Jersey 

By  Frank  Edwin  Elwell,  Sculptor  C07 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  FIRST  AMERICANS  —  Statue  of  the  Indian  Chief.  Mahaska 
Now  being  exhibited  in  the  Salon  at  Paris  —  To  be  erected  at  Oskaloosa,  Iowa 

By  S.  E.  Fry,  Sculptor  612 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  FIRST  FALLEN  IN  THE  SPANISH-AMERICAN  WAR— 
Ensign  Worth  Bagley,  U.  S.  N.,  the  only  Naval  Officer  killed  during  that  war  — 
Erected  in  Capitol  Square,  Raleigh,  North  Carolina  ......  By  F.  H.  Packer,  Sculptor  608 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  HEART  OF  THE  SOUTH  —  An  Allegorical  Figure  bearing 
a  Palm  of  Peace  and  Branch  of  Laurel  covering  the  Sword,  an  Emblem  of  Glory 
For  erection  at  Houston,  Texas  ........................  By  Louis  Amatels,  Sculptor  697 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  MARTYRED  PRESIDENT—  WILLIAM  McKINLEY— 
Erected  in  bronze  in  front  of  the  National  Memorial  at  Canton,  Ohio 

By  Charles  H.  Nlehaus.  Sculptor  610 

TO  THE  MEMORY  OF  THE  TEXAS  RANGERS—  Erected  at  the  State  House  In  Austin, 

Texas  ...............................................  By  Pompeo  Copplni,  Sculptor  602 

TRADE  OF  A  MULATTO  BOY  IN  1766  —  Accurate  Transcript  from  Original  Document 

in  Possession  of  ...........................  Mary  R.  Woodruff,  Orange,  Connecticut  440 

TRAVEL  IN  AMERICA  —  Excerpt   by   Roland  D.   Grant,   an  American   traveler  —  With 

four  nature  illustrations  in  photo-tone  ..........................................   292 

TRIALS  IN  EARLY  JUSTICE  COURTS  IN  AMERICA  —  Court  record  of  Justice  Jabez 
Brainerd,  1773-1776  —  Serious  crimes  included  "Profane  cursing  and  swalrlng"  — 
The  "Gilty"  were  sentenced  to  stock  and  whipping-post  —  Debtors  frequently 
bound  over  to  their  creditors  in  servitude  —  Beginning  of  American  law 

By  Reverend  Bert  Francis  Case  284 

TWO  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE  BIRTH  OF  THE  MOTHER  OF  WASH- 
INGTON —  Ancient  Engraving  Dedicated  to  her  Memory  —  The  Original  Is  in  the 
Collection  of  John  M.  Crampton,  and  Is  known  as  "Washington's  Last  Interview 
with  his  Mother"  ............................................................... 

UNTOLD  RICHES  OF  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS  .....  By  Honorable  Frank  R.  Goodlng 

Governor  of  Idaho  2S1 

UTILIZATION  OF  INVENTION  OF  GENIUS  OF  MAN—  Editorial  writer  In  the  "Pater- 

son  Morning  Call"  ...............................................................   677 

VOYAGES  OF  AN  OLD  SEA  CAPTAIN—  Adventures  In  South  America  and  in  the  ports 
of  the  Old  World  during  the  first  years  of  the  American  Republic  —  An  American 
citizen  impressed  into  the  British  service  —  His  daring  escape  after  years  of  cap- 
tivity and  conflict  —  Autobiography  ..................  By  Captain  Jeremiah  Holmes  305 

VOTE  TO  PROSECUTE  NON-  CHURCH  GOERS  IN  1664—  ..............  By  S.  L.  Griffith 

of  Danby,  Vermont  S6S 

•WE  WANT  PATRIOTS  IN  EVERY-DAY  LIFE"—  Excerpt  from  speech  made  by 

Honorable  Charles  E.  Hughes,  Governor  of  New  York  434 

WHEN   DAYLIGHT  DIES  —  An   Evening  Pastoral  —  With   four  nature   illustrations   In 

photo-tone  ......................  By  John  H.  Guernsey,  Government  Postal  Service  299 

WHEN  SORROW  BECKONS  AT  THY  DOOR—  A  Poem  .........  Howard  Arnold  Walter 

Now  in  the  Orient  128 

WILLIAM  PYNCHON—  An  Immigrant  to  the  New  World  In  1630  —  An  Oxford  Graduate 
who  came  to  the  Western  Continent  as  an  Indian  Trader  and  settled  on  the  trail 
—  He  accumulated  wealth  and  founded  a  family  which  has  contributed  liberally 
to  American  Progress  —  Nathaniel  Hawthorne's  Controversy  with  the  Pynchon 
family  over  his  novel  —  Heirlooms  of  the  early  American  pioneers  —  Described  by 

Blanche  Nichols  Hill  609 

WILL  MAN   HARNESS   POWERS  OF   SUN,   MOON   AND   TIDE?—  Editorial   writer   In 

the  "Baltimore  Sun"  .............................................................   677 

WILL  OF  MARY  WASHINGTON  IN  1788—  Mother  of  the  first  President  of  the  United 
States  —  Transcribed  from  Clerk's  office  at  Frederlcksburg,  Virginia 

By  Mrs.  Helen  Cook  Porter  of  Baltimore,  Maryland  871 


Americana  lufaia  — 


in 


History  is  largely  a  matter  of  viewpoint. 
The  man  on  the  mountains  and  the  man  in 
the  valley  may  gaze  upon  the  passing  pano- 
rama and  both  will  see  an  entirely  different 
picture.  It  has  been  the  desire  of  these 
pages  to  allow  observers  to  tell  of  events 
as  they  have  seen  them,  without  doubt  or 
questioning,  restricting  only  passions  and 
prejudices.  I  recall  James  Anthony  Froude, 
the  eminent  historian,  in  speaking  of  the 
varying  viewpoints  of  history,  once  re- 
marking that  Tacitus  and  Thucydides  were 
perhaps  the  ablest  men  who  ever  gave  them- 
selves to  writing  history,  and  also  the  most 
incapable  of  conscious  falsehood;  yet  even 
now,  after  all  these  centuries,  the  truth  of 
what  they  relate  is  called  in  question.  "So 
at  least  it  seems  to  me,"  added  Froude, 
"wherever  possible,  let  us  not  be  told  about 
this  man  or  that.  Let  us  hear  the  man 
himself  speak,  let  us  see  him  act,  and  let 
us  be  left  to  form  our  own  opinions  about 
him."  This  is  just  what  has  been  done  in 
these  pages,  "wherever  possible."  Many 
interesting  discussions  have  developed,  and 
in  frequent  instances  the  disputant  has  been 
introduced  to  the  narrator  and  both  have 
entered  into  a  friendly  search  for  the  truth. 

Strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  American 
Flag  itself  is  a  mooted  question.  Mrs. 
Champion's  article  on  its  evolution  has 
taken  her  onto  debatable  ground.  Charles 
C.  Hall,  of  Berkeley,  California,  presents 
evidence  that  the  Stars  and  Stripes  were 
made  from  the  military  cloak  of  Captain 
Swartout,  near  Ticonderoga,  and  that  the 
claims  of  Betsey  Ross  of  Philadelphia,  are 
at  least  open  to  comment.  Mr.  Hall's  wife 
is  a  descendant  of  Captain  Swartout. 

D.  M.Willers,  of  Fayette,  Seneca  County, 
New  York,  offers  this  suggestion:  "Mrs. 
Champion,  in  speaking  of  naval  battles  of 
the  War  of  1812,  says  that  not  once  was  the 
flag  of  fifteen  stars  and  fifteen  stripes  low- 
ered in  token  of  surrender.  I  wish  to  ask 
if  there  was  not  a  flag  on  the  Chespeake 
when  James  Lawrence  surrendered  it  to  the 
British  frigate  '  Shannon,'  in  June,  1813. 
Was  there  no  flag  lowered  when  the  Ameri- 
can brig  '  Argus '  surrendered  to  the  Brit- 
ish sloop  'Pelican'  in  August,  1813  ?" 

Mrs.  William  Dutcher,  of  525  Manhattan 
Avenue,  New  York,  adds  the  testimony  that 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  were  first  proposed  by 
General  Israel  Putnam,  who  was  a  cousin 
to  her  grandmother. 

Honorable  John  H.  Loomis,  of  the  Board 
of  Education  of  Chicago,  in  adding  to  Mrs. 
Champion's  valuable  information,  calls  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  the  war  fund  voted 
to  President  McKinley  by  Congress,  of 
which  she  speaks,  was  fifty  million  dollars, 
and  that  the  Puritans,  whom  she  men- 
tioned, were  in  Holland  eleven  years  before 
coming  to  America. 


Dr.  G.  Totten  McMaster,  a  retired  sur- 
geon in  the  United  States  Navy,  does  not 
agree  with  Mrs.  Champion  on  some  of  her 
investigations  into  the  Spanish-American 
War.    He  denies  any  suggestion  of  credit  to 
the  army  in  the  naval  conflict  off  Santiago, 
and  remarks  that  the  "  Oregon  "  did  not  fly 
the  "homeward-bound  flag"  in  her  wonder- 
ful run  around  Cape  Horn  from  the  Pacific. 
That  grand  old    hero,   Admiral  W.   S. 
Schley,  of  the  United  States  Navy,  who  is 
now  passing  his  well-earned  rest  in  Washing- 
ton, honored  by  the  American  people,  in 
speaking  of  Mrs.  Champion's  article,  gives 
this  valued  information  from  his  own  experi- 
ences:    "There  never  was  a  balloon  in  the 
fleet  before  Santiago  in  1898.     There  may 
have  been  land  balloons  in  the  army.    Cer- 
vera's  fleet  was  discovered  by  my  ship  on 
the  morning  of  May  28th,  1898,  and  it  was 
so  reported  to  Washington  on  the  following 
day,  May  2gth.     The  church  pennant  was 
not  hoisted  on  the  '  New  York'  on  July  3rd, 
as    that    cruiser  was  at    Siboney,   eleven 
miles  east  of  Santiago,  at  9:35  on  that  morn- 
ing when  Cervera's  fleet  came  out  of  San- 
tiago harbor.     The  natural  inference  from 
Mrs.  Champion's  mention  of  the  church 
pennant  would  be  that  the  '  New  York '  was 
present  in  the  fight  that  day,  which  is  his- 
torically untrue.     I  do  not  care  for  myself, 
but  I  think  it  is  a  wrong  to  the  officers  and 
men  of  my  flagship,  the  cruiser  '  Brooklyn,' 
who  did  such  sterling  service  to  our  country 
on  that  July  day.     As  she  was  an  import- 
ant factor  in  the  great  events  of  that  great 
day,  I  claim  for  her  officers  and  men  that 
credit    which    the    Government   acknowl- 
edged in  advancing  a  number  of  them  for 
'conspicuous  conduct  in  battle.'    It  is  not 
my  purpose  to  enter  into  any  controversy 
over  the  honors  of  that  day,  but  I  must  in- 
sist that  history  cannot  omit  the  '  Brook- 
lyn's '  conspicuous  part  in  the  great  naval 
engagement  of  that  splendid  July  day  in 
1898  when  the  flag  of  Spain  was  driven  for- 
ever from  the  waters  of  this  Western  Con- 
tinent." 

A  controversy  has  arisen  over  the  remin- 
iscences of  Judge  Munson,  who  was  sent 
by  President  Lincoln  to  sit  on  the  bench  of 
the  first  United  States  District  Court  with- 
in a  thousand  miles  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. This  controversy  is  interesting  as 
Judge  Munson's  judicial  decisions  were  im- 
portant factors  in  the  moulding  of  law  and 
order  in  Western  America. 

A  well-known  army  officer,  W.  H.  Keel- 
ing, of  Falls  City,  Nebraska,  says:  "Being 
one  of  the  first  army  officers  to  be  stationed 
in  Montana  about  the  time  of  which  Judge 
Munson  writes,  I  am  of  the  opinion  that 
Colonel  Reeve  was  not  at  Fort  Rice  in  1865. 
If  my  memory  is  right,  he  was  thousands  of 
miles  away  from  there  at  that  time.  I  do 


iitbta  —  4Hnntefc 


in 


not  think  that  Malcolm  Clark  was  a  grad- 
uate of  West  Point.  I  remember  talking 
with  him  about  it  and  he  said  he  was  not. 
Neither  do  the  records  affirm  that  he  was- 
His  daughter  has  been  superintendent  of 
public  instruction  in  Lewis  and  Clark 
County,  Montana,  and  has  been  holding  re- 
sponsible positions  under  the  direction  of 
the  Commissioner  of  Indian  affairs.  She 
might  decide  this  matter." 

Many  venerable  pioneers  have  offered 
their  testimonies  on  several  points,  and 
each  one  of  them  differs  in  detail.  Pioneers 
whom  Judge  Munson  has  not  seen  for  fifty 
years  have  written  to  him  recalling  their 
acquaintance  with  him.  Many  of  them  cor- 
roborate his  anecdotes,  and  an  occasional 
one  differs  with  him.  E.  Marshall  of  Man- 
chester, Tennessee,  who  helped  to  blaze  the 
trail  for  civilization  in  the  Great  West,  does 
not  believe  that  the  Sioux  Indians  ever 
used  poisoned  arrows.  He  says : 

"I  was  at  the  site  of  Ft.  Rice  from  which 
he  writes,  before  Ft.  Rice  was  located  in 
July,  1864,  and  again  about  the  time  when 
Judge  Munson  was  there  in  1865.  I  was  in 
the  battle  of  Ta-ha-kuta  in  July,  1864,  when 
General  Alf  Sully  defeated  the  combined 
force  of  the  whole  Sioux  nation  and  made 
the  route  to  Montana  safe  for  more  than 
ten  years.  I  carry  the  scars  of  arrow  wounds 
received  there  and  have  seen  many  arrow 
wounds  both  before  and  since  that  time. 
I  have  been  intimate  for  years  with  men 
who  had  lived  amongst  these  Indians  and 
spoke  their  language  fluently,  and  I  never 
have  seen  or  heard  anything  which  made 
me  suppose  for  a  moment  that  poisoned  ar- 
rows were  in  use,  nor  have  I  ever  heard  any 
person  whom  I  believed  was  familiar  with 
the  facts,  assert  that  such  arrows  were  in 
use.  Judge  Munson  saw  an  arrow  which 
was  alleged  to  have  killed  a  man  who  died 
in  great  pain ;  well,  arrow  wounds  are  pain- 
ful and  many  men  have  been  killed  by  them 
but  not  by  poison.  The  Sioux  was  treach- 
erous, bloodthirsty  and  dangerous.  The 
truth  will  paint  him  in  sufficiently  repulsive 
colors  without  the  exaggeration  of  poisoned 
arrows." 

The  Fulton  centenary  and  the  story  of 
the  development  of  American  commerce 
through  steam  as  the  power  of  propulsion, 
has  brought  out  several  claimants.  The 
Fitch  patriots  question  the  justice  of  the 
recent  centennial  tributes  to  Fulton.  To 
protect  the  accuracy  of  historical  state- 
ment, several  of  these  letters,  that  bear 
directly  upon  the  truth,  are  here  recorded. 
That  esteemed  man  of  letters,  Frank  H. 
Vizetelly,  whose  criticisms  are  always  help- 
ful, does  not  concede  to  the  "Savannah" 
the  honor  of  being  the  first  to  cross  the 
Atlantic  ocean.  He  says:  "  Inasmuch  as 
this  vessel  sailed  from  Savannah  May  22, 


1819,  on  her  voyage  across  the  Atlantic, 
and  that  in  the  year  1818,  a  British  steam- 
ship, the  'Rising  Sun,'  built  by  Lord 
Cochrane,  crossed  the  Atlantic,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  the  '  Savannah '  was  not  the 
first  steamship  to  cross,  and  the  '  British 
Queen'  was  not  the  first  vessel  built  for 
trans-oceanic  service  in  Great  Britain.  If 
you  will  consult  Haydn's  '  Dictionary  of 
Dates.'  page  647,  you  will  find  authority  for 
this  statement." 

Through  decades  of  eminent  service  to 
American  letters,  "The  Century"  is  one  of 
the  most  respected  American  institutions. 
It  is  an  authority  on  all  that  pertains  to 
America.  William  W.  Ellsworth,  who  has 
been  one  of  the  strong  factors  in  the  build- 
ing of  "The  Century,"  in  speaking  of  Presi- 
dent Tucker's  article  on  the  "Tercentenary 
of  the  First  Permanent  English  Settlement 
in  America. "calls  attention  to  the  old  Eng- 
lish play,  "Westward  Hoe"  as  being  written 
by  Webster  and  Dekker  in  1607,  that  it  may 
not  be  confounded  with  "Eastward  Hoe," 
written  by  Jonson,  Chapman  and  Marston. 
In  speaking  of  Simon  de  Passe's  portrait  of 
Poeahontas,  and  the  statement  that  there 
is  another  portrait  representing  Poeahontas 
in  native  costume,  seated,  with  her  only 
child  standing  at  her  side,  Mr.  Ellsworth 
gives  this  information:  "I  have  a  photo- 
graph of  it.  It  shows  a  conventional  Indian 
squaw  with  a  child  of  at  least  four  years  of 
age  standing  by  her  side,  and  as  Poeahontas 
died  when  her  baby  was  not  two  years  old, 
it  could  not  have  been  painted  from  life. 
Moreover,  the  member  or  the  Rolfe  family, 
living  in  Heacham  Hall,  who  sent  me  the 
photograph,  wrote  that  no  claim  was  made 
by  the  family  that  it  was  a  portrait  of  Po- 
cohantas,  but  was  simply  a  picture  of  an 
Indian  woman  wearing  such  ear-rings  as 
she  wore,  and  had  been  bought  about  twenty 
years  before  (this  was  five  years  ago).  The 
child  of  Rolfe  and  Poeahontas  was  named 
Thomas  and  not  John.  I  have  often  won- 
dered why  the  inscription  under  this  por- 
trait calls  John  Rolfe  'Thomas,'  and  the 
same  name  occurs  on  the  tablet  at  Graves- 
end.  Last  names  may  be  spelled  many  dif- 
ferent ways,  'Rolff,'  'Wroth,'  etc..  but  there 
is  no  question  of  spelling  over  Thomas  and 
John.  I  dare  say  the  matter  could  be  ex- 
plained and  perhaps  it  has  been." 

In  the  making  of  an  historical  magazine, 
there  is  a  multitude  of  opportunities  for  the 
types  to  defeat  an  author's  intention.  While 
this  is  a  common  heritage  of  the  printer's 
art,  the  absolute  accuracy  which  this  publi- 
cation requires,  leads  it  to  call  attention  to 
instances  where  the  truth  of  a  statement  is 
injured.  This  is  especially  so  in  the  first 
number,  on  page  36,  where  Mr.  Bullock  in- 
tended to  speak  of  Northampton  County, 
Pennsylvania. 


THE  LAST  LEAF 


The  key  of  Yesterday 
I  threw  away, 
And  now,  too  late, 
Before  tomorrow's  cloae- 
locked  gate 


Helpless  I  stand— in  vain 

to  pray! 

In  Tain  to  sorrow! 
Only  the  key  of  yesterday 
Unlocks  tomorrow! 


•DXTOXIAXl    COMMENT 


This  last  leaf  in  this  last  book  of  the 
year  leaves  us  at  the  end  of  the  first  jour- 
ney along  the  road  of  American  civili- 
zation, and  into  the  by-paths  of  our  na- 
tional life.  The  journey  has  been  one  of 
ever-increasing  pleasures  and  the  fellow- 
travelers  that  we  have  met  along  the  way 
have  strengthened  our  faith  in  the  patriot- 
heart  of  America.  A  good  doctor  of  let- 
ters early  sent  us  this  eulogium:  "As  Car- 
lyle said  of  Schiller,  you  may  pass  your 
pages  in  the  contemplation  of  ideal 
grandeur;  you  may  'live  among  the  glories 
and  solemnities  of  universal  Nature;'  your 
'thoughts  may  be  of  sages  and  heroes;' 
but  'you  will  find  no  rest,  no  peace,'  for 
they  are  only  ghosts."  To  this  kind  lit- 
terateur I  recall  at  this  time  the  further 
words  of  Carlyle:  "Foolish  Doctor!  Did 
he  ever,  with  the  mind's  eye,  as  well  as 
the  body's,  look  round  him  into  that  full 
tide  of  human  life  he  so  loved  ?  The  good 
doctor  is  a  ghost,  as  actual  and  as  authen- 
tic as  heart  could  wish;  sweep  away  the 
illusions  of  Time;  compress  the  three- 
score years  into  three  minutes,"  and  we 
are  all  ghosts.  "What  else  is  he?  What 
else  are  we?  We  start  out  of  nothing- 
ness, take  figure  and  are  apparitions; 
round  us  as  round  the  veriest  specter,  is 
Eternity; —  and  to  Eternity  minutes  are 
as  years  and  aeons.  .  .  .  Ghosts !" 


The  American  People  have  much  for 
which  to  feel  proud,  and  little  to  regret,  in 
the  Book  of  Life  that  they  have  written 
and  are  writing.  It  is  frequent  for  those 
who  are  now  making  History  to  denounce 
the  age  in  which  they  are  working.  Man- 
kind has  always  done  so.  I  read  a  few 
days  ago  in  an  American  newspaper:  "It 
requires  more  energy  for  a  man  to  suc- 
ceed to-day  than  it  required  twenty  years 
ago;  more  talent,  more  capital  of  brains 
and  faculty;  the  competition  is  keener,  the 
race  is  swifter,  the  life  is  faster.  Hence 
the  list  of  sacrifices  to  the  Moloch  of  over- 
work." It  is  the  plaint  that  has  come 
down  from  the  beginning.  Baltasar  Gra- 
cian,  a  learned  Spaniard,  far  back  in 
1637,  wrote:  "Everything  is  at  its  acme, 
especially  the  art  of  making  one's  way  in 
the  world.  There  is  more  required  nowa- 
days to  make  a  single  wise  man  than  for- 
merly to  make  Seven  Sages,  and  more  is 
needed  nowadays  to  deal  with  a  single  per- 
son than  was  required  to  deal  with  a  whole 
people  in  former  times."  The  truth  is  that 
the  world,  in  its  wonderful  plan  of  evolu- 
tion, is  growing  better  all  the  time.  The 
Infinite  Idea  knows  no  retrogression.  It 
is  always  upward,  onward.  The  pages  of 
History  are  illumined  by  this  truth.  His- 
tory is  always  Optimistic.  It  is  the  only 
true  support  man  finds  in  the  long  journey. 


My  learned  friends  believe  that  His- 
tory is  the  story  of  Ghosts!  It  is!  Just 
as  that  master  analyst,  Carlyle,  said  that 
you  and  I  are  now  but  moving  specters. 
"This  stormy  Force,  this  Life-blood  with  its 
burning  passion — they  are  all  but  dust  and 
shadow.  That  warrior  on  his  strong  war- 
horse:  fire  flashes  through  his  eyes;  Force 
dwells  in  his  arm  and  heart;  but  warrior 
and  war-horse  are  a  Vision — a  revealed 
Force — nothing  more.  Stately  they  tread 
the  Earth  as  if  it  were  a  firm  substance. 
Fool!  the  Earth  is  but  a  film;  it  cracks 
in  twain,  and  warrior  and  war-horse  sink 
beyond  plummet's  sounding.  A  little  while 
ago  we  were  not;  a  little  while  and  we 
are  not.  So  it  has  been  from  the  begin- 
ning; so  it  will  be  to  the  end.  Genera- 
tion after  generation  takes  to  itself  the 
form  of  a  body.  .  .  .  What  Force  and 
Fire  is  in  each  he  expends;  one  grinding 
in  the  mill  of  industry;  one,  hunter-like, 
climbing  the  Alpine  heights  of  science; 
one  madly  dashing  in  pieces  on  the  rocks 
of  strife,  in  war  with  his  fellow.  .  .  . 
There  are  now  a  thousand  million  walk- 
ing the  earth  openly  at  noontide;  some 
half  hundred  have  vanished  from  it,  some 
half  hundred  have  risen  in  it,  ere  thy  watch 
ticks  once,"  and  every  one  of  them  is  mak- 
ing History,  which,  according  to  its  influ- 
ence on  the  Great  Whole,  is  narrative  for 
these  pages — this  record  of  man's  work. 


History  may  be  the  story  of  ghosts ! 
But  it  is  not  a  "ghost  story."  It  is  a  stern 
reality.  It  is  all  there  is  of  man  that  lives 
to  inhabit  this  great  world  more  than  a 
short  span  of  years.  You  pass;  I  pass; 
even  the  towering  structures  that  you  may 
erect  must  crumble  and  fall.  A  flash  of 
Time  and  there  will  be  nothing  left  but  the 
story  of  it  all — and  that  story  is  History. 
"Like  a  God-created,  fire-breathing  Spirit- 
host,  we  emerge  from  the  inane.  Earth's 
mountains  are  leveled  and  her  seas  filled 
up  in  our  passage.  On  the  hardest  ada- 
mant some  imprint  of  us  is  stamped  in; 
the  last  rear  of  the  Host  will  read  traces 
of  the  earliest  Van."  These  are  the  foot- 
prints that  are  now  being  followed  in  these 
pages.  Show  me  a  man  who  says  that  he 
does  not  like  History  and  I  will  show  you 
a  man  whose  character  is  doubtful ;  a  man 
who  is  trying  to  take  all  he  can  out  of  life 
and  has  no  intention  of  leaving  anything 
worth  while  in  it;  a  man  who  dislikes  the 
written  leaves  of  men  because  he  knows 
that  his  own  life  story  will  pollute  them. 
There  is  a  moral  force  in  History  that 
holds  men  to  their  deeds  and  it  is  as 
relentless  as  it  is  eternal — there  is  no  es- 
cape from  it.  Every  man  is  inscribing  his 
own  leaf  in  the  great  volume  of  mankind. 
You  will  remember  why  good  old 
Abou  Ben  Adhem's  name  "led  all  the  rest." 


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The  Journal  of  American 
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